Language learning - making sense of the wall of words.

Playing with Words: How ‘The Language Game’ Can Boost Your Language Learning

It doesn’t happen too often, but now and again I come across a linguistics book that has some immediately liftable, transferable insights for language learners, both formal linguists and otherwise. So it was with The Language Game, my star read over a quiet Christmas up in Aberdeenshire this year.

As polyglots and language enthusiasts, we often get lost in the intricate maze of vocabulary lists, grammar rules, and perfect pronunciation. We diligently chase language as a concrete, unchanging entity, forgetting the exhilarating dance of meaning that is the true essence of language.

But what if we’ve been approaching language learning from a slightly skewed perspective?

The Language Game, Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater’s paradigm-changing exploration of the improvisational nature of language, suggests that maybe we have. They argue that, much like life itself, language is a constant improvisation and renegotiation of meaning. From the ever-shifting, multifaceted definitions of words like light and live (just think of all the different, often tenuously connected things they have come to mean), language isn’t a fixed system, but a dynamic game we play. At any point, we can recruit existing items in novel ways that suit our immediate needs. This game relies almost completely on context, arising from our in-the-moment desire to communicate rather than adhering to strict, unchanging rules.

What does this mean for us second (third, fourth etc.) language learners? It reminds us that language isn’t a static mountain to be conquered, but a playful river we navigate as it continues to change. The path forward lies not in rote memorisation, but in embracing the creative process of meaning-making in the moment.

Lessons from The Language Game

The Language Game is a compelling, accessibly written book and an easy read even if you don’t have a background in formal linguistics. I really recommend you dip in yourself to benefit from the insights inside it. In the meantime, here are the main polyglot takeaways that I found beneficial – all great rules to learn by as a foreign language enthusiast.

Meaning isn’t set in stone

Ease off on exact dictionary definitions and rigid rules. Focus on using words in context, adapting to the ever-evolving “language games” around you, consuming as much contemporary media as possible.

Context is King

Don’t downplay the role of setting in what words and sentences mean. If something doesn’t make sense, pull back to see the bigger picture, and have a stab at guessing from the context. Always close attention to the social landscape where language unfolds. Words are chameleons, their meaning shifting with the hues of the situation.

Mastery takes repetition

Even the expectation that toddlers incorporate ten new words perfectly into the mental lexicon is on shaky ground. Investigations into the infamous ‘cheem’ experiments reveal that kids grasp new concepts quickly, but lose them quickly without reinforcement.

Let go of the pressure to “gobble up” language in this way. Language use isn’t simply ‘learn it once and remember it forever’. It builds gradually, layer by layer, through repeated exposure and playful experimentation. Fleeting memory may fades, but repeated use cements meaning.

The Language Game is Just Charades

Gestures, context, and playful guessing guide our understanding. Just as children infer meaning from context, so too do we adults when we play charades. The metaphor of charades – using whatever is at hand to produce meaning in the mind of another – extends to everyday communication, too.

Embrace the guessing game – it’s a powerful learning tool. Guessing is good – don’t be afraid to take a leap of faith with a new word. Use it, even if you’re unsure.

Remember, language is a game, and games are meant to be fun. So let’s play!

The Language Game by Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater is available as a paperback and Kindle book from Amazon.

Language learning - making sense of the wall of words.

Language Learning Treats 2023 – for Christmas and Beyond!

That rolled around quickly again, didn’t it?

2023 has been a year of language ups and downs. Amidst some sadder news, like the mothballing of old courses, and language department struggles at leading universities, there was a lot to celebrate, too. AI has gone big in the language learning world, supporting learners everywhere for free. And the non-Duolingo crowd of apps has only got stronger (continual love to Duolingo when you control the owl, of course). Offerings like Lingvist and Lingodeer now give learners more choice than ever.

It’s all got me a bit nostalgic for my own year of language learning treats. I’ve enjoyed so much of what’s been on offer this year, free and otherwise. It’s only proven to me what a well-supported bunch we are in the polyglot world. And long may that continue.

