¡Vámonos!

I loved the official song of the FIFA World Cup 2010 when i heard it for the first time today. And now I've found this bi-lingual version too with K'Naan, the original artist, singing with David Bisbal.

The lyrics are below!

Waving Flag de K´naan y David Bisbal
Give me freedom
Give me fire
give me reason
Take me higher
see the champions
take the field now
youll be fighters
make us feel proud
En las calles muchas manos
levantadas, celebrando
una fiesta sin descanzo
los paises como hermanos
Canta y une tu voz
grita fuerte que te escuche el sol
el partido ya va a comenzar
todos juntos vamos a ganar
Unidos!
Seremos grandes,
seremos fuertes
somos un pueblo
bandera de libertad
que viene y que va (x3)
when i get older
i will be stronger
theyll call me freedom
just like a wavin flag
Now wave your flag (x3)
ohhh ohhh ohhh ohhh
Danos vida
danos fuego
que nos lleve a lo alto
campeones o vencidos
pero unidos a internarlos
In the streets
are exalted people
as we lose our inhibitions
celebretion is around us
every nation all around us
Singing forever young, singins
songs underneath the sun
lets rejoice to the beatuful game
and together at the end of day
Seremos grandes,
seremos fuertes
somos un pueblo
bandera de la libertad
que viene y que va (x3)
when i get older
i will be stronger
theyll call me freedom
just like a wavin flag
Now wave your flag (x3)
ohhh ohhh ohhh ohhh
Unidos!
Seremos grandes,
seremos fuertes
somos un pueblo
bandera de la libertad
when i get older
i will be stronger
theyll call me freedom
just like a wavin flag
Now wave your flag (x3)
ohhh ohhh ohhh ohhh
And everybody
will be singing

The Youtube page also explains -

El español David Bisbal y el somalí K´Naan interpretan la versión latina del tema Waving Flag, elegido para la Copa del Mundo FIFA Sudáfrica 2010.
La canción fue estrenada ayer, como parte de las celebraciones rumbo al Mundial.
"La música y el futbol unen al mundo, y a través de esta canción queremos contagiar el sentimiento de alegría que nos provoca este evento mundialista", explicó el artista español, al referirse a la canción inspirada en costumbres africanas referentes a la fiesta, y que aborda temas como el amor, la unión y el optimismo.
El tema presenta pasajes en español e ingles y un video en el que se pueden ver las pocas habilidades futbolistas de Bisbal, quien lucha sin éxito dominar un balón.
La canción de la Copa del Mundo, Waving flag, fue compuesta por el rapero Knaan Mogasishu, quien nació en Somalia aunque es ciudadano canadiense.
La canción es el tercer single de su álbum Troubador y meses atrás fue elegida por la organización del Mundial como su himno oficial.

Posted by lisibo at 16:48 0 comments    

Labels: CopaMundial, football, songs, spanish, videos, Youtube

As I don my Spain shirt to watch Spain take on the singing might of Bafane Bafane, I thought I'd share with you a clip of the 'guapísmo' 'Nando Torres scoring a hattrick against New Zealand earlier this week.

(thanks to Year4 at Green Park School for sharing this originally!)

Posted by lisibo at 19:21 2 comments    

Labels: football, Spain

Altogether now .....

Posted by lisibo at 19:40 0 comments    

Labels: Barcelona, catalan, football

The Premiership season is over - how will I get to sleep at the weekend without Gary and Adrian?

Liverpool may not have won the Premiership, nor the Champions League but they still have the one and only 'Nando xx



Looking forward to seeing him in action for Spain soon!

Posted by lisibo at 12:47 2 comments    

Labels: football, offtopic

I'm a great one for writing songs and little ditties to help children (and those slightly older!) learn languages. We've had Diez animales to the tune of Ten green bottles, Hace sol y hace calor to Half a pound of Tuppeny Rice and ¿Quieres un helado? to a random (very annoying!) tune I composed myself.

It seems that some of my songwriting (dis)ability has been passed on in the genes as my eldest was inspired to song by Tottenham beating Chelsea on Saturday. Odd, as he is a Man Utd. fan , but his Dad and little brother are Spurs fans so I guess it is explicable. Very catchy, I have to say.

