Archive for June, 2008

Scottish commuters enjoy a little French fancy

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

A French railway station announcer is proving a hit with commuters because of his exotic accent.
Passengers at Edinburgh’s Haymarket Station have been amused to hear Vincent Houplain announcing Scottish destinations over the Tannoy system in his French accent. The 45-year-old Frenchman, who moved to Scotland nine years ago, learned Scotland’s placenames while working onboard trains, and now enjoys his job announcing departures to towns such as Inverkeithing, North Queensferry and Glasgow.

A First ScotRail spokesman said: “Vincent is very popular with our customers. He really connects with people. He is a superb communicator – with a wonderful accent. Vincent puts a real smile on faces – both male and female.”

So what do you think, do you like English being spoken with a French accent? What accent do you love, and which one do you really hate?

Posted in English, French, News about languages | No Comments »

Searching for God, 0 results

Friday, June 13th, 2008

We received this message from a very concerned user:

Greetings,
There is a serious omission in the Hungarian dictionary.
Searching for: God (0 results) No result. Please search again.

So I can’t help wondering… does God exist in Hungarian? Does God exist at all?? Have you ever tried to search for God and how many results did you get?

The person who wrote to me also gave me the translation: “Isten” or “Jó Isten” is Hungarian for “God”.

So I replied to his message:

Thank you for your message. If you search for “god” (no initial cap) you will find several expressions with the word Isten in it.

But “God” only is missing.

Not only in the dictionary, though.

Best regards,
Beaumont.

By which I didn’t mean that God didn’t exist, right? I could also mean that God exists but could show up more often, or something like that. Anyway I hope I didn’t offend anyone. It was just a metaphysical moment that I wanted to share with you…

Posted in Freelang's website | No Comments »

Middle Eastern geography

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

We haven’t uploaded a new quiz on Freelang for a long time, but we are working on a new one. We are working on many things, actually, but we haven’t got much free time to carry on all our projects.

Anyway, what about a geography game in the meantime? Did you know “the Middle East” stretches as far west as the Western Sahara in Africa? What is the smallest Middle Eastern country? Test your knowledge on a drag-and-drop game by clicking here.

Posted in Other websites | 3 Comments »