Anyway, here are a few 2023 treats that were right up my street. I hope you like them, too!

Speak Gaelic!

Speak Gaelic learners have great cause for cheer this season. The BBC’s vast new offering for Scottish Gaelic learners has been a shot in the arm for learners of this beautiful, precious Celtic language, and goes from strength to strength. It’s filled a gap left by the equally excellent, but ageing Speaking Our Language, and it seems determined to build on that heritage in a big way.

We’ve not only got multiple series of CEFR-levelled TV programmes, but also an excellent activity website, a podcast, and now, a series of course books. They even manage to be entertaining, thanks to the infectious cheer of Joy Dunlop and humour of Gaelic’s social media man, Calum MacIlleathain. That’s no mean feat for a language course. Legends, the lot of them.

Even if you have a passing interest in Gaelic, check the series out. It’s a masterclass in how to support a learning community.

Éditions Ellipses

The French educational publisher Éditions Ellipses was my big surprise of 2023. Ever a fan of triangulating my languages, I happened upon their language learning catalogue in France this year. They cover over 20 of them, supporting grammar, vocabulary and cultural learning. Well worth a look if you have French and fancy using it to learn other languages.

I bought a couple of good ones in Lyon, but they’re also available on Amazon: I particularly rate Petites histoires pour apprendre le grec moderne if you’re working on Greek, and Vox allemand for more advanced Germanists.

AI Platforms (LLMs)

I alluded to it in the intro, and it’s impossible to discuss learning in 2023 without a mention for AI. That’s Large Language Models to you and I in the know, as they’re appropriately named – and they’re content whizzes, making for a perfect partner with language learning. I spent so much time bending them to my polyglot will this year, that I wrote a book on using them, AI for Language Learners. Obviously, I would well recommend that as a Christmas treat for any language lover! 😉

The greatest thing about AI for languages is that it’s free to build into your learning routine. Microsoft’s Bing chat is now available to all, and is as good as the best paid models right now. If you want to have a play, check out my articles on creating your own Assimil-style language learning texts and creating Anki decks using AI for starters. Once you get stuck in, you won’t be able to stop!

Language Learning : The Return of …

For me, 2023 continued the personal movie that is French : The Sequel. After abandoning French pretty much immediately after school, it’s slipped back into my life almost accidentally. For one reason or another (mainly music), I keep finding myself in France.

And it’s been a voyage (or three) of rediscovery.

It’s led, of course, to those Éditions Ellipses surprises in Parisian and Lyonnaise bookshops. It’s been such a pleasure, reconnecting… I’m not sure my French will ever be that good, but it’s fun trying! And it just confirms again that sometimes, you don’t always choose the language.

The language chooses you.

What have your 2023 language learning highlights been? Let us know in the comments!

 

Neon books

Éditions Ellipses : Language Learning Find of the Month!

I’m back to my short hop travel habits this month, with language recces in Germany and France. And, as ever, a trip to a target language country is a trip to hunt books for some triangulation fun!

You might already guess that the initial objective of my bookshop hunt was Assimils. These (large) pocket-sized paperbacks have achieved an almost mythical status amongst polyglots. And not without good reason; the parallel text method is solid. I’ve experimented a lot with recreating the format via AI recently, but it’s great to find the originals on bookshop shelves.

And I did spot a good few Assimil editions, in fact. Sadly, not as many as I have on previous occasions, and also not many of the more affordable standalone book editions. More and more often, it seems that French and German bookshops are stocking the much more expensive book-CD sets. Maybe when I’m feeling a bit more flush, I thought.

Éditions Ellipses

But take heart. In much greater abundance, in shiny, colourful, school textbook style jackets, I found another rich seam: Éditions Ellipses. It turns out the publishing house is a staple of francophone tuition. They have books across the subjects, not least languages. And languages aren’t an afterthought, either – they have course books in over twenty of them.