Strange that you weren't inspired to song by last week's match against Liverpool - now what was the score, Isaac? Oh yes - Man Utd 1 - Liverpool 4 :o)

Posted by lisibo at 17:20 2 comments    

Labels: football, funny, songs

In honour of the big match tomorrow night and in honour of Scousers everywhere, a short video!



Especially for @raff31 - get well soon x

¡Qué ganen los Rojos!

Posted by lisibo at 21:40 2 comments    

Labels: football, Youtube

After my week in Anglesey (pictures on Flickr!) I returned to a mammoth list of posts to read in Google reader. I've now waded through them and am back to a nice clean page (until someone else blogs!)

This post on About.com -Spanish language caught my eye-



Reporting on an article in the Telegraph , it seems that Barcelona FC cancelled their flight to the USA on Air Berlin as the company refused to deliver the in-flight communications in Catalan. The club's President, Joan Laporta is involved in the promotion of Catalan and the decision, it seems, was made as a matter of principle.



Whilst I can support the right of people to speak and promote their language, especially in the light of the treatment meted out by Franco to Catalan, Basque and Gallego, and in light of recent discussions, I'm wondering...
how realistic the demands are on a low cost airline? As the spokeman for Air Berlin said, it would involve a great effort.
how far the right to have announcements in your language could be taken - will those from Valencia expect valencià to be spoken whilst those from Mallorca would want them to 'xerrar es mallorquí' ?
how much it was for the entourage rather than the players - although the manager is now Pep Guardiola - Catalan through and through - and there are a number of players from Barcelona, there are others who perhaps would be more comfortable in Spanish - or perhaps they should have asked for announcements in Portuguese, French and Icelandic as well?

And one last thing - does anyone pay attention to the inflight announcements anyway?

Posted by lisibo at 17:31 0 comments    

Labels: catalan, football, opinion, Spain, spanish

There's been lots of football going on around here - I'm making no apologies for it as it's part of me and therefore part of my blog. Added to that, it is relevant to my 'mission statement' of making PLL relevant and fun, as proved earlier this week.

It was my assembly on Thursday - actually it seems to be my assembly every Thursday! - and the theme for the week was Happiness. I talked about Sunday night when Spain had been playing Italy and how I had felt sick when it went to penalties, and then about the match that was happening that evening between Spain and Russia. I talked about my friend Nick who supports Russia and how one of us would be very happy and one would be sad on Friday morning.
Come Friday morning, I walked down the path into the playground and felt like royalty as so many kids stared cheering and shouting and hugging me as if I had personally led the Spanish to victory. It was amazing! And what's even better, they were shouting in Spanish! They love learning Spanish, and this has given them another reasn why their learning is relevant to their lives. Some of them even commented on John Motson's pronunciation - good on you, kids!

So I am SO looking forward to seeing them tomorrow - it's my day off but I'm going in anyway, just so we can all dance around the playground, chanting
¡Campeones! ¡Campeones! ¡Olé, olé, olé!

Posted by lisibo at 22:18 4 comments    

Labels: Euro08, football, opinion

Posted by lisibo at 22:00 3 comments    

Labels: Euro08, football

Posted by lisibo at 09:14 0 comments    

Labels: Euro08, football, Spain

Miss the match last night? Here are the highlights, complete with commentary in Spanish, footage of the crowd in Vienna and in Madrid, and shots of the Royal Box.

Posted by lisibo at 22:35 0 comments    

Labels: Euro08, football, Spain

According to the Euro 08 blog, Spain have been reported to be using voodoo in their pursuit of that elusive championship win.

Originally reported in Russia Today (bit suspicious that, eh?),

Someone in Spain has been making and selling football player voodoo dolls, which come with a pack of flags. La Furia Roja fans can simply fix the flag of whoever Spain are playing onto the doll, and write a name and number on the back, then perform some amateur voodoo on whichever player they want.

The article seeks to give credence to this by citing the example of Luca toni who spent the quarter final inexplicably rolling around in pain, and suggests that..

.. if you see a certain Russian playmaker inexplicably holding his sides in agony or his legs doing things he clearly doesn’t intend tomorrow, you’ll know it’s due to an army of Spain fans poking a “10 Arshavin” doll with sharp sticks.

To be honest, I think the dolls are quite cute and remind me of Cobi, the Barcelona 1992 mascot. And if Spain win, well.....

