Four Languages, Thirteen Years Younger? The Multilingual Brain Strikes Again

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Now here is a language-learning headline calculated to make every serial polyglot feel a wee bit smug: people who speak four languages may have brains that appear up to thirteen years younger than those of monolinguals.

As somebody rapidly approaching 50 with a language list that stubbornly refuses to shrink, I naturally decided to investigate.

The findings were presented at the 2026 Forum of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies. Researchers worked with multilingual speakers in the Basque Country, using combinations of Spanish, Basque, French and English.

First, they used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure patterns of brain activity in 728 people. Artificial intelligence then helped the researchers construct a “brain-age clock”: a model of what neural connectivity typically looks like at different ages.

They applied that model to a separate group of 144 people who spoke between one and four languages. The results, reported by the Federation via ScienceDaily, were striking:

  • Bilingual participants’ brains appeared about six years younger than those of monolinguals.
  • For trilingual participants, the difference was around seven years.
  • For speakers of four languages, it reached roughly thirteen years.

Higher proficiency and earlier acquisition were also associated with younger-looking patterns of brain connectivity.

A Brain Age, Not a Birth Certificate

Before we all add another three languages to Duolingo, there are some important caveats.

“Brain age” is an estimate produced from particular patterns of neural activity. It does not mean that a multilingual 50-year-old literally has the brain of a typical 37-year-old in every respect.

The study also shows an association, rather than proving that multilingualism caused the difference. The researchers accounted for age, sex and education, but could not completely separate language experience from other potentially protective factors.

Multilingual people may, for example, be more likely to read widely, travel, socialise across different communities or engage in lifelong learning generally. As one independent expert pointed out in The Guardian, activities such as exercise, music and social engagement could all be part of the picture.

These are also findings presented at a conference; the fuller published analysis will give researchers more opportunity to prod the methods and conclusions.

Depth Beats Language Collecting

Still, one detail feels especially useful for learners. The apparent effect was not simply binary—monolingual versus multilingual. It varied with the number of languages, how well participants spoke them and how long those languages had been part of their lives.

That suggests the important ingredient may be sustained multilingual experience: recalling words, selecting between competing forms, following different sound systems and continually switching one linguistic network on while damping another down.

In other words, merely collecting beginner courses may not be the neurological elixir we language dabblers would like it to be. Active use and depth seem to matter.

But maintenance need not mean sitting an advanced grammar exam every Tuesday. Conversation, reading, listening and regular retrieval all keep a language working rather than merely stored away. And if those activities also bring social contact, curiosity and enjoyment, they may tick several healthy-ageing boxes at once.

The study doesn’t prove that downloading a language app will turn back time. It does, however, add to an encouraging body of evidence that multilingualism is not simply knowledge we carry around: it is something that continually activates the brain.

So perhaps we all do have room for one more language, after all. Purely for health reasons, obviously.

Remembering King Harald V: Norwegian Podcasts for Learners

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Norway lost a deeply loved national figure when King Harald V died on 28 August 2026, at the age of 89.

In the days since, Norwegian broadcasters and podcasters have produced a wealth of thoughtful audio reflecting on his life: his childhood during the Second World War, his long fight to marry Sonja Haraldsen, his love of sailing, and his 35 years as Norway’s king.

Of course, this is not a moment to turn a nation’s mourning into just another language-learning exercise. But listening carefully to Norwegians tell King Harald’s story can be a respectful way to learn more about the country, its recent history and the affection in which he was held.

Here are some of the best, most elucidating recent Norwegian-language episodes I’ve come across in the past week or so. The suggested levels are only approximate – archival recordings, regional accents and multiple speakers can make individual sections more challenging (but also more rewarding).

1. Oppdatert: Kong Harald – Slik var livet hans

Length: 1 hour 2 minutes
Suggested level: B1–B2
Best for: A comprehensive overview

NRK’s Oppdatert is always a good follow anyway, and on the day of his passing, released a full-length special to the King’s life. It places his personal story alongside many of the defining events Norway experienced during his lifetime.

At just over an hour, this is the most substantial of the recent broadcast retrospectives. NRK’s polished narrative style makes it reasonably approachable, although the length and any changes of speaker may require a couple of sittings.

Listen to “Kong Harald: Slik var livet hans”

2. Forklart: Kong Harald V (1937–2026)

Length: 29 minutes
Suggested level: B1–B2
Best for: A clear first listen

Aftenposten’s Forklart is another excellent choice for intermediate Norwegian learners. Each episode takes one subject and explains it through a structured conversation between a presenter and a knowledgeable guest.