What I loved about the Éditions Ellipses books I leafed through was the practical / vocational slant. Many are geared up to accreditation across the skills range. They’re all levelled using the Council of Europe CEFR labels. And the company appears to be putting titles out so regularly, that the material in them is bang up-to-date.

In the end, I plumped for two Éditions Ellipses francophone language learning titles. The first is one of two ‘Greek through short stories’ books they do, Petites histoires pour apprendre le grec moderne. I went for the B1-B2 book, frankly thrilled to find anything for Greek learners around that level. The books are a little like the “Short Stories In…” series, but so much more comprehensive, with extensive vocabulary, grammar and practice exercises.

The second one I treated myself to was Deutschland Aktuell. L’Allemand d’aujourd’hui. It’s a more advanced, thematic text, using texts as training models for talking about contemporary German topics. I’ve been wanting to revive my not-practised-enough German for a while, but couldn’t find much in the way of engaging resources for B2-C1 in the anglophone market. This Éditions Ellipses text was just the ticket.

So now I’m home, with two wonderful new course books for some systematic learning at a level that’s appropriate to me, and with engaging, up-to-date content. If you, too, are struggling for non-anglophone language learning materials and have a workable level of French, do check out Éditions Ellipses – there are some gems to be found.

An excerpt from the AQA GCSE Spanish spec.

GCSE Specs : Free Language Learning Roadmaps

If you’re a book fiend and love cheap resources, you’ll share my excitement for bargainous budget language guides for students taking school exams like GCSE French, German and Spanish. But you’ll be even more excited to learn that there’s a way to get this thematic, graded content for free.

Enter the humble exam specification document. All exam boards, like AQA and Edexcel in the UK, publish specifications for the qualifications they award. These PDF documents list all of the material students are expected to know in order to possess that competence, and serve as a checklist for teachers preparing students for exams. For foreign languages, that includes core vocabulary and structures, as well as cultural background information. Core vocab is frequently in glossary format, making it the stuff of dreams for systematic learners.

GCSE Goldmines

So where to find these little treasure troves of free learning? The first thing is to identify national exam boards that offer foreign language qualifications. I chose the GCSE as it’s the gold standard first stage school leaver certificate in England and Wales; change this as appropriate for whatever local qualification you are more familiar with. Google which boards run those qualifications, then mine their sites for subject pages, where you should find spec docs as downloadable PDFs. Check out AQA Spanish and Edexcel German for great examples.

GCSE French specification page from Pearson EdExcel

GCSE French spec page from Pearson Edexcel

When you drill down into these documents, you’ll find super-handy lists of topic-related words. But you can also find some really handy crib lists that aren’t simply lists of nouns under topic headings. What I find particularly useful are the round-ups of important function words, which you don’t often see in one place in a course book. Looking for a quick cheat sheet for connectives and sentence-builders in your target language? Bingo!

An excerpt from the AQA GCSE French spec.

An excerpt from the AQA GCSE French spec.

Once you have that precious vocab, you can tackle it with your tool of choice. I like to load mine into Anki, or – increasingly, of late – paste it into AI to play some word games with.

Roadmaps – to Plenty of Places!

Obviously, there is some limitation in terms of languages, with an obvious bias for mainstream school languages like French, German and Spanish. You simply don’t find many schools that are teaching Croatian, Swahili or Uzbek. But between AQA and Edexcel, I also counted Chinese, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Panjabi, Polish and Russian, so the choice is more impressive than you might fear.

Certainly, these spec docs are no comprehensive textbooks. For vocabulary, they can be a one-stop shop. But for grammar, you’re more likely to get a summary of features students should know, such as essential irregular verbs, or key tenses listed by name, but not fleshed out. That said, there is still huge value in that; see it as a kind of manifesto for what you, yourself, should be focusing on in the early stages of language learning. In this way, GCSE specs can supplement other learning materials as a kind of roadmap.

