Russia's $52 billion boost to Roscosmos, Venus Express to enter Venusian atmosphere

Russia lost another Proton rocket a few days ago, bad news for them, but they are also planning to boost the budget of Roscosmos by $52 billion (USD) by 2020.

The current budget is $5.6 billion per year, so an extra $52 billion by 2020 would be more than doubling it, an extra $8.7 billion a year. That makes me wonder whether the "has boosted the budget of its Federal Space Agency by 1.8 trillion rubles ($52 billion)" is actually a bad translation and the agency is actually planning to spend a total of $52 billion by that year, which would also be an increase.

Which means it's time to look through Russian articles on the announcement, and try to read them using both the Bulgarian I know and Google Translate. Here's one:

Общий объем бюджетного финансового обеспечения госпрограммы - 1,8 трлн. рублей. -- Total amount of budgetary financial support to the state program - 1.8 trillion rubles

Россия выделит из федерального бюджета 1,8 млн рублей на государственную программу «Космическая деятельность России на 2013-2020 годы», следует из документа, размещенного во вторник на сайте Роскосмоса. -- Russia will allocate 1.8 trillion rubles from the federal budget to the state program "Russian Space Activities from 2013 to 2020".

In any case, it's an increase. It's apparently being done mostly for modernization (kind of boring but very necessary) and lunar activities (not boring). Let's hope Russia also returns to its previous USSR backyard, Venus.



And on that note, Venus Express is running low on fuel and is going to start aerobraking at as low an altitude as possible: "We have performed previous short ‘aerodrag’ campaigns where we’ve skimmed the thin upper layers of the atmosphere at about 165 km, but we want to go deeper, perhaps as deep as 130 km, maybe even lower”. The aerobraking will take place from June 18 to July 11, and if there is enough fuel left they will take it back up into a higher orbit. Or it may simply not have enough fuel and that will be the end of the mission.

And then in a year, Akatsuki will try to enter orbit around Venus again.

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Unemployment rate by European region, 2002 - 2012

Here it is in a .gif, with the individual images per year shown below. Austria and Macedonia hardly ever change.

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European radio stations all in one spot

My new favourite go to site is this one, a collection of radio stations in Europe by country, even sub-countries like the Faroe Islands and tiny ones like San Marino. Because they are grouped by country and not language that means that the one for Spain has Basque, Catalan and Galician along with the expected Spanish, France has Occitan, and Slovenia has Hungarian.

Galician (at least on that one station) comes across as more of a Portuguese-influenced Spanish than a Spanish-influenced Portuguese, at least phonetically. When written it comes across the other way.

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May 19, 1913: new Balkan war foreseen

Thanks to Times Machine it's easier than ever before to get the news from a century ago, and today's paper has a small blurb on page 3:

FORESEE NEW BALKAN WAR. 

Daily Chronicle Says Greece and Servia May Fight Bulgaria. 

LONDON, Monday, May 19. -- The Daily Chronicle says that the situation in the Near East has gone from bad to worse and that there is great danger of that troubled region being the theatre of another war. The Chronicle's special Balkan correspondent says he has excellent authority for stating that Greece and Servia, which did not sign the preliminaries of peace, have concluded an agreement which, it is believed, takes the definite form of a treaty, the main points of which are a common policy regarding the conquered territories and an alliance against Bulgaria. There is even danger, says the correspondent, of an immediate ultimatum to Bulgaria.

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Germany the first choice for relocation for European engineers

This article from die Welt has some interesting numbers (including a map summarizing them) on the number of engineers in countries in Europe that see Germany as their first choice for relocation. Well, countries in Europe except for all the ones from Estonia all the way south to Ukraine, plus former Yugoslavia and Albania, so we don't know what they think.

But besides them, engineers that most prefer Germany as a destination are from Russia at 71.4%. Austria is quite high at 69.7% (no reason not to choose Germany since it's next door and speaks the same language), Spain and Portugal are just above 60%, Bulgaria in the mid-50s...the lowest ones are Norway at 22.2% (UK, Sweden and Denmark are probably more attractive), Netherlands is 27.3% (did they prefer the UK and Belgium?), and Belgium is the lowest at 15.4% , maybe due to France + UK + Netherlands taking up most of the first preferences.

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European languages in danger online: Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese.

