Tag: language learning

The Eurovision 2023 trophy. Copyright Corinne Cumming / EBU.

Instead I Wrote In Finnish : How did non-English fare at Eurovision 2023?

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As the dust settles on another Eurovision Language (ahem) Song Contest, how did non-English entries actually perform on the night? There’s no better time than Eurovision Boxing Day to take stock (not least to try and distract ourselves from the post-contest blues).

The initial signs were good. The 2023 contest had already beaten 2022 in terms of language diversity, with fourteen languages on offer amongst the usual sea of English. And the semifinals didn’t deprive us of too much, either. All the non-English entries from the Tuesday show made it through, with only Romania falling at the first hurdle on Thursday. That was no issue for the Romanian language in any case, which had made it through on the back of the Moldovan entry.

So how did all that lovely non-English fare in the final?

A High Bar, Évidement

The bar was high. Of the twelve languages that made it alongside English in the 2022 final, seven ended up in the top ten – and four of those in the top five. Notably, the winner – Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra – won the whole contest with a song in Ukrainian.

This year’s grand final saw five languages other than English land a prestige top ten spot. That sounds comparably decent, although one country, Czechia, added two extra languages thanks to its polyglot lyrics, and the winner, Tattoo by Loreen, was in English. Incidentally, Swedish has been absent from contest entries since 2012, when Finland sang in svenska – and Loreen won for the first time, in English.

It’s not all gloom for non-English songs, though. Finland, sending Finnish for the first time since 2015, achieved with its runner-up spot the highest placing in Eurovision history for the language (but not the country, which won in English in 2007). And of course, there is that remarkable multilingual entry from Czechia to celebrate.

Why sing in one language when you can sing in four?

English = Eurovision Success?

It’s worth remembering, though, that we needn’t consider English lyrics to be a path to wider success. Five out of the ten most recent winning Eurovision songs have been either completely, or partially, in other languages. That compares to just one non-English song from the decade before that, so we live in an age where language diversity is no barrier to victory.

Bearing that in mind, there’s perhaps a lesson here for some struggling countries. 2023 German representations Lord of the Lost took their last place for Blood and Glitter with great grace, passing on the baton to future German representatives to “break the curse”. But the last time Germany sent German was in 2007, with a string of notably anglophone songs behind its four-contest run of rock-bottom placings.

Maybe it’s time to give Deutsch a chance again?

The Eurovision 2023 trophy. Copyright Corinne Cumming / EBU.

The Eurovision Language Diversity Contest, 2023 Edition

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Guess what? It’s only Eurovision Song Contest time again. And with year’s final coming from lovely Liverpool this 13th May, it feels closer than ever for Polyglossic. What better time for our annual Eurovision language diversity health-check?

It’s been a long time since we were guaranteed a full sweep of national languages at the contest. That’s not to say linguists are out of luck in recent times, though. The 2022 edition still managed to serve up a not-bad-at-all eleven languages other than English.

So how does 2023 measure up?

Voici les votes du jury Polyglossic

This year, viewers will hear lyrics in the following languages across all three shows:

  • Albanian
  • Armenian
  • Bulgarian (in Czechia’s entry)
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Finnish
  • French
  • Italian
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian (twice over – in Moldova and Romania’s entries)
  • Serbian
  • Slovene
  • Spanish
  • Ukrainian (in Czechia’s entry as well as part of Ukraine’s)

2023 has it – that’s fourteen non-English languages represented on the banks of the Mersey.

Eurovision Thanks Go To…

As ever, it’s hats off to France, Italy, Portugal and Spain for being stalwarts of non-English entries. Merci, grazie, obrigado, gracias. But it’s the Balkans which have made an especially strong comeback this year, positively treating polyglot fans with home tongues. Then, there’s Czechia, who deserve an extra special mention. Vesna clock up two languages other than Czech, alongside English. Výborně!

Particularly exciting is the return of Finnish, given that Finland is one of this year’s big favourites to win (currently playing catch-up in the betting odds with Sweden’s returner Loreen). Finland has, of course, won the contest before; monster metalheads Lordi broke a 45-year wait for a win in 2006. But that was in English; if Suomi’s Käärijä wins this year, it will be the country’s first win in the home language.

Hyvä Suomi!

Which languages are you pleased to hear this year, and which do you miss? Let us know in the comments! But above all – enjoy this year’s show!

Worn and faded paper - language atrophy can leave you feeling your skills have faded.

