Languages
kmp. offers language courses in over 30 different languages. All languages are taught by native-language or bilingual trainers.
The elevated form of Arabic is the standard language of over 240 million native-speaker Arabs. Standard Arabic is one of the six official languages of the United
Nations and can therefore be termed as a global language of the 21st century. Over 25 countries have Arabic as their official language.
Arabic is written from right to left. In Standard Arabic there are only three
vowels, a, i and u.
Bulgarian is a Slavic language spoken by around 10 million native speakers. Outside Bulgaria itself it is quite widely spoken in Greece, Romania, Macedonia, Moldavia, the Ukraine, Serbia, Belarus and Turkey.
Bulgarian is written in a form of the Cyrillic alphabet that with its 30 symbols has 4 more symbols or letters than our basic Latin alphabet.
Bulgarian possesses a highly developed verb system with 9 tenses, 4 of which are different forms of past tense.
The term “Chinese” generally refers to the standard Chinese language based upon the largest dialect group, Mandarin. Its phonology is based upon the Beijing dialect. Mandarin is spoken by 800 million native speakers — there are more native speakers of Mandarin than English and Spanish put together.
Aside from Mandarin there are 7 other Chinese dialect groups, for example Wu, spoken mainly in Shanghai. The differences in the 8 Chinese dialects are so extreme that speakers of the various dialects find it almost impossible to communicate with one another.
Written Chinese, on the other hand, is largely common to all dialect groups. The symbols have the same meaning regardless of the respective dialect but are pronounced in completely different ways. The origin of written Chinese dates back to the second millennium B.C., making it one of the first examples of a written language in the history of mankind. 2,000 symbols must be understood in order to read a newspaper written in Standard Chinese. An educated Chinese native speaker would normally be able to recognise and understand about 4,000 symbols.
Chinese is kmp.’s tenth most taught language.
There are around 7 million native speakers of Croatian. Standard Croatian is very similar to the other Slavic languages spoken in Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia. People from these countries can communicate amongst themselves without any real problem. For this reason linguists tend to consider these 4 languages as variations of one language commonly known as Serbo-Croatian.
The Croatian language is written using the standard Latin alphabet with the addition of some so-called diacritical signs.
The Czech language is spoken by around 12 million native speakers. 2 million of these live outside the Czech Republic. A common history and former union as Czechoslovakia have caused the two languages Czech and Slovakian to be very similar. Since their separation into two independent states, the two languages have taken diverging developments which have lead to difficulties in communication among the younger generations of the two respective countries. Czech has been one of the EU’s official languages since 2004. Written Czech is based on the Latin alphabet. Standard Czech based on the written language is rarely spoken by the majority of the population and is almost exclusively used at official functions or on the TV and radio news.
Danish is a Scandinavian language and is also spoken outside Denmark in Greenland and the Faroe Islands either by native speakers or as a second language. At kmp. we typically teach the standard language or “Imperial Danish” as spoken among other places in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, and Malmö.
There are around 25 million native speakers of Dutch. Dutch is a so-called phonematic language. Put in simple terms, it is written as it is spoken. The use of capitals and small letters is also very straightforward. Almost all words with the exception of the first word in a sentence begin with a small letter. An English learner would normally be able to pick up Dutch relatively quickly.
It has been estimated that up to 400 million people speak English as their first language, while up to 1.4 billion people speak it as a second language. English is the world’s most prominent language. It is the lingua franca of international trade and commerce, as well as being generally accepted as the internationally recognised language of the sciences, IT, economics, aviation, entertainment and diplomacy.
Internationally-operating companies increasingly require their employees to have a good or very good working command of English.
English is by far kmp.’s most frequently taught language. Just about all English courses we teach are business English courses with work-related content.
The English language contains quite a number of words that are written either similarly or exactly the same as their German counterparts. There are, however, the so-called false friends, words appearing in both languages that look similar or identical but have a different meaning in the two respective languages.
German speakers usually find English relatively easy to learn. This is certainly true as far as learning the basics of the language is concerned. From intermediate level on the task of improving your English becomes increasingly difficult.
Finnish is the official language of almost 5 million native speakers. Some of the special features of the Finnish language are the number of vowels (Finnish has 8 vowels), the number of cases (15) and the absence of gender in the grammar.
Finnish is a comparatively complex language, but it is based upon clearly-defined rules and is therefore a language well-suited to analytical and logical learners.
Flemish is the term for the variant of Dutch spoken in Belgium. For this reason it
is also known as “Belgian Dutch”. There are approximately 6.4 million native speakers of Flemish. For centuries Belgium has been divided by a language border. Today Belgium is a federal state consisting of two provinces, Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia as well as the bilingual capital Brussels.