An article in Spanish here on European languages that are in danger of 'digital extinction' claims that the majority of the 80 languages in Europe are in danger of fading away online in the future. The study sampled 30 languages, of which 21 were in danger. According to the study only English has a good amount of technological support, followed by Spanish, French, German, Dutch and Italian which have 'moderate technical support'. The languages of the 30 with the least amount of support were Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Maltese (note: of these, only Lithuanian has a Wikipedia of any notable size). Catalan, Euskara, Bulgarian, Greek, Hungarian and Polish also have 'fragmentary' support.

Obviously the study did not include languages like Macedonian and Sorbian if Bulgarian and Polish are listed as being in danger while the former two are not.

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More on increasing numbers of Europeans learning German, this time in Berlin

Some new numbers from here showing the increasing number of people from Spain and Italy in particular coming to Berlin to learn German. Not too much new but the huge drop in percentage of Turks (40% to 8%) is quite interesting.

More and more people from euro crisis lands are learning German in Berlin. According to a survey by the news agency DAPD there is a particularly large number of Spaniards and Italians in German classes.

At Volkshochschule Mitte the proportion of Spaniards has gone from 1.1% in 2002 to the current 9.72%. Italian students have gone from 2% to 6.38% percent, Greeks from 0.9% to 2.05%. Volkshochschule Mitte has 6,000 registrations per year, making it one of the largest providers of language courses in the capital.

Yearly statistics for the entire city were not done, but numbers from the Volkshochschule provide an indication. The percentage of Turks taking German language courses there has fallen dramatically, from 40% in 2002 to just 8% now.

According to state figures, the last year saw 2,500 Spaniards, 1,300 Greeks, 2,600 Italians and 456 Portuguese coming to Berlin. These numbers also take into account the number of those that left the capital.

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More on the increasing popularity of German in Europe

Mostly fluff here but two numbers to cite:

From a report from Deutsche Welle on 28 August: the number of non-Germans that come to Hamburg to learn German has increased by 30% since 2010. Among them are always more people from countries hardest hit by the economic crisis: Portugal, Spain, and Greece.

Outside of Germany as well the numbers are increasing: in the Goethe-Institut in Madrid the number of people that have signed up for German classes has increased by 30 to 70% (depending on the course).

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Germany's Goethe-Institut seeing record numbers of students from southern Europe

From here in French. Some of these numbers might be familiar as they are also referenced here, but the first-quarter 2012 numbers are new, I believe.

The Goethe-Institut said Friday that it was seeing record attendance in crisis-affected southern Europe.

In the first quarter of 2012, compared to the same period in the preceding year, the institute recorded an increase in its numbers of 30% in Italy and even more than 50% in Greece. In annual data the progression was less spectacular but equally clear. Between 2010 and 2011 there was a 14% increase in the number of Italians at the institute, and a 10% increase in Greece.

In Spain, this growth was over 35%.

The institute has set up specific courses in Madrid and Barcelona to aid students in making the right moves in the German job market.

The number of immigrants in Germany reached its highest level since 1996 due to an influx of people from southern Europe.

with the country attracting 958,000 people last year, 20% more than in 2010, with 679,000 people leaving the country for a positive migration of 279,000 people. This is also a 15-year record.

The number of immigrants from Greece last year increased by 90% compared to 2010, while the number of new arrivals from Spain climbed by 52%.

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Portugal to charge 120 euros per student taking classes in Portuguese abroad

From here in Portuguese:

Portuguese immigrants in Europe will pay 120 euros annually to the state for each child of theirs that attends classes in Portuguese in their host countries. These classes, which were free until now, are provided by the official network of teaching Portuguese abroad, with teachers hired and paid by the Portuguese state. The Portuguese constitution requires the state to ensure the teaching of Portuguese to the children of immigrants.

The annual fee of 120 euros will be charges to students that take Portuguese classes outside of regular school hours, in so-called parallel teaching. In 2010 more than half of the 50,000 students took the Portuguese classes in this way. Those who take the classes during regular school hours (inclusive education) are exempted from the fee.

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More eurostat stats: learn who is learning which languages in Europe

See it as a pdf here. The press release shows which countries are studying which languages the most, and the second most. Which language they study the most is not interesting: English in almost all cases, French and German in some very rare cases where a French- or German-speaking country is next door. Or, in the case of Ireland and the UK, because English isn't an option.

But which language is studied the second most is interesting, since there is a lot of room to jostle around there.