Beating Language Atrophy (In The Heat of the Moment!)

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I spent a great weekend of volunteering at a fun, lively international sports event. As you’d expect, there were language practice opportunities galore. I hobnobbed in German. I gabbed away in French. And – gulp – I stammered away in depressingly cumbersome Spanish. Without even noticing, I’d let my Spanish atrophy.

My first reaction was personal frustration. Spanish was one of the first foreign languages I learned properly. I sailed through it in school, college, and then university. Half of my degree was in the language, and I’d been fairly successful at resurrecting it for an event not too long back. The Spanish I was producing off-the-cuff was just-about functional, old-fashioned, bookish, laboured and uncolloquial. How could it feel so clumsy in my mouth? 

The thing is, it’s the same with any skill. The ability remains, but without regular use, the automaticity of it – the muscle memory, in a sense – will dull. Perhaps the level of skill-drop isn’t as dramatic as use it or lose it, but there’s a grain of truth in there. Even so, that’s no consolation when you’re in the line of fire.

So how do you beat language atrophy in a just-in-time scenario?

Be Kind To Yourself

The crucial first step is simple: silence the self-critic. It’s too easy to reproach yourself in the moment, but it’s also completely fruitless. Our lives are complicated. There are a million and one reasons you might have let a language slide a little. Don’t beat yourself up.

The truth is that we perform even worse when we let that inner voice knock our confidence. You challenge yourself to do better immediately, and you flounder when that just compounds the issue. Stop the vicious circle in its tracks and give yourself a break. Languages can be challenging, and you’re brilliant for having mastered them in the first place!

Don’t Be A Perfectionist

There’s a wonderful saying in Gaelic that speaks so eloquently to this situation. S’ fheàrr Gáidhlig bhriste na Gàidhlig sa chiste. It means “broken Gaelic is better than Gaelic in the box”, and it appeals to the sabotaging perfectionist in us.

When pressurising myself in the heat of the moment, everything annoyed me. I was cursing my use of a wrong verb ending, tripping up on a trilled r, using a wrong auxiliary. That is, despite all the time producing perfectly sensible, comprehensible sentences. In reality, nobody cared or gave marks, and everybody was simply happy to hear a volunteer trying to communicate in their language.

Don’t try to be perfect – you’re not a native speaker, and nobody expects you to be.

Take it back a step

When you’ve gathered your thoughts, it’s time for a mini plan-of-action. The order of the day is simplicity – revising some snappy, colloquial foothold phrases to give you some instant success in your current surroundings. Text engines like Reverso Context are a great place to get quick anwers.

My role included meeting and greeting arrivals, so obvious choices were “¡disfruta!” (enjoy!) and “¡divièrtete!” (have fun!). It was a competition, so add to that “¡buena suerte!” (good luck) and “¡mucho éxito!” (lots of success!) and you have the start of a script. They’re super simple interjections, but they gave enough of a social framework to scaffold short interactions, keep things flowing, and slowly build back confidence.

It certainly beats trying to assemble the phrase ‘I hope you and your teammates all have a really great time at the tournament’ in your head on the spot!

Use other speakers

While you’re finding your feet again, friendly speakers – ideally those non-delegates where the stakes are lower – are golden. And when you locate them, there’s no better way to practise speaking a language than speaking about it. Chat about how long it’s been since you’ve used the language, when you learnt it and so on. It’s instantly relatable, motivating to talk about, and so will get your gears going again quickly.

I volunteered alongside a couple of very fluent non-native speakers for some of my stint. Amongst other things, we found ourselves chatting in Spanish about language atrophy itself. It was low-pressure, good fun, and a godsend for between-task, forgiving, live language practice!

Language Atrophy Kryptonite

So, to reassure anyone fearful of landing in the same boat, you can turn it around. I managed to get my knocked confidence back on track soon enough to be a useful volunteer again (at least to our Spanish visitors).

And perhaps that’s the biggest lesson here – that language competence is never just about the vocab, the grammar, or the pronunciation. It’s about nurturing your confidence in order to give yourself a chance to be the best you can be.

¡Buena suerte!

Nigheanan Mòra by Catrìona Lexy Chaimbeul (2014). Reading target language texts is an excellent way to improve foreign language skills.

