Africa is home to amazing languages. In this entertaining video, I go on a linguistic safari around the languages of Africa, exploring their complex grammar, magnificent array of speech sounds (including the unique click consonants) and some of their home-grown writing systems. Semitic languages span three continents and I look at how Amharic, the main language of Ethiopia, changes verbs at the b… Read More
In May 2018, I had the great pleasure of being a speaker at TEDx Chula Vista, in Southern California. https://youtu.be/pL_jzxpRaEU I say it was a great pleasure, and it mostly was. The audience were fabulously warm and welcoming. They laughed in all the right places and none of the wrong ones. They were incredibly patient when I forgot my words, resulting in a long pause which the editors th… Read More
My great friend Joke, aka Elfy Jo, a multicultural polyglot magical musician, recently interviewed me on her radio show. The conversation careers around topical hairpin bends, as it always does on Joke's red sofa in Guangzhou – usually with the assistance of a G&T. We talk about our shared love of languages, discuss the power of coaching and delight in human diversity. Along the way, we… Read More
I managed to drag myself out of bed to get interviewed at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning by the inimitable Ernest Hackmon on his Importance of Being show. There was lots of humourous banter. Apparently, I am 'linguistic'. That explains a lot! We covered a lot of ground: from my three-year-old self watching Buongiorno Italia and नै ज़िन्दगी/نئی زندگی, to the oft-recurring theme of espionage.… Read More
Puns and plays on words are a huge feature of Chinese. There are lots of words that sound similar, and Chinese characters enable people to make visual puns too – playing with characters that look alike or share visual elements. In the year of the dog, which just started, many greetings involve the play on words between wàng 旺, meaning abundance, and wāng 汪, the sound that dogs make. Yes,… Read More
Black History Month is celebrated in February in the United States and Canada, and in October in the UK and the Netherlands. Beyond slavery, oppression and a nice lady on a bus I am struck by how many accounts focus on the history of black people in the United States to the exclusion of the rest of the world. They are almost exclusively about passivity and victimhood, ended by the actions of cha… Read More
I’m a metal ox, at least according to the Chinese zodiac. I am also a middle-aged, Gen-X, white, male Libran ENFP of mainly Irish ancestry from the south-east of England. Those, and many other things, may categorise me but do they define my destiny? We often fall into the trap of thinking that the kind of person we are dictates what we are able to achieve. That kind of thinking prevents… Read More
I had the great pleasure of being the guest of Doug Gfeller MCC on his OC Talk Radio show The Coaching Perspective. The show goes out live on Thursday afternoons and the live element added just the right drop of adrenaline. Doug was the perfect host and was very welcoming. The topic of the show was Delighting in Difference and Celebrating Similarity. We talked briefly about how I lear… Read More
For the first time in history, five generations are working side by side. People who spent their teenage years dancing on the beach around a tinny transistor radio chat at the water cooler with coworkers who got their first smartphone at the age of ten. The media would have us believe that each generation has its own particular traits. When generations mix, the clash of values and attitudes… Read More
It’s the stuff of nightmares. You get to the Q&A section of your meeting or presentation. You ask, “Who’d like to start us off with the first question?” Silence… Ear shattering, blaring silence. You smile nervously. “Come on! Don’t be shy. I’m sure everyone’s got lots of things they’d like to ask.” People start to shuffle awkwardly in their seats. Grinning inanely, you try to m… Read More