Cactus Language Blog

London Gets Ready for 2012 with Linguistic Skills Training

Posted by Sarah under Cactus Tailormade, Learning a language

Sarah Gooding, Editor at Cactus, asks how people will communicate in the 2012 Summer Olympics

With the Beijing Games a matter of weeks away, Olympic fever is in the air. And excitement for the events this summer can only increase enthusiasm in the UK for our turn at hosting this most monumental of events in just four years’ time.

It’s hard to believe that it’s three years already since Sebastian Coe won the London bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics – and what a coup that was, beating Paris and making London the first city to host the Games three times. Yet we can be sure that time hasn’t stood still for the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) since the 2005 celebrations; what we’ll see on our TV screens for two weeks in the summer of 2012 will be the result of years of planning and preparation. Thousands of jobs will be created, businesses will catch on to marketing opportunities and skills training will be essential…the question is, with over 10,000 athletes of different nationalities descending on the capital, and thousands more in the form of support teams and visitors, how will all these people communicate with each other – and us?

With some 300 languages already spoken in London, you would be pushed to find a more diverse and cosmopolitan host city. No reason to rest on our laurels though. London is preparing itself in the best way possible by providing linguistic training for its hospitality staff, to deal with the inevitable influx of people. Cactus Language Training can vouch for this; sales in language training are booming, with skills training at the forefront of the nation’s thinking. Various sports-related people and businesses have signed up for a series of in-company language training programmes with Cactus. The capital is getting ready to show the world that it is ready. We may be accused too often of being bad at languages, but in four years’ time we won’t be caught tongue-tied.

Tags:Beijing Games, Cactus Language Training, linguistic skills, LOCOG, London 2012, Olympics