Working with Target Language Texts

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Eager to push my Gaelic out of the language course box and into the wild, I’ve been working with a number of short texts for intermediate learners lately. Luckily, quite a few readers have appeared in the recent years, including a bunch of fun titles that go beyond the usual ‘Celtic myths retold’ route (not taking anything away from the great series of beginners’ books from Jason Bond).

A recent favourite of mine, Nigheanan Mòra (Big Girls, 2014), was penned by one of the creatives behind recent BBC Alba drama hit An Clò Mòr, Catrìona Lexy Chaimbeul. On the surface, it’s in firm rom com territory, at turns silly, funny and melodramatic. But it’s grown-up enough to feel like you’re reading a real book, and not just an oversimplified, fleshless yarn that trades plot for easy reading. It’s also chock full of colloquial, conversational Gaelic dialogue, which makes for a great living language learning model.

That said, getting the most from a reader takes a bit more organisation than simply starting at page one and ploughing through. Better to have a strategy to maximise both your enjoyment and your learning.

Working With Texts : One Approach

Of course, there’s no single ‘correct’ way to work through target language texts. Through trial and error, I’ve found a way that works for me, which I’ll outline here. It works best with short-ish texts, since it involves two passes in quick-ish succession, but you could also use it with short sections of longer texts.

That’s because manageable chunk size is the key to this method. Often, you won’t need to worry about that with texts specifically for learners. Many books that support learners, like Nigheanan Mòra, already have nice short chapters of 5-10 pages. I find that’s the ideal length to read and digest texts without tiring (because, let’s face it, reading in a foreign language is more taxing). If chapters are much longer, just flick ahead a little way to see if there’s a natural stop somewhere, and make that your goal.

Pass One : the Chill read

After that, it’s time to start reading. The first pass is the no-chill literary gambol. Read for gist and plot, and don’t fret a jot about the odd unknown word. The focus here is on simply understanding and enjoying the story, first and foremost. I like to go full non-study mode at this stage. I’ll pick a cosy reading spot, grab a drink and just try to immerse myself in the story. No dictionaries, no pencils, no interruptions.

After that first reading – maybe 20 minutes or so – I’ll stop, take a breath, and reflect on the twists and turns of the plot. It’s important to take a passive break to cogitate calmly like this, given that our brains work more efficiently with pacing (a trait the Pomodoro technique plays into).

Pass Two : The Close Read

After this brief pause, I’ll then flick back casually through the pages I’ve just read. In particular, I’ll revisit those passages I felt were tough, or noticed myself slow down in during the first pass. For each one, I’ll re-read carefully, this time trying to translate in my head, paying more attention to the grammatical structures. I’ll also spend some time on words I didn’t get the first time round, looking for contextual clues to help guess the meaning (and not reaching straight for the dictionary).

This is the stage where I really prefer old-school paper books to Kindle ones. I’ll have a pencil by me, underlining any turns of phrase that sound really idiomatic or conversationally useful. With a pop-story like Nigheanan Mòra, there’ll be loads of those, thanks to all the snappy dialogue.  They’re the snippets where I’ve realised aha! So that’s how you say X in Gaelic.

Finally, after all that, I’ll spend some time cross-referencing those new structures in grammars and online materials like the LearnGaelic.scot dictionary and Wiktionary. Once I’m sure I’ve understood them, I’ll add the phrases to my Anki deck. Adding phrases is so much more effective that lifting just individual words from texts. We speak in phrases, not lone words, so by the end of this stage I have some truly useful material to drill. This phrase-lifting approach thoroughly mines a text for connectives and sentence frames – the bread and butter of fluency.

Find What Works For You

So there you have it – one way to work with authentic texts. It’s not rocket science or particularly groundbreaking, but it works for me. And it helps, in terms of discipline, to know that I have these regular steps to follow, to give my target language reading some kind of structure.

What I also find invaluable about it, in terms of motivation, is building in a reading for pleasure stage, which includes choosing material I find fun, as well as the time to enjoy it without pressure. Even if that is silly old rom coms.

After all, learning and practising languages shouldn’t just be work, work, work.

There are myriad ways to approach target language texts. What works for you? Let us know in the comments!

Vitamin pills. Could nootropic supplements support language learning? Image from freeimages.com

New Language, Nootropic?

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Language learning advice always tends to focus on the administratively practical aspect: the materials, the time management, the habit forming. Less often do the polyglot pundits explore the physiological aspect of learning, or body-brain support. Nootropic or ‘smart’ supplements aim to fill that gap, and have become an increasingly present fixture in the learning/hacking circuit in the last couple of years.