French is a global language. Over 100 million people in over 50 countries on all continents speak French, and people all around the world learn French as a foreign language. French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. As is the case with Italian and Spanish, French is a Romance language originating from ancient Latin.
French is kmp.’s fourth most taught language (after English, German and
Spanish).
German is the most spoken language in the European Union. With almost 100 million native speakers it is also among the world’s 10 most important languages. After English German is the second most frequently found language on the internet.
German is the second most taught language at kmp. Our corporate clients often book German courses for their employees on foreign assignment and their families. Our participants can be immersed in the language and at the same time take the opportunity to communicate with native speakers on an ongoing basis outside the classroom. Our pedagogical concept firmly encourages the implementation of acquired language skills in both a business and private environment. If the client so wishes, productive field trips, practical activities and intercultural awareness building can be integrated into the course programme.
The Greek language in its spoken and written form greatly influenced the development of Europe. The science, literature and philosophy of the western world have their origin in Greek. Today we can see this reflected by countless words deriving from ancient Greek that have found their way into all modern European languages.
The first examples of written Greek can be traced back to the third millennium
B.C. No other living language, with the exception of Chinese, has survived in its
written form over such a long period of time.
Today Modern Greek, the official language of Greece, is spoken by over 12 million native speakers. For English learners Modern Greek is relatively difficult to learn, as it is not related to any other European language. The Greek alphabet has nothing distinctly in common with the English (Latin) alphabet. Modern Greek is also one of the languages with the largest number of irregular verbs.
Learning and mastering Modern Greek not only implies learning and mastering a new language but also opens the door in a linguistic sense to the cradle of Western culture.
Modern Hebrew demonstrates the only successful attempt to date to revive and expand a language which had almost not been spoken except as a religious language. In the 19th century Ancient Hebrew was reactivated and its vocabulary systematically expanded, a development which culminated in its choice as the official language of Israel.
Hebrew is written and read from right to left. In an alphabet form known as “square script”, no difference is made between capital and small letters.
Approximately 13.5 million people speak Hungarian. It is the official language of Hungary and has been an official language of the EU since 2004. Hungarian is a so-called agglutinative language meaning that suffixes can be added to a word to extend the meaning. For example the Hungarian word “igazságtalanságunkkal” contains the root word „igaz“ meaning “true” and has been extended or changed with the addition of the following word parts:
Igaz — true
igazság — truth
igazságtalan — truthless/unjust
igazságtalanság — injustice
igazságtalanságunk — our injustice
igazságtalanságunkkal — as as result of our injustice
No matter how long the word is, the emphasis is always on the first syllable regardless of the number of syllables. Hungarian uses a number of polite forms and forms of address. The written language is based on the Latin alphabet, just like written English. Each letter represents one sound, resulting in a considerable simplification in writing and pronunciation.
Hungarian is kmp.’s sixth most frequently taught language.
Hindi is the most widely spoken of the over 100 Indian languages in existence. With over 600 million native speakers, Hindi takes second place after Mandarin and ahead of English and Spanish among the world’s most widely-spoken first languages. Hindi is mainly spoken in Northern and Central India. Hindi and English are the official government languages of India.
Hindi words appearing in the English language are for example ‘shampoo’, ‘jungle’ or ‘bungalow’. Learning Hindi as a foreign language may not be quite so difficult because a number of English words such as ‘ball’, ‘bank’, ‘photo’ etc. have found their way into the basic vocabulary of the language.
Indonesian is among the world’s most widely-spoken languages. Differences exist between “Bahasa Melayu” spoken in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei and “Bahasa Indonesia”, Indonesia’s official language. Both languages are, however, quite similar.
Indonesian is quite easy to learn for most English learners. This is due to the fact that there are no articles, declensions, conjugations or even tenses.
Italian directly originates from the common Roman language or so-called “Vulgar Latin“ and is the Romance language most closely related to Latin. Italian is spoken by around 70 million native speakers.
History has determined that countless words of Italian origin have found their way into the terminologies of specialist fields such as music, technology or banking in many languages.
Italian is a popular language among language learners, who make rapid initial progress. In addition the richness and sound of the language when spoken and heard add a certain fun factor to learning Italian.
Over 120 million people speak Japanese, making it the world’s ninth most spoken language. Japanese is the fourth most popular language on the internet after English, German and French.
The written language employs Chinese characters (Kanji) as well as two so-called syllable groups. While Japanese grammar bears a certain similarity to Korean, the vocabulary and pronunciation of Japanese are not related to those of any other languages. In this respect Japanese has undergone an almost independent development. The language does, however, possess words “borrowed” from other languages, especially from English.
Forms of address are very important in Japan as is reflected in the Japanese polite language (Keigo). Attitude and language are dominated by a feeling of utmost respect for counterparts and by modesty concerning oneself and one’s background.