Here, presenter Marte Spurkland speaks with veteran commentator Harald Stanghelle about the different sides of King Harald: folkekongen, the people’s king; idrettskongen, the sporting king; and a monarch unafraid to show emotion. It also covers the long struggle that preceded his marriage to Queen Sonja.

The combination of clear studio audio, a strong narrative thread and a manageable running time makes this my recommended starting point.

Listen to “Kong Harald V (1937–2026)”

3. Historier som endret Norge: Kong Haralds liv – Plikt, kjærlighet og krone

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes
Suggested level: B2–C1
Best for: The fullest biographical treatment

This extensive conversation with historian and royal commentator Ole-Jørgen Schulsrud-Hansen was originally recorded for King Harald’s 89th birthday, before his death, and respectfully republished afterwards.

It follows Harald from his birth in 1937 through wartime exile and post-war reconstruction, placing his childhood within the development of Norway’s relatively young modern monarchy. There is plenty on the famous Sonja eller ingen ultimatum—“Sonja or no one”—as well as his accession following the death of King Olav V.

Because it was recorded as a historical discussion rather than a breaking-news response, this is perhaps the best choice for learners wanting a rounded biography. The spontaneous conversational style and historical vocabulary make it better suited to confident listeners.

Listen to “Kong Haralds liv – Plikt, kjærlighet og krone”

4. Historisk podkast: Kong Harald V – Vår egen folkekonge

Length: 52 minutes
Suggested level: B2
Best for: Personal memories within modern Norwegian history

This special episode remembers both the monarch and the man. It combines the broader story of King Harald’s reign with memories of his visits around Norway, presenting his life as part of a chapter in the country’s modern history.

One especially useful feature for curious learners is the detailed source list accompanying the episode. It offers plenty of avenues for follow-up reading on subjects including the royal family’s wartime escape, Harald and Sonja’s relationship, the transition of 1991 and the King’s response to national events.

Listen to “Kong Harald V (1937–2026): Vår egen folkekonge”

5. Stopp verden: Vi levde i kong Harald Vs tid

Length: 43 minutes
Suggested level: B2–C1
Best for: The bigger historical picture

This is not a straightforward biography. Instead, historian Tor Bomann-Larsen joins political editor Torbjørn Røe Isaksen to consider the long development of Norway’s modern monarchy, from Haakon VII to the new King Haakon VIII.

The conversation explores the world over which King Harald presided and how the monarchy evolved with Norwegian society. It also traces the history of the royal motto Alt for Norge—“Everything for Norway”.

The speakers assume a fair amount of cultural and historical knowledge, making this the most demanding episode in the list. For an advanced learner, though, it offers an exceptionally rich blend of biography, history and political vocabulary.

Listen to “Vi levde i kong Harald Vs tid”

6. A Short Listen: Slik husker folket kong Harald

Length: 7 minutes
Suggested level: B1–B2
Best for: Hearing ordinary Norwegians remember the King

If an hour of historical Norwegian feels daunting, this short Oppdatert episode is a more manageable alternative. It gathers some of the moments and qualities for which people across Norway remember King Harald.

The short running time makes it ideal for repeated listening. However, naturally spoken contributions and changing voices can sometimes be harder to follow than a single studio presenter—so do not be discouraged if this brief episode proves surprisingly challenging.

Listen to “Slik husker folket kong Harald”

Reading Alongside the Podcasts

For further Norwegian reading, the National Library has created a beautifully illustrated overview of King Harald’s life through items in its collections.

King Haakon’s deeply personal memorial address to his father is also available from the Royal House. Its language is clear, heartfelt and dignified.

Taken together, these recordings offer something more than listening practice. They allow learners outside Norway to hear the country remembering a king whose warmth, humour and humanity meant a great deal to its people.

Hvil i fred, Kong Harald.

MFL GCSE Results 2026: Green Shoots of Regrowth for Languages?

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Late August always brings its usual flurry of exam news. And for the first time in a while, this year’s Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) GCSE results feel like a genuine milestone. This summer’s cohort was the first to sit exams under the newly overhauled specifications for French, German and Spanish — a shift that, not without controversy, moved the focus away from broad topics and towards mastering a prescribed vocabulary list of 1,700 words.

So how did the new exams land, and what do the numbers actually tell us about the health of language learning in the UK?

Spanish Keeps Its Crown

The headline from this year’s entry data is a changing of the guard, now well and truly cemented. After Spanish overtook French as the most popular language GCSE last year, the 2026 figures show it consolidating that lead further.

