Lingo24 has teamed up with soapboxracing.co.uk for an extreme gravity racing event, set to take place on the longest and most testing course in Britain on the weekend of the 25th and 26th July. As official supporters of the event, Lingo24 has translated sections of the website into Gaelic.

And for those wondering what a ‘jessie’ is after reading the text on the homepage, it’s a Scottish colloquialism for a feeble, easily scared person.

As if you didn’t know already, Saturday 9th May was Europe Day - an annual celebration of peace and unity in Europe.

It was on that day in 1950 that marked the first move towards what we now call the European Union, which today has five hundred million people living in twenty seven member states. That’s a lot of people and, of course, a lot of languages.

The UK has long had a reputation as being rather ‘mono-lingual’ when it comes to communicating on holiday. Indeed, ordering ‘dos cervezas’ on a Spanish break in the sun is possibly as much as many UK holidaymakers could manage.

However, it’s important not to get hooked in by these well-worn stereotypes, and there are many people who are more than willing to try their hand at another language when abroad. The problem is, as English speakers it’s so easy to become a little lazy when our native tongue is so widely spoken – English has become the international language of convenience.