There are around 70 million native speakers of Korean. It is the official language of North and South Korea. In the recent past the political division of the two countries has brought about separate politically determined linguistic developments. Korean grammar is quite similar to Japanese grammar. Its lexis largely originates from Chinese with approximately 40-60% so-called Sino-Korean words.
The Korean language contains a number of finely-defined levels of politeness which are used depending on the counterpart’s position in the company and his/her age. In addition Koreans try to avoid referring to themselves as the subject of a sentence.
They do not say, “I have a headache” but rather, “My head is aching.”
Instead of “I’m thirsty”, they say, “My throat is dry.”
Instead of “I have no time”, they say, “There is no time available.”
Norwegian is spoken by around 5 million native speakers. Within the country of Norway various dialects of the language have developed. Some of these dialects differ from the others quite strongly. Norway’s infrastructural and geographical conditions have allowed the various dialects to follow their own development. The independent development of these dialects has brought about the existence of 4 different official variants of Norwegian, of which only 2 have official status.
Centuries of former Danish rule have led to the language being strongly influenced by Danish. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are all quite closely related.
Norway, however, is positioned both geographically and linguistically between the two countries and their respective languages, so that the Norwegians are able to understand their neighbours on both sides equally well.
Persian is spoken by around 70 million native speakers. It is the official language of Afghanistan, Iran and Tajikistan. Persian is also referred to as Farsi. Almost 50% of the language’s modern vocabulary originates from Arabic. Persian is written in the Arabic alphabet from right to left. Persian and Arabic do not, however, have common roots. While Persian is an Indo-Germanic language, Arabic is an Afro-Asian language.
Persian grammar has no definite articles and no genders.
Probably the most famous work of Persian literature in the western world is “Arabian Nights”, a collection of Persian fairy tales and legends.
Polish is spoken by around 60 million native speakers all over the world. It is the second most widely spoken Slavic language after Russian. There are about 20 million native speakers of Polish not living in Poland. 12 million of them live in the US. After Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish-speaking population in the world.
Similar to German, Polish uses the Latin alphabet but has 35 letters and not 26 as in German. The additional letters in the Polish alphabet are marked by so-called diacritical signs. These are Ć, Ę, Ł, Ń, Ó, Ś, Ź and Ż, which are used to represent typical Polish phonemes and expand the range of letter pronunciation beyond the 26-letter Latin alphabet.
There are around 210 million native speakers of Portuguese. Portugal’s colonial history has led to the Portuguese language spreading widely across the globe, earning it the status of a global language. Portuguese is also the official language of Brazil, several African countries and parts of South East Asia.
The pronunciation of Portuguese is complex and very diverse, having 9 vowels, 5 nasal vowels, 10 diphthongs, 5 nasal diphthongs and 25 consonants. As in French, consecutive words are run together in Portuguese, producing a melody of speech acoustically softer than Spanish.
Portuguese and Spanish are quite closely related, and almost all words in the one language will find a very similar-sounding counterpart in the other.
Two of the special grammatical features of Portuguese are the frequent use of the gerund and the so-called personal infinitive.
In Portuguese the emphasis on words ending in a, e, o, s or m normally falls on the penultimate vowel. The emphasis on words ending in i and u, on the other hand, falls on the last syllable. A type of emphasis diverging from this rule is shown by an accent (acute, circumflex or tilde).
Portuguese is kmp.’s eighth most taught language.
Romanian is spoken by around 30 million native speakers. It is the first and official language of Romania and Moldavia. Romanian is the easternmost Romance language. It originates from the common Roman language or so-called “Vulgar Latin”. 75% of the words in Romanian originate from Latin, 15% have a Slavic origin. The remaining 10% have their origin in various languages such as German, Greek, Hungarian, Turkish or English.
In Romanian the definite article is tagged onto the end of the noun, for example autobuzele – the buses. Romanian is the only Romance language that possesses a neutral gender as well as a masculine and feminine gender.
Romanian was written in the Cyrillic alphabet up until the middle of the 19th century. From 1860 the language began using the Latin alphabet. The pronunciation of Romanian is similar to Italian. In addition to the vowels a, e, i, o, u there are two other vowels in Romanian â (or î ) and ã. Learning Romanian is considerably easier if you can master other Romance languages.
There are more than 150 million native speakers of Russian. It is the official language of Russia and Belarus as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian native speakers have immigrated to numerous industrial countries around the world. Russian can be viewed as a global language. If you include people who speak Russian as a second language, there are around 240 million people in the world who speak Russian.
Russia’s enormous size and the widespread nature of the language has led to the existence of a number of Russian dialects, but standard Russian is based upon the dialect spoken in and around Moscow. Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. The pronunciation contains 42 phonemes, only six of which are vowels. Russian is a highly inflected language. This means words can be modified using conjugations, declinations and comparison at the end of the word, but they can also often be changed at the roots. Russian has neither definite nor indefinite articles.