  • Spanish keeps climbing, helped along by its practicality and cultural reach — everything from Latin pop to La Liga gives students a reason to care.
  • German offered a bit of hope for once. After years of worrying decline, entries have stabilised – nothing to throw a party over, but a genuinely welcome sign for Germanists.
  • French, sadly, remains the one losing ground, dropping again relative to Spanish. The Guardian’s editorial on the 2026 results put it well: the decline of “traditional” school languages is an alarming trend that risks turning language learning into a preserve of the affluent.

The Grades: A Welcome Turnaround

One of the biggest worries heading into 2026 was whether the new, vocabulary-heavy specs might cause a dip in attainment while teachers and students found their feet. Thankfully, the transition has gone about as smoothly as anyone could have hoped.

Top grades have held remarkably steady – credit to hard-working teachers, for sure, but also to the grading adjustments Ofqual introduced a few years back to stop marking French and German more harshly than other subjects. Language advocates campaigned for years against MFL being graded more severely than other EBacc subjects, and it’s genuinely satisfying to see that finally paying off.

  • Across German, French and Spanish, the share of students hitting grade 7+ has held up well against the national average.
  • And there’s been no spike in ‘U’ grades among Higher Tier candidates — a good sign the new papers are fair and accessible, not a nasty surprise waiting to happen.

Next Up: Cracking the A-Level Problem

The drop in GCSE entries overall is still a real problem the sector needs to grapple with — but there’s plenty to be optimistic about here. The new specs have bedded in safely, and the old “languages get marked too harshly” narrative is finally losing its grip.

The next challenge is turning this GCSE momentum into A-Level uptake, which is notoriously hard given how expensive small sixth-form language classes are to run. But there are some genuinely clever ideas emerging — the ‘Languages For All’ initiative, a partnership between The Reach Foundation and Royal Holloway, is a good one to watch.

Rather than leaving individual schools to fight their own funding battles, the initiative sets up collaborative ‘hubs’ where schools and colleges pool teachers, resources and centrally taught classes. The results from their Hounslow pilot speak for themselves: between 2022 and 2025, the number of state schools offering A-Level languages tripled, from four to twelve, and enrolments doubled.

For anyone working in languages education, this year offers a solid, encouraging foundation to build on. With fairer grading at GCSE and scalable, resource-sharing models proving themselves at A-Level, there might just be a new blueprint for persuading more students to keep languages going into higher education and beyond.

Hindi Two-Hour Fix : I Faced Down Ergativity!

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You may know that I have a long-running project creating verb drill apps in lots of languages. Well, I’ve been putting off adding Hindi to VerbBlitz for years (honestly!). Not for anything you might consider ‘the hard bit’ – the transliteration of Devanagari, for example (actually really straightforward). It was because of one specific quirk that I’d built up in my head into a real hurdle: the ergativity switch in the perfective aspect.

It’s horrible linguistic jargon, ergativity, and it takes a bit of mental gym to get your head round it if you learnt about ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ in your native language(s) in school. In a nominative-accusative (subject-object) language, like English for example, the subject gets treated the same way whether the verb is intransitive (“she left”) or transitive (“she ate the bread”). The object is the odd one out, marked or positioned differently.

An ergative-absolutive system splits things up differently. The subject of an intransitive verb – one that doesn’t take an object – is treated like the object of a transitive one – it’s ‘absolved’ of action, so it’s termed the absolutive. Meanwhile, a transitive subject gets a special marker all its own – the ergative case. If you’re wondering, that jargony label comes from Greek for worker – as it’s all about who’s doing the ‘work’ of the verb.

The Pattern in Hindi

Hindi is an Indo-European language like English, and like English, patterns like an accusative-nominative language almost everywhere. The language only switches into an ergative system in one place: transitive verbs, perfective aspect. Everywhere else, it runs on the ordinary subject-agreeing pattern, which is exactly what makes the switch feel so jarring the first time you meet it.

Take the verb khaanaa, “to eat.” In the ordinary habitual present, it behaves like you’d expect from basically any language: the verb agrees with the subject.

main roti khaataa huun — “I eat roti”
(khaataa is masculine, agreeing with main, “I”)

Now switch to the perfective — simple past, “I ate”:

maine roti khaayi — “I ate roti”

(khaayi is feminine, agreeing with roti)

Two things happen at once. First, the subject main takes an extra marker and becomes maine, so being marked as the ergative ‘worker’. Second – and this is the bit that trips people up – the verbal participle khaayi is no longer agreeing with the subject at all. It’s agreeing with roti, the object, which is feminine. Swap in a masculine object and the participle changes with it, not with you.