At their simplest, nootropics are supplements that contain vitamins, minerals and other compounds believed to enhance brain function. Some of these substances are implicated in wider bodily health, such as Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid) and Iodine. Others are more specific, often herbal substances, like Lion’s Mane Extract and Ginkgo Biloba. It seems that every five minutes there’s a new buzz around a potential cognitive enhancer, although a few core specifics, like the latter two, are hardy regulars in ingredients lists.

Choosing a Nootropic Supplement

Trials on the efficacy of each of these compounds vary wildly in their findings, so it’s important to do your own research before you convince yourself that a particular supplement is worth plumping for. Quite a sober and systematic treatment of them is available here, for example. For obvious reasons, it’s always better to seek out neutral information sources like this, rather than accept corporate marketing claims uncritically.

That said, with a little trial and error, you’ll soon find your favourites. I’m sold, for instance, on the usefulness of Gingko Biloba, which has a long heritage and a raft of research suggesting its value in cognitive support. As such, it’s always one ingredient I’ll check for first in a good nootropic.

Brand visibility is also an important checkbox for me, giving me the peace of mind of an established company’s commitment to supplement safety. PhD Nutrition’s offering fits the bill in that respect; it’s one I’ve been trying myself of late, and it’s pretty solid. As with many capsules containing herbal extracts, the dose is hefty, spanning a whopping three capsules daily. If you prefer something easier to swallow, I’ve also found these orange-flavoured cognition gummies a very decent alternative.

Nutritional Support, Not Replacement

Of course, it’s also important not to forget that good body-brain support starts with basic nutrition. Many nootropic supplements contain a number of essential nutrients you should be getting first and foremost from a healthy diet. Nootropics aren’t there to fix fundamental dietary issues, so make sure the basics are in place before giving them a go.

And it goes without saying: always check with a qualified health professional if you’re unsure a supplement is completely right for you.

As for their effect on my personal learning? Well, as with all these things, there’s no control version of me, so it’s hard to say for sure. But if it’s safe, and if the research is generally positive, then the old adage is always true:

It can’t hurt to try.

Social Training Time

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Just like my fancy Philips UV-C box, sometimes, the biggest leg-ups to our language learning come from unlikely sources. So it is with community volunteering as a kind of social training, which, as a shy linguist, is something I try to throw myself into – sometimes against my kicking-and-screaming inner child – at every available opportunity.

This week, I had another opportunity for just that. In April, Brum is hosting the Union Cup, an exciting, international and inclusive sporting event that has been a couple of years in the waiting after Covid disruption. After last year’s Commonwealth adventures, it was a no-brainer to volunteer. A chance to showcase the city, support communities and get some valuable exposure therapy when it comes to interacting with lots of people. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that there’ll be speakers of lots of other languages around too.

It’s all an antidote to a very specific language learning problem I’ve experienced. It’s that reluctance to step forward and speak in a situation where I can use my languages. I’ve felt it at home and in my target language countries. It’s a complex beast, with several components: fear of making mistakes, looking silly, feeling a nuisance or a bother, and such like. Most of us feel these things from time to time, but there’s nothing like a foreign language to up those stakes!

Targeted Therapy

But the social training that volunteering offers is almost perfectly suited to target all this. For one thing, in many roles, you’re almost constantly dealing with people face-to-face. And you never know what to expect. Sometimes you’ll get the whole spectrum of moods – good and bad – in the course of a morning. Someone might ask a question you have no clue about. Something might happen that requires you to think on your feet.

In short, it’s a social training that focuses on coping with the unpredictable. And if there’s anything that typifies using language in the wild, it’s unpredictability. What else, for something as varying as its human hosts?

So, into the fray we step for our social training. And even for shrinking violets like me, people work can get addictive. I now count amongst my friends serial volunteers who go for everything that comes along. Of course, it doesn’t have to be volunteering. I have a polyglot friend who is getting lots of people exposure from bar work, which he unexpectedly loves, and is thriving on.

On that note, fellow shy polyglots – and even those not-so-shy ones who want to keep their oar in – volunteer! It’ll be so good for you – and your community, too.

ChatGPT writing a short story in German.

Short Stories… in ChatGPT

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It’s no secret – reading fiction is a favourite strategy of polyglot learners. That’s more than simply reading Harry Potter novels in translation. There’s a whole market sector that revolves around non-native short stories, and I’m not alone in enjoying the excellent Short Stories In… or Penguin Parallel Texts series to practise my languages.