Russian is positioned after English, German, Spanish and French as one of kmp.’s most taught languages.
Spanish is spoken all around the world by about 350 million native speakers. The number extends to between 450 and 500 million people when you include speakers of Spanish as a second language. Spanish follows Mandarin, English and Hindi in the list of the world’s most widely spoken languages.
The wide geographic distribution of Spanish and the vast amount of first and second language speakers earn Spanish the status of a global language. It is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations. The largest number of Spanish native speakers live in Mexico, followed by the USA and then Spain.
The Spanish language (Español) is also known as Castellano. These two terms are synonymous, hovever, the term “Castellano” tends to be used more frequently in South America and “Español” in Central America. As is the case with most Romance languages, Spanish developed from “Vulgar Latin”, the language of the Roman legionaries or the common Roman language. Spanish grammar derives largely from Latin, which is very apparent in verb conjugation.
Spanish is a so-called pro-drop language, meaning that pronouns are frequently omitted because they are implied in the respective verb conjugation.
Written Spanish is very phonetic, representing the spoken word sound for sound. Foreign words in the Spanish language are therefore often phonetically adapted in their written form. For example: The English word “bacon” becomes “beicon” in Spanish and “football” becomes “futbol”.
Spanish follows English as the world’s second most taught language. At kmp. Spanish is the third most frequently taught language after English and German.
Swahili is the most widespread Bantu language and is spoken in the following countries: Tanzania, Kenya, the Congo, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, The Comoros, Mayotte and Somalia. 90 million people speak Swahili, making it the most important language of trade and commerce in the countries of East Africa. Nevertheless, only 5-10 million people are native speakers, and over 80 million people speak Swahili as a second language.
Swahili is one of the few African languages with a tradition in its written form dating back to the beginning of the 18th century. Before this time the written form of Swahili was in Arabic. Missionary schools and the colonial powers helped to enforce the Latin alphabet as the norm for written Swahili.
One of the most popular expressions in Swahili is “Hakuna Matata”, which can roughly be translated as “no worries”. The word “safari” also derives from Swahili.
Approximately 8.5 million people speak Swedish, 8 million in Sweden and 0.5 million in Finland where it shares official language status with Finnish on a national level and partly on a municipal level. Swedish is a Scandinavian language and has a lot in common with Danish, although it is more similar to Norwegian. Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can communicate amongst themselves relatively effectively in their respective native languages.
As is the case with English, Swedish only uses the “you” form of address, except when addressing the King “Your Royal Highness”. Swedish is relatively easy to learn largely because Swedish grammar is quite straightforward. To a large extent Swedish requires no verb conjugation. It only has 2 cases, nominative and genitive. There are only two genders: utrum (masculine and feminine) with –en as an article and neutral (objects) with –ett as an article.
The Swedish language has a lot of short words and sentences. The structure of the language is similar to English.
Swedish is kmp.’s ninth most taught language.
Turkish is spoken by around 65 million native speakers. 58 million of them live in Turkey and 2 million in Germany. In Turkey itself there are a number of different dialects, but the formal language is based on the language spoken in the area of Istanbul.
The first example of written Turkish is in runic script and dates back to the 7th century. Between the 7th and the 10th century written Turkish was based on written Arabic. At the beginning of the 20th century a „New Turkish Alphabet“ was developed under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk based in part on the Latin alphabet as used in Germany.
Turkish is a so-called agglutinative language. This means that the grammatical context of a word can be largely extended by adding endings. “House” in Turkish is “ev” and “we are in your house” is “evinizdeyiz”. By adding a number of suffixes to the word “ev” it can be changed in such a way that one single Turkish word can express five English words or statements.
Turkish | English |
ev | house |
evde | in the house |
eviniz | your house |
evinizde | in your house |
evinizdeyiz | we are in your house |
Turkish contains a large number of words deriving from Arabic and French.
There are over 5,000 words of French origin in the language. English learners of
Turkish would therefore find Turkish vocabulary easier to master if they were to
be familiar with French.
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Types of Courses
kmp. offers a wide variety of courses. A number of individual factors determine the right choice of course. We would be happy to offer you expert advice and recommendations on the way to finding the most suitable course programme.
Business English
General business English covers the skills required for communication in a general business English environment. A wide range of business language skills are taught in these courses.
kmp. Levels Chart
Evaluating your current language level in the respective target language and agreeing language goals are key factors when planning a kmp. language course.
Contact
kmp. Sprachenservice
Ziegelstraße 30/1
D-71063 Sindelfingen
Germany
Tel: +49 (0) 7031 93 95 – 0
Fax: +49 (0) 7031 93 95 – 95
Email: info@kmpservices.de
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