That’s the whole switch. Transitive verb, perfective aspect, subject gets marked with ne, and the verb hands its agreement over to the object instead.

Why it’s not actually scary

Once you see it named and isolated like that, it stops being a monster under the bed. It’s genuinely just: this one aspect, with transitive verbs, agreement moves from subject to object. Everything else about Hindi verb conjugation carries on exactly as you’d expect as a card-carrying, stock Indo-European language.

There’s also a nice way to hold it in your head if you’ve studied any Indo-European languages with a passive voice: this construction is generally thought to have started life as a passive (“by me, roti was eaten”) that then got reanalysed as an active perfective over time. Once the marker ne clicked into place as “the person who did it,” the participle just never stopped agreeing with the thing that was, historically, its grammatical subject – the object. You don’t need the history to use the pattern, but it makes the logic click.

The lesson

None of this was brain-achingly hard to learn. What was hard was the story I’d told myself about it – that it was some sprawling, thorny irregularity that would derail the whole data model. It wasn’t. It was one clean rule, confined to one aspect, with one consistent trigger.

That’s usually how it goes with the “scary” bits of a language. The size of the thing in your head and the size of the thing on the page are very rarely the same. Give it the two hours it actually needs, and more often than not it turns out to be a paragraph, not a chapter.

The MFL AI Toolkit Just Got Better: New Models for Worksheet Authoring [August 2026]

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Local AI is getting better. The past few weeks saw the release of several compact but powerful LLMs that make a great fit for foreign language content authoring (think worksheets and reading texts, with an even lower overhead!).

I’m using LM Studio to run these for content projects – you’ll find them all as easy downloads in the models tab. Make sure you have a bit of disk space and a fast connection – they range from 8 to nearly 20GB in size – then download and start prompting!

  • Qwen3.8-27B — Alibaba / Qwen
    Released 13–14 August 2026 · Apache 2.0 · ~27.8B parameters

    The freshest of the bunch, and arguably the pick of the litter for MFL content work. It’s the direct successor to the community-favourite Qwen3.6-27B, but now natively multimodal (text, images and video), with a 262K-token context window that stretches to 1M — plenty of headroom for feeding it whole set texts or past papers and asking it to generate comprehension exercises around them. Qwen also ships adjustable “reasoning effort,” handy for dialling compute up for tricky grammar explanations and down for quick vocab drills.

  • Muse Glimmer — Meta
    Released 10 August 2026 · Apache 2.0 · 30B parameters

    Meta’s return to genuinely open weights, distilled down from their closed flagship Muse Spark 1.2. It’s pitched squarely at agentic, on-device workflows — think batch-generating worksheet sets, checking your own answer keys, or wiring up a local pipeline that self-corrects its output — and runs comfortably on a single consumer GPU or a beefy Mac. Covers 100+ languages, which is more than most of us need, but never hurts!

  • Bonsai 27B — PrismML
    Released 14 July 2026 · Apache 2.0 · 27.8B parameters (1-bit / ternary)

    Now this is at the extreme end of “small”, and it’s attempting something quite novel. It’s an ultra-low-bit compression of Qwen3.6-27B — down to 3.9GB in its 1-bit form — small enough to run on a many portable devices (although I’ve not tried it on PocketPal yet), and comfortably on a laptop with room to spare. Quality takes a modest hit versus full-precision Qwen3.6-27B (PrismML’s own figures put it around 90% retention at 1-bit, better at the ~7GB ternary setting), so it’s more “worksheets on the train” than “your main authoring model,” but as a proof that 27B-class output now fits in your pocket, it’s a fun one to have installed.

A slightly older model that’s worth a mention alongside these is Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, a very efficient mixture-of-experts model that nominally has 35B parameters but only about 3B are active at any one time via a clever routing trick. It’s noticeably faster than Qwen3.8-27B for similar output quality in my own testing, and it’s been my workhorse for some time. It’s worth keeping an eye out for a future MoE version of 3.8 built the same way — that could be genuinely excellent.

Why Small Models?

Using smaller models locally addresses many of the environmental and privacy concerns around AI use. All the prompt compute happens privately on your local machine — no student data, no draft worksheets, no half-finished reading texts ever leave your laptop. And despite the tiny footprint, they’re still excellent at producing native-quality text across dozens of languages, which was frankly unthinkable on consumer hardware even a year ago.