Second place stats:

(total 27 countries)

German: 10 (Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, Turkey, Netherlands)
French: 8 (Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Romania, Macedonia)
Russian: 4 (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)
Spanish: 4 (France, Sweden, UK, Norway)
Italian: 2 (Malta, Austria)
Dutch: 1 (Belgium)
Swedish: 1 (Finland)
Danish: 1 (Iceland)

Actually Portugal doesn't have anything listed for some reason.

Those numbers were actually for primary and lower secondary school, and on the right it goes into the higher grades. One easy assumption to make would be that those on the left reflect the views of the parents and a more long-term outlook on their children's future, while those on the right reflect something more career-oriented, and based on not just parents but children themselves. The numbers on the right would be more susceptible to current trends.

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Europe is the part of the world where Portuguese faces the most difficulty

No surprise here:

Europe is the region where Portuguese, similar to French and Spanish, faces the most difficulty. This in spite of its importance "as a large international language" and with a growing economic relevance, said the president of the Instituto Camões.

A related article is this one:

http://www.pagef30.com/2010/10/french-speakers-grow-from-200-million.html

when new numbers for approximate French speakers worldwide came out, showing growth from 200 million to 220 million over just three years. At the same time, it showed a weakening presence in Europe.

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"This is Alabama. We speak English here."

Tim James is running for governor in Alabama, and has produced the following ad:

Tim James' campaign video -- Language @ Yahoo! Video

Text: "I'm Tim James. Why do our politicians make us give drivers license exams in twelve languages? This is Alabama. We speak English. If you want to live here, learn it. We're only giving that test in English if I'm governor. Maybe it's the businessman in me, but we'll save money. And it makes sense. Does it to you?"

Does it to me? Let's check. Here are all the countries that make more per capita than the US.

Rank	Country	US$
1	Luxembourg	104,512
2	Norway	79,085
3	Qatar	68,872
4	Switzerland	67,560
5	Denmark	56,115
6	Ireland	51,356
7	Netherlands	48,223
8	United Arab Emirates	46,857
9	United States	46,381

Luxembourg - all citizens fluent in at least three languages (French, German, Luxembourgish, usually English as well), all three languages are used in different aspects of daily life in the country.

Norway - Norwegian is the official language, has two written forms (Bokmål and Nynorsk) that each region chooses from according to its personal preference, most citizens fluent in English.

Qatar - Arabic is the official language, but has a huge expat population, many of which don't bother to learn Arabic.

Switzerland - 3.5 official languages (German, French, Italian official, Romansh also official but not to quite the same extent).

Denmark - More or less the same as Norway, except with more German speakers per capita (58% of the population speaks it).

Ireland - Two official languages, Irish and English. A lot of time and effort is being put into reviving and strengthening Irish.

Netherlands - Also similar to Norway and Denmark, with the majority very good at English and German in addition to Dutch.

United Arab Emirates - similar to Qatar.


Looks like every single country there either has a large number of official languages, or has a society in which most expats can live and work without needing to first learn the local language. Add to that the fact that a large cost in administering such tests is getting the translation done in the first place, and no, the "maybe it's the businessman in me" argument doesn't fly here.

On a more personal level, articles like this show how multilingualism increases pay and employment opportunities even for those that already speak English as a mother tongue, as monolingual English speakers often miss out on opportunities that go to those who speak another language as a mother tongue in addition to fluent English. The British Council says much the same thing:

Monoglot English graduates face a bleak economic future as qualified multilingual youngsters from other countries are proving to have a competitive advantage over their British counterparts in global companies and organisations. Alongside that, many countries are introducing English into the primary curriculum but – to say the least – British schoolchildren and students do not appear to be gaining greater encouragement to achieve fluency in other languages.

Now, if he really wanted to make an appeal for having English-only tests, the safety/practicality argument would have been better (signs are in English, police officers and other drivers will talk to you in English, etc.), and people with English as a foreign tongue could be given extra training on the side (role playing how to talk with a police officer or angry driver for example) to deal with this. But that doesn't have quite the visceral appeal as "This is Alabama. We speak English here. If you want to live here, learn it."

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Update on Euronews in Turkish - will begin at the end of January

Well, that was nice of them. After this post on Euronews beginning broadcasting in Turkish "soon" I asked on Twitter what the definition of soon (or yakında) was, and they responded here. Looks like soon = end of January. I can wait that long.

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Euronews will begin broadcasting in Turkish soon

Here's a tweet from Euronews 21 hours ago on this, and another on the same subject in English. Not sure exactly when it will start and their page doesn't yet have an option for Turkish, but soon should hopefully mean just a few days. Remember, the best thing about Euronews is that all of the articles there are synchronized across each language, so in order to see an article in another language all you have to do is select the language and it will take you to the same article written in it. Unfortunately it's not always written in the same way but at least it is on the same theme.


