Tag: languages

An issue of "Our Gaelic Page" in The Highland News, 1897.

Learning Gaelic in 1900 : Highland News’ “Our Gaelic Page”

Over a century before the BBC’s Speaking Gaelic team were building a community of modern learners, the Highland News was doing the same with its regular feature Our Gaelic Page.

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a chance language learning find in the BNA – the regular Gaoluinn Irish language lessons in The Irish Independent. I’ve spent some time this week on the trail for similar resources for Gaelic in vintage newspapers. Did anything like Gaoluinn exist in Scotland?

Our Gaelic Page

Well, around the turn of the 19th Century, it happens that The Highland News was publishing this regular page packed with language learning content. Although Our Gaelic Page didn’t consist of lessons in the sense that Gaoluinn did, it featured poetry, prose, song, a learner’s Q&A section, and even recent exam paper questions.

Its aims are clearly different from those of Gaoluinn – this a page for those with Gaelic, who want to maintain or improve it. But it offered a wealth of material for that end; in some ways, the content reminds me a little of the NRK podcast Språkteigen – discussion of language simply for the love of learning it.

Clàrsach nan Gaidheal

Its regular song section, Clàrsach nan Gaidheal – the Gaels’ Harp – is a great find for anyone interested in traditional music. Editions ran into the hundreds, each one offering background notes, lyrics in Gaelic and English, and even the music in the form of what I think are chords. Annotation like m, n and r aren’t familiar to me, though, so if anyone has an idea about what they refer to, I’d love to hear from you!

An edition of the Gaelic song series, Clàrsach nan Gaidheal from The Highland News, 1898.

An edition of the Gaelic song series, Clàrsach nan Gaidheal from The Highland News, 1898.

Exam Reports

One of the more academic inclusions consists of exam reports from various places – sometimes Glasgow, sometimes as far as London. As well as the top performers’ names, we get, unusually, a rundown of all the exam questions, too. Newspapers as a repository of past papers is a brand new genre for me (and one I quite like, I must admit!).

That said, the exams take quite a different tack from the more communicative approach of today. This is Gaelic being taught much as Latin and Ancient Greek were – declensions and conjugations by rote. As much as I love that traditional take, perhaps treating the language as a written classic wasn’t the best strategy for reviving it in conversation.

Gaelic examination reports from The Highland News, 1902.

Gaelic examination reports from The Highland News, 1902.

Our Gaelic Page seems to have run from 1897 to 1902 – at least that’s what turns up in the BNA scans. But it’s certainly not the only focus for learners a century ago. Further searches turn up plenty of other evidence for an active, enthusiastic community at the time. Amongst the tidbits are reports from language societies, notices seeking teachers for adult classes, and ads for new reference books. Nothing new there – in fact, it’s heartening to draw a continuous line between learners then and now.

In any case, it’s a lovely glimpse into life as a language learning a hundred years back, as well as a great reading resource for this modern-day learner. I’ll doubtless be dipping into more of Our Gaelic Page over the coming months.

Vintage TV set for franchise hopping! Image by FreeImages.com

Target Language TV for Titters : Amazon’s Last One Laughing

I’ve long been a fan of highly exportable TV show franchises as ‘authentic target language with stabilisers’ media for learners. The language is rich and colloquial, but the format is familiar enough to be more accessible to L2 speakers than other TV genres.

Well, I’ve recent discovered another one that is available in a wonderfully broad array of languages. It’s Amazon Prime’s Last One Laughing, the show where comedians vie to keep straight faces in an onslaught of silliness, and be the very last to crack up.

It’s a simple concept, and for sure, it’s simple, cheap telly. That’s probably why Amazon found it so easy to roll it out to so many different language settings. All you need is a studio and a bunch of comedians willing to act daft. The result? Last One Laughing has local versions in languages from mainstream French and Spanish to more niche learner langs like Dutch and Norwegian.

Good TV Fit for Learners

In terms of the language, the show is a curiously good fit for L2 learners. The improvised dialogue can be slow and deliberate, as the contestants try to out-pun each other. It can often have a touch of the bizarre and clownish about it, too, which is always good to keep learners on their context toes (did she really just say her brother was a fish?).