None of these is going to replace a careful human eye on the final worksheet — but as first drafts, distractor generation, or a quick “give me five more sentences at this CEFR level,” they’re genuinely useful additions to the toolkit. Worth an afternoon of poking around, at the very least.

More Greek fun on the socials

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Formative social media – that’s the kind we like! And I keep finding accounts that make me feel slightly better for all the minutes scrolling on Instagram.

Of course the algorithm helps – like one and it’ll funnel all of them to you sooner or later. But there are some really special ones that I’d add to the first raft of them that I compiled a while ago.

First off, Nefeli Abastado and team run the brilliant gr_language. It dives deeper than most Greek accounts by adding an etymological and cultural slant – you learn about the Hellenic world woven into the words.

Next we have Artemis, a Greek teacher from Crete, who runs the excellent Greek Talk Club channel. My favourite thing about it is the focus on the colloquial; snazzy infographics are a regular feature, teaching you how Greeks really speak.

Roula’s feed also aims to colour in the Greek history and culture behind the vocabulary. Recommended for any Greek learners who asks not just what, but: why?

Nostos Hub is a super follow too. It features a little more grammar than some of the others, with great, clear explanations of tricky words and phrases in the language. There’s still a healthy nod to Greek heritage throughout, though!

For sure there are more golden Greek feeds to find – let me know your own favourites in the comments!

Thanks, Glasgow 2026

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What a week and a half it’s been at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games!

As you’ll know, I’ve been an enthusiastic convert to – and massive advocate for – volunteering since Birmingham 2022. It’s such a fantastic way to give a little back and gain a real sense of community in return. And for language geeks, international events like the Commonwealth Games bring that wonderful world of diversity right to the doorstep.

It’s wise to expect the unexpected at these things, of course. I thought I might get the chance to say karibuni (welcome) in Swahili, or chat a little in French with francophone athletes in Glasgow.

But in fact, it was my tiny bit of Welsh that got an outing in and around the venues. Team Wales had a ton of supporters cheering the competitors on, so croeso! (welcome), diolch yn fawr (thanks a lot) and un… dau… tri… (one… two… three… – for taking group pics, of course) came in surprisingly handy! And isn’t it the best feeling when you say a few words and see those smiles of surprise in return? It makes all that dabbling worthwhile, even if you’ve learnt only a handful of words.

Gwen, the Welsh Dragon—possibly my favourite Games pin of all!

The other big language surprise came from among my fellow volunteers. Of all things, one of them spoke Norwegian fluently – cue a fun wee conversation on shift. And then there was the fab bus convo with two delegates who spotted me doing Duolingo: we ended up comparing notes on the languages we were learning.

That’s what happens when lots of lovely people come together for the big, lovely shindig that is volunteering. Like-minded souls, you might call us. Although everyone here has been equally lovely and also wonderfully different.

Glasgow 2026 has been an absolute ball. It’s made me want to keep spreading the word: if you get the chance, give event volunteering a go. It’ll open up your world!

Beyond the Novelty: The Sustained Impact of Song-Based Instruction in Language Learning

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Music in the language learning classroom is not a new concept, and there’s lots of anecdotal evidence for its positive effects. But  it’s also not the easiest thing to test empirically, as you can imagine. You might see a spike in interest briefly in class, but it’s harder to show concrete academic growth over time with something so subjective.

However, a robust quasi-experimental study published in Brain and Behavior provides a more rigorous look at the data. The researchers investigated both the immediate and sustained effects of song-based lessons, offering practical insights into how multimodal approaches function over time.

The Methodology

The researchers conducted an eleven-week study involving 200 elementary-level EFL learners. To ensure internal validity, intact classes were assigned to either a control or an experimental group:

  • The control group received traditional instruction aligned with their standard curriculum (I know, what a shame for them!)
  • The experimental group covered the exact same instructional objectives and content, but their lessons were integrated with age-appropriate English songs.

Data were collected at three distinct time points: a pretest, an immediate post-test, and a four-week follow-up assessment.

The Findings

The inclusion of the delayed follow-up measurement is where this study proves its worth, moving the conversation beyond short-term performance gains. The results demonstrated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group across three interconnected constructs:

  • Academic Development: Learners receiving song-based instruction showed enduring improvements in their core language skills, including vocabulary growth, comprehension, and linguistic accuracy. Crucially, these academic gains were largely maintained at the follow-up stage.
  • Cognitive Engagement: Rather than simply entertaining the students, the musical input facilitated sustained attention, mental effort, and active participation. This aligns with multimodal learning theory, which posits that integrating verbal and auditory channels can enhance attentional focus and memory formation.
  • Motivation for Learning: Grounded in Self-Determination Theory, the findings indicate that song-based activities effectively supported learners’ psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This resulted in higher intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, an effect that also remained stable at the four-week follow-up.