But what if we could source those stories on demand… and for free?

Unless you’ve been hiding for the past three months, you’ll know where I’m going with this. ChatGPT, the natural language processor, has already made ripples in the fan fiction arena. And, it turns out, it has a knack for performing the same feat multilingually, and tailored to your exact needs.

The power of it becomes apparent when you ask it to write you a story. Because you can tailor that story precisely to your own interests. Personal interest, of course, is a holy grail with language learning motivation. And ChatGPT is like your own private author, ready to fit original content to exactly what you like.

I started where I started – literally, with languages – and requested a German short story about Eurovision. What else? The results were pretty impressive.

ChatGPT writing a short story in German.

ChatGPT writing a short story in German.

The only thing is, it’s a bit wordy for my (hypothetical) class of German students. So I ask ChatGPT to tailor it to a specific level:

ChatGPT writing a short story in German.

Tailoring the story to a specific level.

Brilliant – we’re getting something we can turn into a learning resource now. But I’d love my students to focus on more descriptive adjectives to improve their writing. Can we turn this into a better model?

ChatGPT writing a short story in German.

Tweaking the output with specific criteria.

Again, ChatGPT turns up the goods! The German is sound, and the story is a fun little read. But what about making this a polyglot resource, parallel resource, so anyone learning more than one language can keep their learning in sync? No problem:

ChatGPT writing a short story in French.

Translation into French.

Impressive. It has no issue with any of what you’d call the mainstream languages. I tried it in all of the languages I have some proficiency in, and it even churns out decent Greek and Polish. I’m not yet fluent enough in Scottish Gaelic to check this properly, but it seemed the only one that was a bit iffy, despite giving it a good go:

ChatGPT writing a short story in German.

A translation into Scottish Gaelic.

Finally, let’s throw in a short summary version we can use as revision materials, or an item description:

ChatGPT writing a short story in French.

A short summary of the story in French.

Obviously, this all comes with the caveat that it needs careful checking before use as an accurate resource. But the initial performance is pretty spectacular, to be honest. As the model is tweaked and improved, it’s not hard to imagine this becoming a cornerstone of personal resource creation for learners of languages, as well as everything else.

The movement of atoms. The morpheme could be called the atom of language. Image from freeimages.com.

Houston, We Have A Morpheme Problem

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It was in Greek class that I realised it. I have a morpheme problem.

Yes, those pesky little indivisible chunks of languagey-ness are causing me grief. The exact nature of that grief is a regular mixing up of pronouns and possessives with s- (you) and t- (him/his/her), to the amusement of my teacher.

Πού είναι ο μπαμπάς του… ΣΟΥ; Pou íne o babás tou… SOU?
Where is his… YOUR dad?

The source? Probably the romance languages I’ve learned, where the correspondence is reversed. French has ton (your) and son (his/her), for example, while Spanish has tu and su. The romance you/he/she attachment to those tiny little chunks has reasserted itself temporarily (I hope) to wreak happy havoc.

Yes, interference is real, and it’s not just about whole words – it’s a morpheme thing, too.

Morpheme Madness

In reality, it’s nothing to worry about. It’s a natural by-product of a brain built for pattern-spotting, and studies of bilingual infants show that we’re well-equipped to remedy it in the natural course. I can talk about it now because I realised I was doing it, and self-corrected along the way.

But what else can I do about in the immediate term?

Much of it is to do with voice, at least for me. Cultivating distinct voices for each language you learn is a great way to compartmentalise and separate. But unless you’re a gifted impressionist, your repertoire might be limited, and you might have to double up. I realised my Greek voice was suspiciously like my Spanish one., all faux-masterful and brooding. No doubt a bit of clowning around and trying new accents on might help there.

But it’s an ideal case for mass-sentence training too, which I’d become lax with of late. Glossika has a ton of sentences including those little σου and του, and an extra five or ten minutes of training a day will – I hope – re-cement the little imps into my Hellenic pathways.

Have you noticed interference between your languages at the morpheme level? What are your strategies for re-enforcing separation? Let us know in the comments!

Anki Enhanced Cloze

“Cloze” to Perfect : Extending Anki’s Gapfill Activities

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Ever had that realisation that there was a better way to do what you doing all along, one hiding under your nose the whole time? Well, that was my week of epiphany with Anki.