Posted by lisibo at 20:59 0 comments    

Labels: football, news, Spain

I'm finally sat in my lounge, clad in my Spain shirt with a glass of wine in hand watching the big match. When José Picardo enquired via Twitter ¿estás lista? whilst I was at music group practice, I tweeted in response that 'La Furia Roja marcha adelante'.

As José pointed out for me, tonight it's La Furia Amarilla. Doesn't sound as scary I'm afraid. And what's more, I predicted that the best team would win - and they'd be wearing red when my mate Nick (who supports Russia) asked me yesterday.

Oh dear!

Let's hope that's the end of my woes for the night!

STOP PRESS - Xavi has just scored!!!!

Posted by lisibo at 20:40 0 comments    

Labels: football, Nick Brown, Spain

In advance of this evening's main event (sorry boys, there's something more important than the ETR flashmeeting this week!) I'd like you to watch the following videos, consider their message and then ....

¡Hazte de la peña de la Selección!




And in case you haven't got the message yet as you can't speak Spanish, here it is in English!

Posted by lisibo at 14:13 1 comments    

Labels: football, Spain, video, Youtube

Please note - this blog has not been taken over by football - 'proper' post coming later ;o)

Posted by lisibo at 10:04 0 comments    

Labels: Euro08, football

And for those of you who are not in the least bit interested in football, but watch for the 'aesthetic appeal'...





Who's your favourite?

Posted by lisibo at 11:00 2 comments    

Labels: Euro08, football, Spain, Youtube

I know that Euro08 actually kicked off last Saturday, but for me, it all starts tonight when Spain take on Russia. As the only house in the street displaying a flag in the window (how different from previous football tournaments - and a little sad!, you can't miss my allegiances. At least without England, I have the loyalties of my children too. Well, half of the eldest's as he is rather fond of Cristiano Ronaldo. Husband is supporting Turkey - less said about that the better.

So in honour of the kick off at 5pm, and to get you in the mood ..... ;o)

To help you recognise the some of the players (I don't think Raúl is quite past it yet though!)


And here's Raúl himself, with his own take on El Himno Nacional-


More pictures of the team -

Posted by lisibo at 10:37 0 comments    

Labels: Euro08, football, Spain, Youtube

I read an interesting article in the Guardian the other day about language learning and football - two topics close to my heart.

In the Sports Comment section under the title 'Learning the lingo will net England brighter future', Louise Taylor suggests that apprentice footballers, now called 'scholars', should learn languages as part of their studies to prepare them for the possibility of playing for teams abroad.

Gareth Southgate recently cited the lack of players experiencing new systems and styles of play as one reason for the stagnation in the national game - learning a language would make a transition to playing elsewhere that much easier.
'Sadly most are unwilling to step outside their lucrative, cosily familiar, domestic comfort zones and the same could be said for many home-grown managers. Instead of whingeing about continental types - often multilingual and well-educated - pinching the top jobs here, why don't English coaches start investing small portions of their large salaries on language lessons before emigrating for a while?'

The case of Chris Coleman at Real Sociedad is mentioned - communication difficulties made his job hard - and that's a man who tried (and succeeded to a certain extent) to learn some Spanish while he was there. Michael Owen is reported to have driven miles just to get an English newspaper when he was at Real Madrid, and we all saw David Beckham's 'interesting' efforts to speak Spanish (although he did manage to get himself sent off for some colourful Spanish at least once!) Not sure about his excuse that his cockney accent impeded him, but it is true that people can feel embarrassed about the way they sound in the foreign language. Didn't do a bad job of his last press conference I guess!



One man who did make an effort - and actually succeeded - was Gary Lineker who learned to speak Spanish sufficiently well whilst playing for Barcelona to interview Spanish speakers like Diego Maradona on TV, and also learnt Japanese when he played for Grampus 8. But he is the exception.

At a time when the state of language learning in this country is as newsworthy as the state of our national football team, could this be an answer to both issues? Lots of young lads (and lasses!) aspire to be footballers and look up to their heroes. If it's known that languages are seen as important, perhaps we'll see a resurgence in the uptake at KS4? And if footballers are learning languages, they might be more inclined to travel abroad to play, gaining the experiences that might be said to be missing in our national team(s). I don't know - but something has to change!!

