The Language Show

On 1st of November, I went to the Language Show at Kensington Olympia, London. This is an annual event but it was the first time I found out about this and being now a fully committed language learner I went to check it out.

To use a cliché, it was like being a kid in a candy store. Hundreds of stands, all related to languages, book shops, free taster courses, intensive class sessions, free seminars - and with all these, hundreds of people who are also connected to the area of learning languages.

Just as soon as I walked inside the building, I got my free tickets for Arabic and Turkish taster courses from the reception desk. Arabic was scheduled to start at 12:00, so until then, I explored the many delights of various stands, learning about different methods used for language learning.

My one big disappointment was that majority of stands only had books for display. It made practical sense that they didn’t have to carry a lot of stock, but I had been really looking forward to buying several books - especially foreign language fiction. That was one of the main reason I had been looking forward to visiting the stand of Great Britain Association of Esperanto. I saw Lord of the Rings trilogy on the shelf and I was ready to buy it, until the lady informed me they were not for sale.

Another thing that excited me was visiting Greek and Latin for all. Now, eventually I would like to learn a great number of languages, and I have not made any final decision as to what I would like to learn and what I wouldn’t. Currently, Latin and Ancient Greek weren’t on top of my list. But then I visited this stand, saw the available material, and thought Latin…hmm…why the hell not! So again I was quite ready to buy the Cambridge Latin Book 1, until I was told it’s not for sale. But at least the guy gave me a free cloth bag to carry all my various leaflets and booklets (shame that the bag had ripped by the time I got home at the end of the day).

Even though I was unable to buy the Latin book, the idea of it stuck in my mind. So yesterday, I ordered the Cambridge Latin book online along with Harry Potter 1 in Latin. So I guess, I will be adding Latin to the other three languages I am currently learning.

Arabic taster course was great. The man teaching it was a native Syrian and he had a pretty engaging way. Turkish taster course on the other hand was a complete disaster, due to the really irritating woman from Cactus Languages, trying to do the taster course for 30 minutes in “Turkish Only” way with really bad acting and TOO MUCH prancing about to convey her meaning. Now, I think “Target Language Only” are great idea - but not for a taster session. That’s the kind of stuff that should be reserved for at least a day’s immersion course. Fortunately, she did not put me off from Turkish - however, it is a final stamp against Cactus.
I have heard a great deal of horrid things about them, and know some people who have found their language classes to be a complete waste of time. With this experience, I refuse to have anything to do with them ever again.

I also attended a seminar titled “Subliminal Language Learning” held by a woman named Caroline Smart. Another DISASTER. First of all, she spoke so slowly that it reminded me of how New Yorker’s feel about Texan speech. You feel like you have to wait couple of hours before someone would bother to finish their sentence. Caroline apparently is also a yoga teacher who found mixing relaxing and meditating techniques of Yoga blended well with language learning. I do believe that in the hands of a person capable of delivering a decent seminar, this could have been an interesting session. But in this particular incident, I cursed myself for not sitting at the end. However, I was fortunate that people sitting behind me also found it boring enough to get up and leave, which gave me enough space to escape without wasting more time than I already had.

Despite some of these disappointments though, the Language Show was a great experience and for crazy language/book maniac like me, a great day out. I look forward to attending this event a yearly tradition.