About Us

The Language Alliance website has been created by Simon, Scott and Bex. Bex is a natural linguist, whereas going by our school experiences myself and Simon are most definitely not.

I hated languages at school, I didn’t get it and I didn’t enjoy it. I absolutely loved the idea of being able to speak another language but the way they tried to get me to memorise and regurgitate just didn’t work for me.

The week after we finished school myself and Simon had flights booked to Spain. We had not a lot of money but big plans, our first port of call was Benidorm where we hoped to pick up some work in an English bar. We picked up work easy enough (this was 20 years ago) and what followed was one of the best and craziest summer of our life. Yes, there were girls, parties and plenty of sunshine but for the best thing were the people I got to meet – people from all over the world. If they could speak English then I could speak to them and they all had something new and interesting to say.

Towards the end of that summer I met a girl from the North of the country and fell in love. I’d picked up a bit of Spanish, the pigeon variety, but communication was a tricky. Nevertheless, we were in puppy love so I somehow arranged to travel up to see her when the summer season was over.

I remember arriving in a tiny town which that you entered through a road with derelict factories either side covered in spray paint saying ‘ETA’. There was not a word of English anywhere, nothing on the roads, on signs or in the shops – to me this was a truly wonderful and alien place. There were also no people anywhere which I found strange, so I headed for the town square, lay on a bench and promptly fell asleep.

When I awoke I had a small crowd gathered around, all speaking at me at a thousand miles an hour –all I could manage was my girlfriends name which luckily did the trick. Through ‘total submersion’ my basic Spanish developed very quickly indeed. I got to know and chat to many of the people in that crowd. Turns out that most of them had not seen a man with long blonde hair before – I was as strange to them as they were to me.

Myself and the Spanish girl did not last the course but my love and languages and they ability they give to communicate has. I love to travel and there is nothing I love more than to get off the tourist trail and meet and learn the locals, make friends and learn something new and interesting.