Language Acquisition

ICLR Portuguese lecture 5

Brazil is the only country in South America that speaks Portuguese. Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world by both land area and population. The population in 2012 was around 194 million people. The capital city is Brasilia, while the largest city is Sao Paulo.

ICLR Chinese Lecture 6

China also has the most international borders, neighboring with 14 countries: Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, North Korea.

ICLR Arabic Lecture 6

The 365-day calendar that is divided into 12 months was invented in Egypt. Egypt is home to seven UNESCO-designated World Heritage sites: Abu Mena; ancient Thebes with its Necropolis; Historic Cairo; Memphis and its Necropolis; Nubian monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae; the Saint Catherine area; and Wadi Al-Hitan, or Whale Valley, home to fossil remains of the earliest and now extinct form of whales.

ICLR Russian Lesson 6

Moscow has more billionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Russia’s capital boasts more billionaire residents than any other city in the world – 79 to be exact, according to Forbes. Even without Forbes confirming, it’s easy to believe since we spotted just about every make of luxury car including more Rolls Royce’s than we’d even seen in Monaco.

ICLR German Lecture 6

Germany boasts as many as 108 Nobel laureates
This is the third highest number in the world after United States of America and United Kingdom. The first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Germany was Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen for Physics in 1901, and the most recent was Joachim Frank for Chemistry in 2017. Legendary genius Albert Einstein (recipient of Nobel Prize for Physics, 1921) was German and born in the German city of Ulm.

ICLR French Lesson 6

Did you know that France uses 12 different time zones? At first, that might sound shocking, but if you think about it’s not that strange since the French have colonized a big part of the world. Within the French territory in Europe, only 1 time zone is being used, but accounting all areas outside Europe it stretches over 12 different time zones.

These areas include Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Polynesia, French Guyana, Reunion och New Caledonia.

ICLR Spanish Lecture 6

One of the weird facts about Spain is that before 2015, the age you had to be to marry someone legally was fourteen. This was the youngest marriage age in all of Europe. Hearing this will come as a bit of culture shock to many people as that would be considered completely inappropriate by the standards of many cultures. Spain seems to have changed their tune on this issue as in 2015, they increased the legal marriage age up to sixteen years of age.

ICLR Portuguese Lecture 4

Despite having been heavily involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade, Portugal abolished slavery all the way back in 1761—that's half a century before Britain, France, Spain, or the United States.

ICLR Spanish Lecture 5

According to stats, Spain has the second-highest life expectancy of all the OECD countries at an impressive 83 years. Only the Japanese have a higher life expectancy. Figures show that Spanish women are outliving their male counterparts: 85 years compared to 79 years for men.

ICLR German Lecture 5

Germany is composed of sixteen states. The states have their own constitution and are largely autonomous in regard to their internal organization. At the municipal level, Germany is divided into 403 districts (Kreise), of which 301 are rural districts and 102 urban districts. Bavaria is the largest state.