The Exam Spec Yardstick

As well as providing handy ‘how to’ guides for languages, there’s another benefit. It’s actually quite helpful to gauge your own competence against a national qualification. It gives you the confidence that you are performing in that language at a particular level. Many specs include links to wider levelling tools like CEFR (the A1-C2 scale) too, which is practically the currency of the polyglot community.

But specs can also provide the encouragement you need to seek accreditation yourself. If you have the knowledge and skills for GCSE French under your belt, why not sit GCSE French? There are plenty of further ed organisations that offer language GCSEs for adult learners – check your local colleges and universities to see what’s available.

It’s out there, waiting for you – a bunch of comprehensive, expertly curated resources to download for free. What gems have you found amongst the specs? Let us know in the comments!

A book in the Philips UV-C Disinfection Box.

Extras for the Book Cleaning Cupboard

Giving second-hand bargains a new lease of life is one of my favourite things about my language book obsession. For a start, it’s an accessible hobby. Like the books, most of the tools and techniques for book restoration are extremely cheap. Some, like UV disinfection boxes, are less so, but still no longer prohibitively expensive.

Community support is a big factor, too. There’s an almost inexhaustible pool of tips out there. Through scouring the gamut of book-lovers’ websites, Reddits, TikToks and more, I’ve added another few everyday essentials to the book care list.

Trigger warning – there will be a lot of talk about grime here! The upside?

It becomes clear how easy it is to deal with it.

Greaseproof Paper

Sometimes you’ll come across a page or two that needs a bit of extra treatment. As with glossy book covers and edges, you can target stains or blemishes with surgical spirit to gently clean and sanitise. But if you need to go a little harder on a page or two, slip a piece of greaseproof paper beneath it. That way, you won’t be too rough on its neighbours as well.

Art Gum

No, art gum isn’t glue, a I thought when I first happened upon it mentioned by a book fixer. It’s actually a very gentle kind of erasing rubber. It’s a popular choice amongst artists as, unlike the school pencil case alternatives, it doesn’t disintegrate with use, and so leaves no grainy residue. That makes it handy not only for rubbing pencil and pen marks from book pages, but also other bits and pieces that shouldn’t be there (food stains, the odd dead fly – seriously, it’s best not to think about what, just how to get rid and forget!).

Art gum barely any more expensive than a standard one either. Faber-Castell do a great malleable version which costs under a fiver.

Freezer Bags (and Freezer!)

OK, a freezer isn’t exactly cheap. That said, of course, it’s pretty likely that there’s already one at home. Freezing a book (in a protective freezer or ziplock bag, of course) may seem a strange course of action. But it’s an excellent way to dry and loosen any grime or residue that’s stuck to pages. Blitz a book with cold, and it’ll only take a blunt knife to dislodge any undesirable blobs. Again, best not to ponder… Just act, and those pages will be as new.

Please don’t let all this talk of mystery stains put you off, though. It’s very rare that you’ll have anything to worry about from the biggest and the best second-hand booksellers out there. It’s just nice to have strategies for the odd stubborn case.

After all, doesn’t every book deserve a second chance?

An old book about to cook in the Philips UV-C Disinfection Box.

The Philips UV-C Disinfection Box : An Unlikely Language Learning Ally?

It’s not often I rave about a purchase that isn’t a language book. But I think I might have fallen in love with my latest gadget acquisition, the Philips UV-C Disinfection Box.

Language learning and automated sanitisation don’t seem like natural bedfellows, I’ll admit. But bear with me – there is a connection, I promise.

I’ve been an avid collector of vintage language books for some time now. I particularly enjoy hunting down old Teach Yourself books from decades gone by. They’re both quaint and practical. I can enjoy all the anachronisms of their stilted dialogues and translation exercises at the same time as getting a lot from the no-nonsense grammatical approach.