Practical Implications

The data present a clear, solutions-oriented takeaway for curriculum design. Song-based instruction functions as a highly effective pedagogical catalyst: it enhances motivation, which in turn increases cognitive engagement, ultimately driving sustained academic development. Perhaps it’s something many of us knew – instinctively!

And perhaps it’s a call to bring music more into the centre stage, rather than in a minor support role. Music can be relegated to the role of a peripheral, affective ‘ice-breaker’ in language learning. But when implemented systematically, emotionally engaging, multimodal input can produce long-term, solid language gains.

Happy Commonwealth Games 2026 – Enjoy The Languages, Glasgow!

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A busy one this week, as many of us in Scotland (and beyond) are preparing for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, either as volunteers or visitors. The 2026 edition of the games will be filling the city with sporting joy from 23rd July to 2nd August.

And there’s a language connection there, of course – I couldn’t hide my enthusiasm at that very fact when it was Birmingham’s turn to host the Games in 2022. A huge number of languages are spoken across the Commonwealth, with some countries hanging on to a staggering level of linguistic diversity. Nearly a thousand languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea. Nigeria has over 500. India with over 400, Australia breaking 200, and Cameroon at nearly 300 round off the medal table.

Some of those, of course, will be represented by athletes and spectators coming to Glasgow. It’s a lovely thought to think that the event might bring Arrernte, Hiri Motu or Fulfulde to the streets of the city.

As for me, I’m looking forward to a couple especially. There’s Greek, obviously, thanks to Cyprus. We should hear a fair bit of Swahili about, with visitors from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. And francophone countries are in the mix too, with Canada, Cameroon, Mauritius, Vanuatu, and of course, Rwanda again. I’m a little giddy at the thought of hearing Maltese, too – not one I’ve ever tried to learn, but I’ve had a vintage copy of Teach Yourself Maltese on my shelf for years that wants to persuade me otherwise!

And as well as all the Scots, of course, there’s a wee treat for Gaelic speakers and learners – BBC Alba are covering the games in the language.

If you’re in Glasgow, have fun listening out for those languages. And wherever you’re following the fun, have a wonderful Commonwealth Games 2026. Find out more at the official site!

Open Textbook : University-Grade Language Resources for Free

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You know I like a language freebie. And this week, I found out about a brilliant free resource from colleagues involved in the project. It’s called the Open Textbook Library, and it offers a practical, structured approach to sourcing course materials without the hefty price tag.

What Are Open Textbooks?

Open textbooks are complete, peer-reviewed academic books published under open licences. This means they are free to read, download, and adapt for your own teaching and learning. While the initiative initially aimed to address the high costs of higher education textbooks, it has grown into a comprehensive academic repository. The library also now features a dedicated UK & Ireland Collection, curated by university librarians.

The Language Learning Angle

For language learners, the library offers a solid, structured alternative to expensive commercial courses, with the reassurance that they’ve been put together by subject experts. The Languages section contains university-level course books for a variety of languages, ranging from French and Italian to Arabic and Chinese.

Many of these texts are designed around modern pedagogical frameworks and mirror the courses you’d actually follow if you enrolled at the university publishing them. To give a couple of concrete examples, you can find the highly thorough Spunti series for Italian (such as Spunti: Italiano Elementare 1), alongside structured introductory materials like the Linam German courses (including German 101). Texts frequently include multimedia links too, so you have listening covered with many of them.

Beyond Languages

Of course, we’re all about languages at Polyglossic. But the Open Textbook catalogue spans a huge range of academic disciplines. If your interests overlap with the social sciences, historical linguistics, or computer science, you will find rigorously reviewed texts available in those areas as well.

How to Access the Library

Accessing the materials is straightforward. You can browse by subject on the Open Textbook Library website and download the texts directly.

They are typically provided as PDF or EPUB files. This digital format is particularly useful if you prefer to keep your physical footprint small and travel light, allowing you to load an entire syllabus onto a single device. There are no subscriptions or ongoing fees to manage – just practical, open access to structured learning.

Finally, if you’re a course author yourself, maybe you’d consider contributing to Open Textbook too. It’s a wonderful initiative to democratise learning – and who doesn’t want to give a little back?