Right now with eight languages there are 56 combinations (well, technically permutations) in which languages can be learned, i.e. those with English as an L1 can use it to learn another seven, and same for everyone else on the list. Add Turkish and this becomes 72. Now someone with Italian as a mother tongue can use it to learn Turkish, someone with Turkish as a mother tongue can use it to learn Russian, and so on.

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Europa: usage de Internet Explorer cade ancor, 2.6% min quam ante six mensus

De un articul in francesi quel on posse leer ci.

Internet Explorer, li max usat navigator de internet, continua a cader. Secun li max recent barometre de navigatores publicat lunedí per li institution AT Internet, in septembre li navigator de Microsoft representat 62% del visitationes in Europa, contra 64.6% ante six mensus. In detra, Firefox (Mozilla) continua su bell progression, anc Google Chrome, nu li quaresim max usat navigator de internet per usatores europan.

...

In tot Europa, li navigator del Fundation Mozilla representat 27.8% del visites in marte ma 28.4% ti septembre. In Hungaria e Slovakia, li contestor Firefox es in avan de IE.

Pos ili on trova Safari (Apple), con 4.3% in septembre (contra 3.3% in marte), e Google Chrome, nu in li quaresim loc con 2.8%, du vezes plu mult quam ante six mensus. Li navigator Opera stagna a 2.2%.

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What Russia really looks like

The Canadian historian Pierre Burton always used to describe Canada not as the world's second-largest country, but rather a long and thin country located right next to the border with the United States, shaped kind of like Chile but running east and west instead of north and south. And in terms of the Canada that most Canadians know, this is very true. Take a look at this population density map from Stats Canada.

Canada is basically a densely populated area in the east, a fairly populated area in the west, and a bit of space in between them when you hit western Ontario. Very few have actually been to the north. When you look at the map in this way it makes sense that Canada has a population so much smaller than that of the US, which has large populated centres in every corner of the country in spite of its slightly smaller size.

Russia is the same way, except that it lines up against the eastern border of Europe to the north and south instead of east and west. It's important to have an idea of how population in Russia works, because without it it tends to look like this:

Europe before reaching Russia is generally quite easy to understand, as each country is fairly small and they all fit together quite nicely like pieces of a puzzle. The only part where there is some confusion would be in the former Yugoslavia where new countries have been emerging left and right with varying degrees of international acceptance, and these new shapes have yet to make a strong impression. But overall it's quite easy.

Once you get to Russia though, everything gets thrown out the window. All of a sudden the borders are gone and you have now reached a country that is larger than the continent it borders upon, and everything goes out the window. When you take a look at Russia as a whole it can be easy to remember as it looks a bit like some sort of mythical auroch-like creature lying on top of Central Asia, with its head stretching out towards Alaska, front paws hanging over northeastern China and rear legs standing on Georgia and Azerbaijan.

But like the somewhat inaccurate image of Canada, this isn't really the Russia people usually mean when they think of the country - most visit major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, and its this heavily populated area in the west that Europe interacts with the most as well. So if Canada is to be compared to Chile, Russia would also end up looking something like this (very rough approximation):

That still doesn't look like any other country, but it's still easier to picture compared to Europe than the monstrous mythical auroch over Central Asia.

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Developers from Iran hoping to break into European market at Gamescom in Cologne

BBC News has an article on this here, including a video with an interview. Taking a look at the main site for Gamescom in Cologne (Köln) I see that there are four game companies from Iran at the convention - Fan Afzar Sharif Company Ltd, Iran National Foundation of Computer Games (that's the one featured in the video), Puya Arts Software, and Tochal Advanced Systems Co. A search on the site actually brings up six but one doesn't look like a game company and the other has a web site that doesn't work.

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Italian group on Facebook wants to see Latin as Europe's official language / Facebook: nasce il gruppo “latino lingua ufficiale d’Europa”

Amphitheatrum Flavium, sive recentius Colosseum, est ellipticalis in media Romaamphitheatra, maximum architecturae Romanae opus, quod officium suum per quingentos fere annos praestitit, ultimis ludis effectis sexto saeculo. Praeter ludos gladiatorios multae aliae species ludorum ibi habebantur, sicut simulata proelia navalia, beluarum venationes, supplicia quae multos Christianos et alios reos nefarios pertinuerunt, scaenica spectacula celebrium proeliorum et actiones fabulosa antiquitate concitatas.