But, in the words of my Nan, sometimes you just don’t know where they’ve been. And, for an OCD germaphobe, that can be a problem. Of course there are lots of tips and tricks for cleaning up and restoring old books, and I use them all. But there’s that wee niggling doubt for a sensitive soul like me.

Dial ‘D’ for Disinfection

I came across UV-C disinfection techniques during the Covid-19 pandemic, where they were touted in the press as one tool that libraries, amongst other places, were using to virus-proof their returns. Just seconds of a low-power ultraviolet blast apparently kills any sign of dangerous microbes.

Wow. The cleaning freak in me was piqued. This, I thought, was an OCD-er’s dream.

Sadly, at the time, they were prohibitively expensive. Perhaps, I thought cynically, the inflated price was a result of pandemic-driven demand. Or, perhaps less cynically, it was just the premium of new(ish) technology. But in any case, I bided my time and eventually forgot about them – until they recently popped into my line of sight again.

You see, I’d added one particular model – my inner hygiene-geek’s dream model – to the Amazon price tracker site, CamelCamelCamel.com. I’d requested an alert whenever the price dropped from £170-ish to – I thought – a very unlikely £60. And guess what? It only went and did just that.

The Philips UV-C Disinfection Box.

My pride and joy, the Philips UV-C Disinfection Box.

So now, I’m the proud owner of a large disinfection box. It works like a charm – you lock in your book or otherwise, press the button, and it’s blasted with a sanitising beam for a number of seconds. It destroys all bacteria and viruses in Philips’ lab tests, so they say, which gives this second-hand book buyer a huge peace of mind.

I guess this is a story about the joys of clean books, on the surface (in more ways than one). But perhaps more usefully, it’s a reminder to put your most wished-for items onto CamelCamelCamel.com!

A book in the Philips UV-C Disinfection Box.

Cooking a book in the Philips UV-C Disinfection Box.

Close-up of the cover of Routledge's Hindi : An Essential Grammar (2022)

Hindi : An Essential Grammar [Review]

Hindi has sat comfortably amongst Routledge’s Essential Grammars range for some time, offering students the concise, systematic grammatical treatment the whole series is known for. The title appeared in its first edition back in 2007, so a fresh, updated version was a very welcome addition to bookshelves at the end of 2022.

Anyone familiar with my own bookish exploits will know that the Routledge Essential and Comprehensive Grammar series are close to my language lover’s heart. They’re all excellently researched reference and study works, supported throughout with authentic, real-world language. Recent editions have benefitted from an even clearer layout and eye-friendly typesetting, and the Hindi title is no exception. They’re very easy on the reader, particularly in terms of line spacing and table layout.

The book takes the familiar parts-of-speech approach, chunking grammatical elements into particularly brief, easily manageable chapters. This makes for real indexical ease, obvious from the detailed, seven-page contents section. No wading through an amorphous Nouns chapter here! But it’s great for targeted study, too; you could easily tackle a whole section in an hour-long study session, either independently or with a teacher.

As well as the usual amendments and corrections, this second edition offers extended explanations on several aspects of Hindi. These include extra material on flexible word order, ergativity, and politeness distinctions. As with other updates, such as the second edition of the Greek Essential, it’s great to see Routledge’s commitment to keeping the whole series relevant.

Script Support

The book is a winner on another important front, too: alternative script usage. To be fair, if you’re serious about learning Hindi in the long-term, then you’ll probably have started with Devanagari well before picking up this grammar. You might even have studied Devanagari before your Hindi journey like some (ahem). Devanagari is no prerequisite to learning to speak Hindi, of course, and if you’re in it for the casual dabbling, you might not have the time or inclination.

With this grammar, it’s no sweat at all. You can dive into any section of the book and read examples in Devanagari or Latin transliteration. The transliteration is extremely straightforward, too, using capitals to represent retroflex consonants, and the tilde for nasalised vowels. And the transliteration takes nothing away from the book’s commitment to both lanes; this edition still concludes with a substantial section on contemporary script usage, including current trends and recent changes.