Anki has included cloze functionality pretty much from the get-go. If you’ve not come across cloze before, it’s basically fill-in-the-missing-word. Your card pops up, and instead of providing the whole answer, you just recall the missing section.

Cloze is a great tool in your learning box to ward against the isolation issue with vocab. Learning items in context is just as (if not more) important than learning individual items. If you drill ich habe einen Hund (I have a dog) in German, you’ll not only pick up Hund, but a handy sentence frame and grammatical information to boot. Vocab plus structure is always a winning combo (and why mass sentence drilling is so powerful).

Native Cloze in Anki

Anki’s native cloze capabilities are simple enough to use. To make a cloze card, you simply type in your sentence with the gapped words surrounded by braces, along with a special tag to signify the gap:

Ich habe einen {c1::Hund}.

In the toolbar, there’s even a button to do this for you – just highlight your word to gap, and click […].

There are even some extra tricks in there, right out of the box. For instance, you can add a hint that appears in the blank before you guess:

Ich habe einen {c1::Hund::noun}.

You can add several gaps, or sets of gaps. For instance, if you change a couple of them to c2 instead of c1, they’ll be treated as separate question sets:

Ich {c1::habe} einen {c1::Hund} und er {c2::ist} sehr {c2::lustig}!

When you come to test them, the c1 and c2 words will appear on separate cards. Really handy to drill more complex material.

As great as it is, though, it’s not perfect. For one thing, Anki hides and shows all your grouped gaps at once. Not great if you have two or three gaps on one card, and want to test your recall of them in their own right, rather than in one fell swoop.

Enhanced Cloze

Thankfully, the Anki Open Source community comes to the rescue. Anki Enhanced Cloze retains all the native functionality that Anki already did so well. But it also allows for individual hide/show within a set, adds a number of useful extra fields, a main/pseudo cloze distinction and some much nicer formatting.

A screenshot of a learning flashcard made with Anki Enhanced Cloze

Anki Enhanced Cloze

The resulting card is so much more flexible for self-testing, and looks much nicer, too. And the best thing? Card creation follows exactly the same method as Anki’s native cloze, along with the extra little hint trick. It’s a very quick way to make your cloze cards a lot more effective.

Needless to say, I’ll be spending some time this week converting my older cloze cards to the newer format. It’s one of those cases where a better way of doing things was hiding under my nose the whole time – the add-on has been around since 2021. Ah well – better late than never!

False equivalencies - the equation 1+1=3. Image from freeimages.com.

Equivocal Equivalencies : Avoiding the X=Y Trap in Language Learning

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When starting out with language learning, it’s tempting to assume a one-on-one correspondence between your native and target language for everything you come across. It seems like a simple game of equivalencies: X equals Y. But you quickly learn that it’s not always as simple as that. Different languages carve the world up in subtly different ways.

It’s most obviously the case with content words. For instance, ‘sad’ in English covers both the person feeling the emotion, and the situation causing it. In Greek, it’s two words: λυπημένος (lipiménos, the former, with a Greek passive adjective ending) and λυπηρός (lipirós, the latter). Now that would have scuppered Elton John’s sad sad situation.

But function words differ, too. Grammatical categories that have lexically crumbled into each other in English remain resolutely separate in other languages. Take the word where. In English, you can use this as an interrogative:

Where is the bank?

And you can use it as a relative:

I know where you are.

Same word, two completely different functions. It leads English monolinguals to assume that they’re equivalent, identical. For sure, their function is related – both referencing place – but they’re performing different jobs, respectively standing in for missing information and joining two clauses.

False Equivalencies

Something that took me a little time to get my head around was the same situation in Scottish Gaelic. The interrogative and the relative are different words here, càit(e) and far:

Càit a bheil e? (Where is he?)
Tha fios agam far a bheil e. (I know where he is.)

Norwegian behaves in a similar way, although with a further complication. Generally, hvor is the interrogateive, and der the relative:

Hvor er du? (Where are you?)
Jeg vil være der du er. (I want to be where you are.)

But when a question is implicit, the relative is just hvor, as in English:

Jeg vil vite hvor du kommer fra. (I want to know where you come from.)

Incidentally, it’s the same situation with Norwegian then, which is variously når or da, according to the rule above.

Interesting tidbits of language, for a geek like me / us. But they serve as a reminder to delve a little deeper into usage using a resource like Wiktionary when you learn a word that seems to correspond neatly to one in your native language(s).

It may be less than half the story!