Foreign languages are good for footballers

The great Welsh footballer Ian Rush moved from FC Liverpool to Juventus FC in 1987 and when he was asked by a reporter about his new life in Turin, he replied that "living in Italy was like living in a foreign country."

If Ian Rush had learned some Italian, of course, he might have felt a little bit more at home playing for La Vecchia Signora, as Juve fans call their club, but British footballers are an insular lot, so they usually stay at home. If they do go to a "foreign country", they rarely learn the local language. To help them, and the rest of us, the European Union decided that there should be a European Day of Languages. It's today, by the way.

The first European Day of Languages was in 2001 and the BBC was so inspired by the idea that it created "a snapshot of 35 main European languages" on its website. It's very useful as each page has audio clips of a dozen "key phrases" The first language is Albanian, and we're told that "Albanian is not related to other languages!" But it's easy and  I can now say "Yes" (Po) and "No" (Jo) in Albanian. On the Luxembourgish page, you can learn how to say Et deet mer leed, mä ech schwätzen nët Lëtzeburgesch ("I'm sorry, I don't speak Luxembourgish."). That's a perfect sentence for British footballers.