And perhaps it will help them to avoid too many slip ups - although some are inevitable, perhaps they won't be as spectacular as this one! You can even relive the moment on Youtube!

Posted by lisibo at 17:21 3 comments    

Labels: careers, football, languages

This session was resented by the very entertaining Nigel Pearson, one of the Primary Language Advisor at CILT and Katja Neubauer, Junior Director of the European Initiative at the Kings School in Rochester.

Beginning by acknowledging that unfortunately England aren’t in Euro08, Nigel and Katya suggested ways in which the event could be exploited and celebrated. Here are some of their suggestions –

Use it as an exercise in ICU:

• Look at the logo – colour, shapes used, design
• There are 16 countries taking part from across Europe – what language(s) is /are spoken by each on? Where are they in Europe? (compass points)
• Flags – kids could make them, wave them and chant the names of the countries whilst you bang rhythm on a tambourine.
• Mark countries on am map
• Have a table of progress to be filled in throughut the tournament.
• Trix und Flix are the mascots (descriptions / design your own) – it takes place in Austria and Switzerland from 7^th June -29^th June (dates – how long is it? What day of the week does it start on? Etc) Cities are Innsbruck, Salzburg, Wien, Kalgenfurt, Geneve, Zurich, Bern Basel (country and location)
• Web searches for information about host towns

Nigel and Katya then introduced us to some vocabulary to do with fitness and football such as run, jog, head (the ball), jump etc with actions and a range of games to practice and reinforce -

What’s missing? ¿Qué falta?

Hot or cold ¿Frío o caliente?

Corners - like NSEW

Flashreading – flash the card very fast - ¿qué es?

Echo the word – using different voices

Throwing words – using a ball, throw it at a word – class read word it hits or teacher says the word and pupils throw it at the correct word. (headers whilst counting in TL)

What’s on the card? ¿Qué hay en la tarjeta? Using sí and no, can also be done with drawing part of a gallows to add to the competition, and could also be developed fromsingle word responses into sentences e.g. Un estadio; Es un estadio; pienso que es un estadio.

Memory game – numbers on front of card, guess the word behind it – practices number and vocabulary too. Kids (and us adults playing today!) are fiercely competitive!!

Number football – headers that you count – can always mime! Or a penalty shootout. And why not some Klinsmann dives!

Further football linked activities included –

Describe a player - uses personal identification questions and answers

Footballers are heroes for many of our pupils so why not let the kids research and use ICT for presentation of their favourite (foreign) player?.

Design shorts / strip for football – can add other equipment for football. Add extra information to reuse vocabulary in different contexts eg colours used for school uniform, favourite colours, eyes etc

Blow football – shout appropriate cheers like animo, venga, gol etc

Songs - Katya and Nigel presented a song in German about football to the tune of Frere Jacques– I’ve quickly translated into Spanish:

Juego al fútbol, juego al fútbol

Es genial, es genial

Muchos muchos goles

Muchos muchos goles

Uno a cero.

Uno a cero.

You can modify the lastline to add more scores, add countries etc

España cuatro, Francia tres or

España gana, Alemania pierde - I think you might be able to guess who I'm supporting :o)

Nigel also shared a French song from the World Cup. I quickly opened Audacity on my laptop and recorded it -it's in My Box of Goodies on the right! :o) (Thanks to Nigel who kindly said that was OK!)

Football sans frontières

Ça c’est super.

Brésil et Bulgarie

Pays Bas et Italie

Belgique et Tunisie

(Nigel kindly told us when to go up and down using his hand 'stepping' - that's the 'hand thing' referred to for those who wondered!)


The session concluded with a couple of websites that might be helpful - there will no doubt be more nearer the time, and I'll post any that I find.

www.uefa.com

www.flags.net

As I've blogged before, Euro 08 is already in focus at my school through Chris Fuller's Euro08 project which joins schools across the country as we find out about our allocated participating country prior to meeting up in June for a tournament of our own. Already in training - Jo Rhys-Jones looks rather nippy and Chris Fuller climbs - and that's just the teachers :-o
There's room for more schools to be involved - let Chris know if you're interested!

Posted by lisibo at 17:16 0 comments    

Labels: Chris_Fuller, Euro08, football, Jo Rhys-Jones, Nigel_Pearson, primary languages, Primary_language_show