Emirates' international crew explain idioms in fun new videos

Emirates is making the most of its multilingual international crew with an amusing new set of videos explaining proverbs and idioms in a range of languages — perfect for a Friday afternoon watch!

The airline's crew speaks fifty-five languages, with fourteen of them showcased in twenty-nine quick videos at emiratesshareasmile.com.

Want to tell an Arabic-speaking colleague you like the food? Emirates has you covered:

Or how about explaining to a Japanese contact that you'd rather avoid style over substance?

Unfortunately for Aussies travelling abroad, Australian English isn't one of the languages in the video — so you'll still have to explain what "fair dinkum", "you're a dag" and so on are to your international colleagues and contacts.

Overall, these videos are more amusing than directly business-useful for passengers, but we hope they inspire the airline to create more practical language tools on-board.

What's really interesting is that Emirates is spruiking the variety of nationalities on its staff, which could be a real draw for business travellers.

With multilingual cabin crew and a top-notch entertainment system, Emirates could offer passengers a boon with short, sharp, useful basic language courses to view on board.

Just imagine making the most of your 14-hour business class flight to Dubai with a quick brush-up of your German before your connection to Frankfurt, taking a few video language courses — or even the opportunity to spend a few minutes practising what you've picked up in the business class bar area with a native German-speaking flight attendant.

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John Walton

Aviation journalist and travel columnist John took his first long-haul flight when he was eight weeks old and hasn't looked back since. Well, except when facing rearwards in business class.