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Lanseria Airport is a small privately owned airport in Johannesburg. After two other airlines tried to make flying from it profitable, kulula made an agreement with Lanseria for exclusive rights after they invested in the airport and took the business risk. Since then, flights to and from Lanseria have become very popular due to its convenient location and the fact that flights are typically cheaper than if one would fly to OR Tambo. They are cheaper as the airport charges at Lanseria are quite a lot cheaper than at OR Tambo.

Kulula reported flies 1 million passengers into and out of Lanseria annually, and 1time would like a piece f this pie. 1Time has approached the Competitions Committee , which has agreed that there is a case to be heard regarding the exclusive rights of kulula. This does not mean that kulula are wrong, just that the Competitions Tribunal will hear the arguments from 1time and then assess the merits of the case. The exclusive rights of kulula do expire next year February, but 1time are keen to get in there much sooner. I also think that they are wanting kulula to get a hefty fine to hurt their bottom line.

At the end of the day, from a consumer’s perspective, the more airlines and airports that are in the market the better, as the cheaper and more competitive prices will be. I don’t really feel kulula should be fined as they did make the initial investment to get Lanseria Airport up and organized. However they have made the profits from this investment, and now more airlines should be able to use the airport.

I’m off to the Motherland again. Yes, boys and girls, it’s “do svidanya” to you and “privet” to Moscow. I can’t wait!

This will be my sixth time in Russia, and if the other times were anything to go by, I’m in for the ride of a lifetime. Here are some Russian quotes to get the mind bloggling:

(I’m writing them all transliterated into English characters for ease of reading.)

• Kak dela? = How are you?
• Chto? = What? (Can you feel the ch-t-o on your tongue? Love it!)
• Ya khachu pit! = I want a drink!
• Privet, kak tebe zavut? = Hi, what’s your name?
• Net, ya ne goluboi! = No, I’m not gay (in Russian, I’m not light-blue!)
• Da, u menya est komnata v otele ne daleko! = Yes, I have a hotel room not far away!
• Khachu banyu = I want to go to sauna (Russians have a special sauna called banya) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banya_(sauna)
• Menya zavut Kobus = My name is Kobus (I know it isn’t!)
• Ya pyan = I’m drunk

Just a bit more on that “banya”. Russians love it, and always make time (sometimes more than once a week) to go to their version of sauna. People go in naked and beat each other with birch switches. The leaves slap the hot steam and water against your body and make for a strange, but lovely tingling feeling. No, this isn’t an orgy or a drug of sorts, it’s really great.

But then, to top it all off, they run naked into the snow, and then briskly back into the sauna. Why? Not craziness – they open and close the pores on their skin and get all the city gunk out. Very healthy.

Beware of a lady inviting you to banya though, that means she’s getting serious…

Well, if you need other phrases, be sure to ask at the end of this post, and I’ll gladly add them in.

Hopefully the next post will make it through the tundra to www.imod.co.za!

Language is such a personal thing. You grow up in a specific family setting (hopefully) and are soon set in your mother-tongue, and perhaps learn one or two further languages in your lifetime.

But does the language you happen to grow up with, influence the way you think?

A recent article a friend sent me seems to say it does. What do I mean by “influence the way you think”? Well, simply put – just because you speak English means that you have a different way of imagining the number three. Or put in another way, if you have many words for shades of blue (as Russian does), you can better distinguish these colours than a Spanish speaker, for example.

Many people have gone this route to try and prove something similar, but this article finally starts to get closer to the mark, with some fantastic research. Certain language speakers, for example, couldn’t remember who broke a vase, because when reported in their language, they just say: “The vase broke itself.” Whereas in English, we say: “Paul broke the vase” and so we remember that it was Paul.

Counting and numeracy is another big topic here. I’ve often seen linguists checking out how different languages express numbers. Some forgotten tribes don’t go higher than ten without saying many after that. One tribe in the Amazon, the Piraha, just simply cannot count, and the word for “one” can also mean “a few”, while “two” can also be used to refer to “not many”.

