In the 1990's, the EU countries agreed on a single currency and a single spelling for it. Only Greece, which has its own language, was exempt from this agreement.
But two new members, Latvia and Hungary, have declined this clause in the agreement and requested to maintain their own spelling. Two other newcomers have accepted a compromise instead, according to which they are allowed to use their own spelling within their borders, but not in translation of EU documents.
Although the euro may still be the single currency, its spelling differs among the participating countries and especially those belonging to the European enlargement scheme.
This issue has once again proven that for countries with a background of foreign dominations, language remains a very sensitive matter of political nature.
The Arctic Council has produced a report on the climate of the region, which concluded that the far north is warming up twice as fast as the rest of our planet.
Scientists are already aware of the fact that the brain is capable of altering its structure, but now they have discovered that language learning can enhance it.
In specific, the grey matter of bilinguals' brains has a greater density as compared to monolinguals' brains.
Furthermore, those who learned the second language at a younger age were found to have more advanced grey matter than those who learned it later.
Somali translators, for instance, have not yet the luxury of a translation tool, since such tools do not support their language at the moment. They even have no ability to use conventional spell checkers, such as Word spell checker, since there is no Somali version yet.
The Somali written language is only 30 years old and never had the chance to develop and reach the standards of modern languages. 30% of the words Somali translators need to translate into their language do not really exist in Somali.
However, the market demands translations into Somali, since Somali businesses are mostly based on imports.
British Council's director of communications explained that the most favoured choices were strong and positive words.
The UK has not been included in this survey and this is the reason why some words, such as "peekaboo" or "zing", appeared in the list. Such words sound funny to a non-English speaker. Native English speakers presumably would not select these words to appear in the list.
Time has also played a decisive role in the selection of words. For example, many people participating in the survey have chosen the word "flip-flop", which came 59th out of 70 entries. This word was widely used during coverage of the US election. If the survey had been carried out earlier, it probably would not appear in the list at all. "Hiccup" is another funny word included in the list by the non-English speakers. The same applies to "Kangaroo".
So, which is your favourite English word?
