The community group where people from a wide range of countries living, working or studying in Falmouth meet on a social basis to practise various languages and to learn about each other’s cultures, celebrated the European Day of Languages last Thursday.

At the initiative of the Council of Europe, the European Day of Languages has been celebrated every year since 2001 with the aim of promoting linguistic diversity as a means of achieving greater inter-cultural understanding. On the occasion of the day, a range of events are organised across Europe: activities for and with children, television and radio programmes, language classes and conferences and other events.

This year members celebrated the event by giving people the opportunity to come along to its regular Thursday evening meeting and to try to learn some simple phrases in as many languages as possible in the space of two hours. With the help of 12 volunteer teachers, there was the opportunity to try out languages as diverse as Turkish, Hungarian, Swahili, Breton and Mandarin. Amongst the teachers was local author, James Penhaligon, who has just written a best-selling account of his childhood growing up in Tanganyika in the 1950s entitled “Speak Swahili Dammit”, Turkish geologist Ceylan Polat and Cornish teacher Pauline Preece.

Despite the appalling weather around 30 people turned up and spent a light-hearted and enjoyable evening where the concept of “speed dating” was employed to move people from table to table and to experience a new language every ten minutes.

Get-togethers take place at Falmouth Watersports Centre every Thursday from 9.30pm onwards. There is no official membership but we welcome donations towards our everyday running costs. Anyone who is interested can just come along on a Thursday evening or, if you want to find out more, contact Tony Casey on 01326 312936.