Desacrator48 Groupie United States Joined 5068 days ago 93 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French
| Message 1 of 4 02 December 2010 at 8:55pm | IP Logged |
One of my big motivations for pursuing languages and selecting them is in fact because of the World Cup.
When I found out this summer that the NEXT world cup would be in Brazil, I realized I could combine two of my favorite things right now: soccer and languages. I hope to make it my first World Cup trip and combine these two pleasures, in conjuntion with starting to learn Portuguese 2 years from now.
Now if you don't know, today was a big day for me because I was going to find out where I will be spending my money 8 and 12 years from now...and also what languages I will have to learn to prepare for then.
I did think wishfully (and arrogantly as an Anglophone) a while back that England and then the US would get these bids, thereby forgoing the language barrier and an opportunity to learn two more 4 years apart...but if you haven't heard yet, we all now have the incentive to learn Russian and Arabic!
If you guys really want to see the power of international languages and the lingua franca, you have nowhere else to go than watch the presentations of the bids in Switzerland.
FIFA 2022 Qatar Presentation
That one is Qatar's. You could imagine my surprise and admiration when instead of speaking English like every other bid (USA, Australia, Japan, S. Korea), the royal princes of Qatar spoke also in perfect French, Castillian Spanish, and American English.
Does anybody else tie the World Cup or global soccer into learning or a love of languages?
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SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6419 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian
| Message 2 of 4 03 December 2010 at 1:13am | IP Logged |
I've tried learning a few words of the host countries' languages.
This post got me all excited. I thought it was going to be about an international competition for polyglots, and I wanted to be on the team.
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sm66 Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 5118 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Greek, German
| Message 3 of 4 03 December 2010 at 7:06am | IP Logged |
I too would love to go to Brazil 2014 so I can use that motivation as the perfect excuse to dabble in Portuguese. Russia in 2018 will be a very interesting linguistic experience for you as well! But, needless to say, I'm not happy with Qatar getting the World Cup in 2022, and I can't really see the opportunities to actually speak Gulf Arabic while you're over there.
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leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6310 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog
| Message 4 of 4 04 December 2010 at 2:00am | IP Logged |
It's very cool that you posted this. I plan to use the 2016 olympics as an excuse to learn Portuguese. World Cup is
also an excellent Idea too. But I'm old, and will probably be dead before 2022. I may need to find a different
motivation to learn Arabic.
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