Transliteration throughout might sound like a no-brainer, but it’s really not a given with Hindi primers. I’ve been working with Teach Yourself Hindi Tutor recently, and although it’s a truly fantastic and valuable resource, it requires proficiency in Devanagari from step one. Similarly, many beginner’s textbooks provide Latin support only so far, before switching to script after the initial chapters. For some, native script is a choice that definitely comes later on.

All in all, my verdict won’t be a surprise, considering my understandable fanboying of the series: I think this one’s just swell! For Hindi scholars, Indo-Europeanists and dabblers alike, Hindi : An Essential Grammar is a solid title in the series, substantially improved in its new edition.

Filipino : An Essential Grammar, published by Routledge in October 2022.

Filipino : An Essential Grammar [Review]

Only the other day was I heralding the appearance of two brand new Routledge Essential Grammars – and just in time for Christmas, too. So what should land on my doormat this week but the very latest addition, Filipino : An Essential Grammar? There’s no such thing as coincidences, I hear you cry!

Any new language is a welcome addition to Routledge’s solid family of language learning texts, and with this one, it’s a double whammy; it pips the publisher’s own Colloquial series, which still lacks a Filipino / Tagalog title. For a language with upwards of 80+ million speakers worldwide, the book plugs a textbook gap with the solid, practical approach we’ve come to love from the Essential collection.

Filipino : A Concise But Comprehensive Essential

At just shy of 200 pages, the title, penned by Sheila Zamar, is one of the lighter volumes in the series (check out the brilliant Icelandic edition for a true doorstop of a book, for comparison). That said, it’s by no means light on content, divided into well-defined parts-of-speech chapters. Each of these is concise and snappy, but still chock-full of examples of language in use.

Filipino : An Essential Grammar, published by Routledge in October 2022.

As a self-confessed verb obsessive, it’s extremely satisfying to see four very chunky sections (nearly half the book) taken up with a systematic presentation of the verbal system. It’s what you’d expect, given the quite different (and fascinating) classes of Austronesian conjugation, but the exposition and explanation is handled with neat, logical progression. Handily, glosses are provided alongside many of the examples, so you can see exactly what is going on in a given sentence.

(Type)set for Success

If you’re a fan of the series you’ll have already noticed, but I should add a word or two about the excellent formatting of the whole reissued grammar series. From the clean, sans-serif fonts to the clutter-free setting of the tables, the new editions are all exceptionally clear and easy to read. The block-colour covers in blues, aquamarines, crimsons and bricks look both artsy and academically serious at the same time, although that leaves me with one mystery: what do the cover colours signify, if anything? My first thought was language groups or families, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Perhaps authors have the option to choose their own favourite as a wee thank you for their work. Answers on a postcard in the comments.

Filipino : An Essential Grammar is certainly worthy of its essential title in a not-so-crowded textbook field for the language. Heartily recommended for serious learners and casually interested polyglots alike!

 

The Buntùs Cainte book - a bit of language learning nostalgia!

Brewing Up Nostalgia : Buntús Cainte

My love of old language books is no secret. I’ve been harping on about my single-handed attempt at recreating the language section of my local Waterstones, circa 1993, for ages. So it’s no surprise that I snapped up another old course when I spotted it in a bookshop this weekend.

The only thing is, it’s brand new.

Well, new is subjective. It’s actually a reprint of a decades-old Irish Language course, Buntús Cainte (Foundations of the Language). It’s been a well-selling title for years, not least for the language; people seem to love it for the nostalgia of the original programme as much as the content.

The title was originally a 1960s TV show on Irish state carrier RTÉ. Like other national broadcaster courses such as the Gaelic offerings from the BBC, Can Seo and Speaking Our Language, the show was supported by printed materials that you could pick up at your local bookshop. All of them had a warm, friendly approach to “language learning in your living room”, which is probably why they still stir up such nostalgia.

