RJA wrote:

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 You forgot to record the fact that Ken & Neal are the fourth seeds, RJA!  Oversight rectified. 

-- Edited by Stircrazy on Sunday 8th of September 2013 01:00:56 PM

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And I was so careful not to make any spelling mistakes for you to pick me up on 

Oh you must be joking - they let them have a game ... the shame of it 

Spectator wrote:

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Well, after the problems of last week, getting an absurdly easy first-round draw isn't a bad thing. Just out of interest, anyone here know whether the people on the Challenger website are speaking Luxembourgish? Or just German with a very heavy Luxembourg accent? I've never heard/read Luxembourgish, so wouldn't know.

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I hadn't turned the sound on before, so thanks for prompting me to do so - that brings back some memories. It sounds like Lëtzebuergesch to me - I've heard it in real life before but never online.

I'm amazed they use it on their site - I guess they must be trying to attract the locals. Then again, it has always sounded to me like a combination of French words with slightly German pronunciation and (more frequently) German words with slightly French pronunciation plus a few short words that are all their own, so maybe it's intelligible to most French and German speakers too. I found it all easy enough to understand, but probably knowing the context helped a fair bit!

Spectator wrote:

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Thanks, Steven. Yes, when I first heard it, I wasn't really listening and just caught the accent (and had seen that the site was in French), so thought it was French. Then when I actually listened to the words, most of them sounded like German, but there were one or two places where I wasn't quite sure. Knew that someone on this board (most likely you or SC) would be able to solve the mystery!

My tennis-playing ability (or, more accurately, lack thereof) is unlikely ever to give the opportunity to play beyond the confines of our local free courts ... let alone to have the opportunity that the GB players have to experience different cultures/languages/places. From an environmental point of view, that's probably good. And I know that their life - with all the travel, lack of pay, trying to do things cheaply and staying in questionable lodgings, etc - is far from idyllic. But even so, the tour must have its fascinating elements.

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I wonder how much advantage players take to broaden their horizons or whether it's just a case of surviving. I'd certainly do my best to experience as much as I could given the opportunities to see the world that they have.

It must also provide a great opportunity to become multilingual - not only is there plenty of downtime (waiting for matches, etc) providing the opportunity to learn (and languages are probably the best subjects to learn little and often, e.g. something like supermemo courses on a iPhone would be ideal for this purpose) but there must be constant opportunities to practice and to pick up new words.

I imagine some players do take advantage and others don't. For example, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that someone like the Fed is fluent in so many languages. It's probably harder for British players because (presumably) English is the default language at most tennis tournaments (though maybe not at the French/German/Spanish/etc tournaments if hardly any anglophone players are taking part), but it seems like such a good chance to build up skills that would be both useful and fun later on that it would be a pity to let it go to waste.

Having said that, it's clear that a few of the Brits can speak Spanish (though I don't know how well) - it would be interesting to know whether some of them think they are a lot better at languages and/or have a much better general knowledge of the world than would be the case if they weren't professional tennis players.