A blog article here in Italian talks about efforts to promote the idea of Latin as Europe's official language on Facebook. The group it's talking about is here, but at present only has 93 members.

(There are a few promoting Latin in English as well such as this and this one)

Part of the article:

Facciamo del latino la lingua ufficiale d’Europa. L’iniziativa era stata lanciata più di un anno fa e aveva registrato un discreto successo. A proporla un blog amatoriale, Soverato News con un appello messo in rete in cui si leggeva: “Soverato News sta portando avanti da qualche mese una battaglia per la valorizzazione della lingua latina. Fare del latino la lingua ufficiale d’Europa nel senso di lingua parlata è un progetto ambizioso e forse difficilmente realizzabile. È possibile però, e in questo ci crediamo, fare del latino la lingua ufficiale d’Europa nei testi ufficiali e nel senso di idioma di riferimento dei popoli europei”. Adesso è nato un gruppo su facebook che ancora non conta molti sostenitori ma non è escluso che possa presto trovarne tanti altri..."

Let's make the Latin language the official language of Europe. The initiative was begun a year ago and has had some success. In proposing an amateur blog(?), Soverato News made an appeal on the internet which said "Soverato News has for a few months carried out a battle for the strengthening of the Latin language. Making Latin the official language of Europe as a spoken language is an ambitious project and perhaps difficult to accomplish. It's possible however, and we believe this, to make Latin the official language of Europe in official texts in the sense of a language of reference for European peoples." Now a group on Facebook has been born that still doesn't have many supporters but it's possible that it will soon find others..."

I joined the group because a large number of members alone may eventually result in more attention being paid to the idea of a common language for Europe, Latin or otherwise.

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Summit of the Union for the Mediterranean in Paris / Paris'te Akdeniz Birliği zirvesi

Current members of the Euromediterranean Partnership; Blue are EU members; Cyan are EU candidate countries; Green are partner countries; Yellow is observer country

Today's article is from BBC Turkish.

Paris'te Akdeniz Birliği zirvesi

Mediterranean summit in Paris

Akdeniz Birliği zirvesi, Avrupa Birliği dönem başkanı Fransa'nın ev sahipliğinde, Paris'te başladı.

The summit of the Union for the Mediterranean began in Paris with the president of France and the rotating president of the European Union as the host.

Zirvede Türkiye'yi Başbakan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ve Dışişleri Bakanı Ali Babacan temsil ediyor.

Representing Turkey in the summit is prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and foreign minister Ali Babacan.

Suriye, İsrail ve Filistin liderlerinin katılacak olması dolayısıyla, Orta Doğu barış süreciyle ilgili gelişmelerin zirveye damgasını vurması bekleniyor.

As the leaders of Syria, Israel and Palestine will be participating, the zummit is expected to be one that makes its mark on the development of the process of peace in the Middle East.

AB üyesi ve Akdeniz'e kıyısı bulunan 43 ülkenin liderlerinin katılacağı zirvenin sonunda ortak bildiri yayımlanacak.

A statement will be issued after the summit with leaders of a total of 43 nations, those from the European Union and nations with shores along the Mediterranean.

Akdeniz Birliği Sarkozy'nin uluslararası alanda en fazla önem verdiği projelerin başında geliyor.

The Union for the Mediterranean is becoming the project Sarkozy is giving the most importance to in an international arena.

Proje, Barcelona süreciyle aynı hedefleri içerdiği gerekçesiyle çoğu AB ülkesinin ve AB Komisyonunun tepkisine yol açmıştı.

The project includes the same rationale as the Barcelona Process and evoked the reactions of the EU countries and the European Commission.

AB Komisyonu ile yürütülen çalışmalar sonucunda projenin, Fransa'nın başlangıçtaki beklenti ve hedeflerinin biraz uzağında kaldığı ifade ediliyor.

As a result of work done with the European Commission, the project has become somewhat farther away from France's expectations and goals in the beginning.

Akdeniz Birliği projesi, AB ile Akdeniz bölgesi arasında başta kaçak göç, çevre, içme suyu, enerji, ulaştırma, sürdürülebilir kalkınma gibi alanlarda yakın işbirliği ve dayanışmayı öngörüyor.

The project for the Mediterranean is seen to have close interdepencence and cooperation in areas such as immigration smuggling, the environment, drinking water, energy, transportation, and continued development.

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