European Day of Languages

European Day of Languages

The 26th September 2015 is the official day to celebrate the European Day of Languages. The European Day of Languages which has taken place on the 26th September since 2001 and is hosted by the Council of Europe. With lots of schools joining in the fun to help create awareness and teach various different languages.

There are key benefits to learning a different language from a young age:

  • Young children are still using their individual, language-learning strategies to acquire their home language and soon find they can also use these strategies to pick up other languages.
  • Young children have time to learn through play-like activities.
  • Children who have the opportunity to pick up a second language while they are still young appear to use the same innate language-learning strategies throughout life when learning other languages. Picking up third, fourth, or even more languages is easier than picking up a second.
  • Young children who acquire language rather than consciously learn it, as older children and adults have to, are more likely to have better pronunciation and feel for the language and culture.

Did you know…?

  • There are between 6000 and 7000 languages in the world – spoken by 7 billion people divided into 189 independent states.
  • There are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe – roughly 3% of the world’s total.
  • Most of the world’s languages are spoken in Asia and Africa.
  • At least half of the world’s population are bilingual or plurilingual, i.e. they speak two or more languages.
  • In their daily lives, Europeans increasingly come across foreign languages. There is a need to generate a greater interest in languages among European citizens.
  • The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is listed by the Guinness Book of Records as the hardest tongue twister in the world.
  • At the time of the French Revolution, 75% of French citizens did not speak French as a mother tongue. Until the 19th century, French was spoken more widely in Holland and Germany than in some parts of France
  • German is the only world language that capitalizes all nouns.
  • Lithuanian together with Latvian are the only two living languages from the Baltic languages family.

At Primary Teaching Services we have lot’s of products that are perfect for helping to teach languages from stickers, wristbands and certificates.

You can click here to shop lot’s of different rewards products to help praise your pupils in various different languages.

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