This is significant, because us English folk can’t imagine a world without one plus one equaling two. Even in the sci-fi film Contact with Jodie Foster, the other civilization in the universe uses prime numbers to communicate, because “it’s the only thing that must be the same in our languages.”

I somehow wonder what this all means if it’s real. Should I teach my children German? Or Chinese? Will they perform better at school without ever hearing French? Is this all just simply coincidence, or do we perform better in art if we are Russian, or better at Mathematics if we’re Chinese?

Without researching and thinking too much, what would you say? Does our language influence our thought abilities?

Last week we spoke about how 1time are really starting to do more and more flights into Africa, and now kulula has come out with another new route of their own. Kulula has partnered with Federal Air and now offers flights from Johannesburg to Vilanculos. These are daily flights, and the flight time will be 3 hours. You can book and pay on kulula.com, but unfortunately as the actual flight is not with kulula, you can not pay with kulula moolah, discovery miles or ebucks.

Flight price looks to be around R1684 one way, and the only way to pay is with your credit card. Federal Air has typically been a charter airline and have partnered with quite a few safari destinations, bringing passengers specifically to them. This goes to show how popular these flights into Africa from South Africa are becoming.

Here are some more travel posts:

• 1Time fly to Maputo
• SAA fly to Maun in Botswana

And if traveling is your thing, then perhaps you’ll be interested in some language discussions:

• The easiest language of all
• A language is a serious thing, bru

Remember, if you’re interested in flying and the cheapest flight costs, visit the Travel Super Market.

Last time I wrote, I mentioned something about Indonesian being the easiest major language to learn. Some of you might have wondered, what is the easiest language out of all of them, and which is the most difficult?

Well, before we start, remember that we are looking at this from an English native speaker’s perspective. Let’s first answer the question of the most difficult language.

Categorically, it must clearly be Sentinelese. But you’ve never heard of Sentinelese, have you? That’s exactly why it’s so difficult to learn – almost no-one in the world speaks it, and I can assure you that you won’t find a teacher in your neighbourhood. There’s only one island in the world where an ancient and hostile tribe speak Sentinelese, and they aren’t too keen on visitors. Just Google it and see.

More Pictures

Other hard languages for us English speakers are obviously those without a similar alphabet (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc), and those with difficult grammar structures. Finnish and Hungarian, both of Finno-Ugric language origin, have particularly tough grammar.

You see, in English we have it quite easy – our verbs don’t change that much: ‘I do, you do, he does, we do, they do’ – most forms end up as ‘do’. But in other languages, every form is different and even differs from male to female to neuter.

Easy languages are all over the place. The main ones spoken about are Spanish (not that easy, though!), Indonesian, Norwegian and surprisingly, Afrikaans!

Afrikaans? Really? Well, if you think about it, yes. It has almost the same alphabet, extremely easy grammar, mostly easy pronunciation and you write everything as you say it, so spelling isn’t tough.

I’ve seen articles in a few places comparing Danish and Norwegian, Spanish and French, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Afrikaans is the easiest for English speakers to learn.

What do you think?

Pages citing Afrikaans as the easiest:

• http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t15802.htm
• http://www.pagef30.com/2008/08/why-norwegian-is-easiest-language-for.html (a very long article on why Afrikaans is the easiest)

1time airlines have done very well, being in ‘independent’ low cost airline, unlike Mango – which is owned by SAA, and kulula – which is owned by Comair. They have managed to make a nice for themselves and only fly routes which they know they can make a profit from, as they need to show a profit to its stakeholders. 1time has also made it quite apparent in its financial reports that their goal is to start offering flights into Africa, as long as the flights are within 4 hours (the maximum flight time of their planes).

The third African route they will be opening up will be to Maputo from Johannesburg. They will be offering 5 weekly flights to Maputo, which is the maximum flights allowed. 1time have stated that they see the cost of flights to Maputo being cut by 50% with them entering the market, which is fantastic news for us passengers.

Go 1time.