(Pop-)Culturally, too, it’s a winner. If you didn’t know much about the comedy scene in your target language countries before, then you certainly will after a few episodes. The guests are fresh, current TV faces that give a good sample of who’s popular right now where your language is spoken.

If you’re looking for some target language listening fun, then Last One Laughing is both great learning material and just good TV. Well worth a punt if you have Prime.

An Irish lesson printed in the Irish Independent, 1924 (British Newspaper Archive)

Irish Lessons from 1924

As part of my PhD research, I spend countless hours trawling the British Newspaper Archive for forgotten dialect writing. Occasionally, the net catches more than I was expecting.

So it was this week, when I was searching for some Black Country collocation or other. Because they’re often short – like doh yer (don’t you) – and because of OCR errors in the transcriptions, the chance for false positives can be really high.

But this false positive was a bit more interesting than many. The search had mistakenly picked out some Irish text in a 1924 edition of the Irish Independent. It turned out to be part of a regular “Teach Yourself” style column, Gaoluinn. That’s an alternative spelling of Gaolainn – the Munster word for Gaeilge, the Irish language, which suggests that it’s Munster dialect that is the basis for the lessons.

Now, newspapers and language learning lessons are nothing new – there was a giveaway in the early noughties (I can’t remember the paper) where you got a special edition Teach Yourself book with every copy (I still have that mini Teach Yourself Basic Italian somewhere!). But Gaoluinn looked to be part of a run of language lessons that built up readers’ knowledge across editions.

Gaoluinn – Newspaper Irish Lessons

An Irish lesson printed in the Irish Independent, 1924 (British Newspaper Archive)

An Irish lesson printed in the Irish Independent, 1924 (British Newspaper Archive)

It’s typical of the language learning of its time, taking a systematic grammar-based approach (you might remember this from my raving over Teach Yourself Polish 1948!). The particular week that popped up here explains plural formation in Irish, alongside a bunch of illustrative phrases with just a hint of the aphorism and sermon about them.

A lovely thing about the lessons is its attempt at ‘folk’ phonetic spelling alongside the Irish. You can imagine readers giving it a go – readers whose families had maybe lost the language a couple of generations ago, and wanted to reconnect with Irish.

There’s More Out There

There’s clearly loads more Gaoluinn to explore in the archive, but I haven’t investigated further yet. Of course, I have more pressing things to be getting on with on the BNA, as fun as false positives are!

But I’m intrigued by the find nonetheless. A quick peek shows that it ran from at least 1922 to 1925, and later on, often taught via the target language (how modern – the way I learnt to teach!). I have so many questions, though… Was it serialised from an existing course book, or was it turned into a course book later? Was it popular or well received?

It’s definitely something I’ll circle back to when I have a bit more time. And, incidentally,  I’m sure there’s some PhD material in there for anyone interested in the evolution of language teaching, too!

A robot reading a script. The text-to-speech voices at ElevenLabs certainly sound intelligent as well as natural!

ElevenLabs : 5-Star Tool for Language Work and Study

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know how impressed I’ve been at ElevenLabs, the text-to-speech creator that stunned the industry when its super-realistic voices were unleashed on the world. Since then, it’s made itself irreplaceable in both my work and study, and it bears spreading the word again: ElevenLabs is a blow-your-socks-off kind of tool for creating spoken audio content.

Professional Projects

In my work developing language learning materials for schools, arranging quality narration used to involve coordinating with agencies and studios — a process that was both time-consuming and costly. We’ve had issues with errors, too, which cost a project time with re-recordings. And that’s not to mention the hassle keeping sections up-to-date. Removing ‘stereo’ from an old vocab section (who has those now?) would usually trigger a complete re-record.

With ElevenLabs, I can now produce new sections promptly, utilising its impressive array of voices across multiple languages. The authenticity and clarity of these voices are fantastic – I really can’t understate it – and it’s made maintaining the biggest language learning site for schools so much easier.

Supporting Individual Learning

As a language learner, ElevenLabs is more than worth its salt, too. It’s particularly good for assembling short listening passages – about a minute long – to practise ‘conversation islands’—a well-regarded polyglot technique for achieving conversational fluency.

