Twitter Map

My friend sent me an article about "London's Top Ten Languages" which has been worked out by looking at tweets sent within the city during summer 2012...

http://news.sky.com/story/1003113/twitter-map-shows-londons-top-10-languages

The article is very interesting, mainly the picture at the top which attracted my attention purely because it has lots of colours on it!... although it didn't actually make much sense to me until I read the actual article
The writer, Lulu Sinclair, explains how the map was formed by Ed Manley and James Cheshire, revealing a 'heat map' of languages used during the summer of 2012. This was obviously when the Olympics was going on, therefore a lot of different cultures and countries were bought together, and many people of different nationalities came across to the UK to watch the Games. 

English was the largest tweeting language, with over 3 million (93%) people using the language. The graph below (also seen on the article itself) shows the next top 10 languages that were commonly used through the summer:

As you can see, Spanish and French top the graph, most likely because they are close countries to the UK in terms of distance. 

The researchers found that an 'unknown' language also seemed to crop up a lot, which they later found out was English slang terms such as "lol," "ahhhhh" and "hahaha"- clearly these were some of the top phrases used during the Olympics?!

Have a read of the article and let me know what you think! 

Gemma x

"Why do we behave so oddly in lifts?"

For my first post, I thought I would share with you a funny article I read the other day. I found the article on the BBC News website under the Magazine section, and it was titled "Why do we behave so oddly in lifts?"

I thought the article, by William Kremer, was really well written. It had good humour in it, but was also very factual and something people could relate to, therefore an easy and entertaining read.

Lift Etiquette:
Almost everyone has been in a lift at some point in their life, maybe even a few times a week. Therefore, I think it is correct in saying that everyone has experienced that immediate discomfort as you walk in to a lift and there are strangers in there. As the lift stops at my floor and the doors open revealing a few bewildered faces looking back at me, I slowly get in and I always manage to give them the friendly 'hello' smile, which they thankfully usually return.The same things happens if I am in a lift and someone walks in. But then it is the awkward standing still while you travel to your destination, where most people look at the walls, or the floor, or even up at the ceiling. I find that if there is a pushchair in the lift, I accidentally always seem to just stare at the child occupying it...

If you haven't already, have a read of Kremer's article and you too will probably find yourself realising all the things you do in a lift without thinking. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19846214

Gemma x