The Boy and The Cat enjoy linguistics...in The Boy's case, German is his thing. The Cat is partial to a bit of ancient Greek. They both study French, and speak it pretty well. At least in the class room. The Cat's Mother and I have tried to promote this by declaring French only half hours. No English is permitted. A lack of vocabulary is no excuse whatever the topic of the conversation.
The downside is that neither of The Cat's Mother nor I are remember much French, so we bumble along in pidgin Franglais...which we both find hilarious. Generally the youngsters sit there stony faced, or storm out declaring us to be ridiculous. We look at each other confused...
I've never been much of a linguist, and my particular gig is an obsession with news. Local news, national news, international news...I just have to know what's going on. If I had a garden fence I think I'd be there gossipping with the neighbours...
On my computer then I have homepages for the BBC, Sky News, the Evening Standard, Brighton & Hove Argus, Euronews, France 24, Al Jazeera, The First Post, China Daily and Russia Today. I can never get enough.
Russia Today is the easiest and best way of knowing what's going on in Russia. And I am delighted to say, that at my age I have decided that now is the time for me to learn a new language. Russian seems to be the way to go. Naturally, my interest is entirely stimulated by a visit to the country earlier this year, having studied Russian politics at University...and of course, Russia will be one of the superpowers in the new world order. Russia Today has helpfully supplied a link to their favoured language learning specialist, and I hope you will take the opportunity of learning this very special language here Marina Orlova is the sort of language teacher I've always felt I deserved
Somehow, I don't think the BBC would provide this type of service...and I think with this sort of teaching, my 'O' Level language grades would have been much higher