French fluency: it's only going to cost £8,171 or is it?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. We do this in a bid to be less polluting and tackle climate change while at the same time keeping a global outlook. Learning to speak a language fluently (or even a few words) is a wonderful way to get to know the world better. This blog looks at the costs - apparently Indonesian is the cheapest to learn, and Korean the most expensive. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

My Bangladeshi born neighbours cooked this for my family to celebrate the end
of Ramadan. Isn't that lovely? Eid mubarak to all who've been fasting. Understanding
each other isn't just about words - it's also sharing food and, in our case, cutting our hedge!

Today my brother texted to say he's 50 per cent fluent at French according to Duolingo (an app on his phone).  I'm a bit jealous as I'm still  only 44% fluent! So I was interested to see that you can work out exactly how much it costs to learn a new language.  This post contains info from a press release promoting Voucherbox.co.uk

The guide for travellers seeking to pick up a new language reveals that Indonesian is the cheapest tongue to master while Korean will set you back the most cash. Apparently French will cost me £8,171. I reckon it's going to be more expensive for me than it is for my clever younger brother!

	Language	Difficulty (Hours)	Ave cost per hour	Overall cost to fluency
1	Indonesian	900	£6.35	£5,715
2	Portuguese	600	£10.23	£6,138
3	Spanish	600	£10.26	£6,157
4	Swedish	600	£10.32	£6,191
5	Romanian	600	£10.83	£6,500
6	Urdu	1100	£6.24	£6,864
7	Italian	600	£11.67	£7,004
8	Hindi	1100	£6.79	£7,466
9	Danish	600	£12.47	£7,484
10	French	600	£13.62	£8,171
11	Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik)	1100	£7.50	£8,250
12	Polish	1100	£9.03	£9,932
13	Serbian	1100	£9.85	£10,834
14	Greek	1100	£10.18	£11,195
15	Dutch	600	£18.71	£11,224
16	Russian	1100	£10.31	£11,338
17	Croatian	1100	£10.51	£11,556
18	Latvian	1100	£10.51	£11,556
19	German	750	£16.02	£12,013
20	Bulgarian	1100	£11.82	£12,999
21	Czech	1100	£11.82	£12,999
22	*Thai	1100	£12.80	£14,082
23	Hebrew	1100	£14.44	£15,886
24	Arabic	2200	£8.89	£19,548
25	Turkish	1100	£18.27	£20,097
26	Japanese	2200	£11.08	£24,375
27	Mandarin (Chinese)	2200	£13.35	£29,367
28	Korean	2200	£18.71	£41,155

"Money saving gurus at Voucherbox.co.uk looked into the costs and the number of hours it takes for English speakers to start from scratch learning a new language and go all the way through to fluency.

The data was compiled using the average prices from a cost-per-hour language learning website, and calculated the estimated expenses of learning 28 languages from around the world.

As well as the cost per hour, the research also looked into the difficulty of learning each language – with average hours needed ranging from 600 to a staggering 2,200.

The 28 languages were picked from around the world and included European languages such as Spanish, Italian and French, as well as the more exotic languages such as Persian, Mandarin and Thai.

The results showed that although Indonesian took longer than more basic languages to learn, with around 900 hours needed from start to finish, it had the cheaper average hourly rate of tuition of £6.35, meaning the cost was particularly low.

Coming in at second place in the cheaper languages was Portuguese, with a total cost of £6,138. This differed to Indonesian as although the hourly price is a costly £10.23, only 600 hours are needed to speak fluently.

This was then followed by Spanish with a total costing of £6,157. This included 600 hours of language priced at £10.26 per hour.

In terms of typical school-taught languages within the UK, it’s those who study German compared to French that should be pleasantly surprised. Within the research, it was revealed that students on German courses at school could be saving £12,013 in money compared to just £8,171 if they had chosen to learn French.

Tipping the costly end of the scale as the more expensive languages to study included Korean, Mandarin and Japanese.

To learn Korean, you must set aside a whopping £41,155, as well as dedicating 2,200 hours to the language. It was revealed that as well as being one of the most difficult languages to crack, it will also cost £18.71 per hour.

Mandarin, or Chinese, will set you back a total of £29,367, while Japanese is also expensive, priced at an average of £24,375."

Over to you?
So if money is the only object - what language would you like to learn?!

Keeping it clean with tweed and soap

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. On a short Saturday city stroll we met anachronistic cyclists, a Korean soap sculpture and a Madagascan rafia hat collector. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

At the weekend Nell, 12, and I went for a wander around London - bits we didn't know to cheer up some rather dull chores. Living in London it's easy to find new places to discover but we lucked out when 500 tweedy looking folk, some on Penny Farthing bikes, came to a halt beside us before commencing a parade around London.

Turns out they were on the Tweed Run - a celebration of well-attired gentlemen and ladies who raise a lot for charity. It looked a lot of fun wearing what is conventionally traditional clothing (and very beautiful) on a bike - a sartorially startling contrast to the luminous lycra most London cyclists wear.

This sculpture is made from soap by a Korean artist.

Bubbles
In Cavendish Square behind department store John Lewis there is a statue of the Butcher of Cumberland. It looks like marble, but on close inspection we discovered it is made from 2.7 tonnes of Honey I Washed The Kids soap. The idea is that it crumbles away releasing a Lush-like smell. It's made by Korean sculptor Meekyoung Shin, see a short video here. Disappointingly we couldn't smell anything, maybe it needs more sun and less rain.

Later that day we went to tea with a woman who has collected hats from all over Madagascar. There were baby hats, dating hats, keeping the sun off hats and purse hats - all whipped up with dried materials. Her hats were the real McCoy, collected 30 years ago, but on the web I found the Madagascan Hat Company, a Fair Trade outfit that makes amazing raffia hats using traditional skills but with a twist that makes them more suitable for modern, tourist heads, see here.

Not bad for a short day's city stroll!

Dragon stance

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world without racking up their carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola
Korea is one of the countries I don't expect to know about. It's far away, mysterious and I haven't yet had any students from there. China yes. Taiwan yes. But this half-term week after a fascinating detour to the V&A museum (the Natural History Museum was just too crowded) we all found out about Korea's early writing programme for the masses, the way Buddhist texts were written up and the importance of dragons. Most of the dragons were on decorative china pieces but bold, lithe and perfectly scary. As we'd just seen a lifesize sculpture of George slaughtering a dragon in the plaster court, dragons seemed to have become the dominant animal force in the East wing...


While there a text pinged in from the girls' tae kwondo instructor, Michael, suggesting that they used half term to prepare for some tests (belts). That's how I know that this amazing hand/foot discipline was born in Korea on 11 April 1955. Bizarrely for the past couple of years our family has even been using a few Korean words - all thanks to the stances the kids learn in tae kwondo - without realising just where they came from. Not long ago Pete even wrote about it in the Guardian, see here to find out if we ever found our 'indomitable spirit'.
I'm afraid to say that there wasn't really a dragon's chance for me.