The book itself is still a great resource for learning basic Irish. It’s straightforward chalk ‘n’ talk if you like that kind of thing, with vocabulary and phrase lists and brief grammar examples. It comes with two CDs of audio materials – pretty indispensable if you’re new to Irish orthography. And at less than 10€, it’s all a bit of a bargain.

Fancy a Brew?

But the loveliest thing about it is that nostalgia it brews. The cover font, still in its groovy 1960s typeface and colour scheme, is a joy, as are the of-their-time stick cartoon illustrations throughout.

Buntús Cainte

It’s a reminder that good language learning materials aren’t a sum of their content alone. They’re about the feelings they inspire, the memories they connect you back to, the vibe you get from them. Clicking with a course is a holistic process. It’s no wonder that it’s still one of the best-selling Irish books.

In a similar vein, there was a heart-warming documentary on the making of Speaking Our Language recently, which has all the same feels. Worth checking out if you want to know how these institutions of educational TV work their way into our hearts.

In any case, it’s great to find an old gem of language learning. Even greater that it’s a fresh, new print that I don’t have to clean upI don’t have to clean up, for a change!

Two different copies of Teach Yourself Swedish, freshly arrived from eBay!

Luck of the eBay Draw

The stars aligned for me this week. Not one, but two 1990s copies of Teach Yourself Swedish arrived in my postbox. Used, super cheap, but both so pristine you’d think they’d never been removed from their original bookshop shelves. Winning the eBay language learning lottery!

Why two copies of Teach Yourself Swedish, you ask? Isn’t that just being greedy?

Well first, is there really such a thing as greed when it comes to books? Our love knows no bounds. (Note: it probably is possible to have too many books, but I’m not there yet.)

Secondly, they’re actually different books.

A Long Time Ago in a Language Learning Galaxy Far Away…

You see, Teach Yourself has been going for donkey’s years, and by the 80s and 90s, the company had accrued a whole back catalogue of vintage language learning titles. As I’ve said many a time before, older language learning material shouldn’t be written off – it’s solid, albeit usually more grammar-based learning, and often very inexpensive.

But clearly, things needed a refresh. So Teach Yourself set about recommissioning a lot of those old tomes with completely updated replacements. It started in the late 80s, with updated French, German, Italian and Spanish titles. At first, these appeared in the 80s blue style covers.

But, come the 90s, Teach Yourself went arty in glorious technicolour. The book covers positively exploded in shapes and colours. Many are things of beauty (at least to my geeky eye), and it’s one of the reasons I love collecting them.

The Double Life of TY Books

However, those books had a double life during the transition. Older courses saw reissues, but with the bright, shiny covers. One last hoorah before they were retired.

But then, their successors (or usurpers?) came along, in their shiny, new covers – sometimes the same ones as the old course! Teach Yourself Gaelic, for example, recycles the same wrap even as it transitions from the old Roderick MacKinnon course to the updated Boyd Robertson edition. You can only tell the newer edition from a big yellow New! box in the corner. (No, that text was never going to age well.)

This clearly isn’t the case with Teach Yourself Swedish. Both the R.J.McClean and Vera Croghan books have their own wonderful designs. But for all intents and purposes, they were both still new language books in the 90s.

It’s just one has a much older soul. And I love it all the more for it.

A pristine copy of Teach Yourself Swedish by R.J.McClean (1992)

A pristine copy of Teach Yourself Swedish by R.J.McClean (1992)

The eBay Bookseller Lottery

With the wonderful quality of these two titles from that crossover period of the early 90s, I clearly lucked out on the eBay wheel of fortune. Items from the eBay book giants are generally in great condition; some just require a bit more TLC than this pair.

Of course, you can’t tell the condition of books from eBay supersellers until they arrive. That’s part of the fun, of course. But it does lead to the occasional sigh of deflation, as one described as very good lands on your doormat in a rather more dishevelled state. That doesn’t happen too often, thankfully.

And it a couple of quid a pop, it’s a fun gamble!