Beyond language learning, the tool can be a great support to other academic projects. I’ve created concise narrations of complex topics, converting excerpts from scholarly papers into audio format. Listening to these clips in spare moments (or even in the background while washing up) has helped cement some key concepts, and prime my mind for conventional close study.

Flexible and Affordable Plans

ElevenLabs offers a range of pricing options to suit different needs:

• Free Plan: Ideal for those starting out, this plan provides 10,000 characters per month, roughly equating to 10 minutes of audio.

• Starter Plan: At £5 per month, you receive 30,000 characters (about 30 minutes of audio), along with features like voice cloning and commercial use rights.

• Creator Plan: For £22 per month, this plan offers 100,000 characters (around 100 minutes of audio), plus professional voice cloning and higher-quality outputs.

For messing around, that free plan is not too stingy at all – you can really get a feel for the tool from it. Personally, I’ve not needed to move beyond the starter plan yet, which is pretty much a bargain at around a fiver a month.

Introducing ElevenReader

And there’s more! Complementing the TTS service, ElevenLabs has introduced ElevenReader, a free tool that narrates PDFs, ePubs, articles, and newsletters in realistic AI voices. Available on both iOS and Android platforms, the app doesn’t even consume credits from your ElevenLabs subscription plan.

Seriously, I can’t even believe this is still free – go and try it!

Final Thoughts

ElevenLabs has truly transformed the way I create and consume spoken content. It truly is my star tool from the current crop of AI-powered utilities.

The ElevenLabs free tier is enough for most casual users to have a dabble – go and try it today!

Anki Heat Maps – Honesty Corner

When it comes to building and reviewing habits, honesty is the best policy. And there’s one Anki plug-in that has been that tough-talking, truth-speaking friend I’ve needed over the years.

Review heat map has been going for as long as I’ve been using Anki (and that’s a long time already!). I think it was a German conversation partner on iTalki who pointed me in its direction originally – it was so long ago, that that origin story is lost in the mists of time.

But because of that admirable length of service, I have years of usage data in there – and it really shines a light on my consistency (or lack thereof) in that time.

Anki Honesty

I’d not looked at mine in a while – in the desktop app they’re hiding below your decks – so it was about time to check in. And while I knew I’d been a bit on and off in 2024 (preparing for a PhD was a slight distraction!), I didn’t realise I’d been quite so neglectful.

Anki heat maps over time

Anki heat maps over time

It’s not all bad, though. There’s actually something very encouraging about this. Progress is bitty, yes; but it never stops completely. A couple of times, I’ve had over two weeks without checking in. But I’ve always got back into it (usually in a mammoth catch-up sesh, working through 200+ cards – although even those catch-ups took perhaps just 10-15 minutes each).

Taking stock like this also serves as a motivational kick – I can do better. And so it’s back in my goals list for 2025 – make Anki part of the start of your day. Getting a year completely blued out, like 2021, will be so satisfying.

Know Yourself

Heat maps can show us that sometimes, we fail to take our own advice. We fall off the wagon. It’s clear that there are times that I repeatedly let my daily tactics slide, despite my own efficiency evangelism!

That said, knowledge is power. Looking over those heat maps, I see when those times of slippage occur. Without fail, they’re always times of being over-busy, stressed out, or – conversely – times of extreme leisure (think: holidays!). More than anything, the stops and starts in my heat maps show that life sometimes gets in the way.

But you can always get it back on track.

Review Heat Map is a pretty essential addition to your Anki toolbox, to my mind. And it’s available for free from the Anki plug-ins site!

Fireworks at New Year - the best time for resolutions!

Realistic Resolutions for 2025

Days away from the turn of the year, many of us feel the potential to start new projects and revitalise old ones – a roadmap to the ‘you’ you want to become. And as with all roadmaps, New Year’s resolutions are always better when you start with a good plan.

The best kind of plan, in this case, is a scaffold. A scaffold is a set of looser rules to guide you, rather than a straitjacket to lock you into one, unbending path. Where this helps is when life inevitably gets in the way – there will be times you have to miss a streak or fall short of your weekly goal. Broad guiding principles provide just enough give to prevent bumps in the road from feeling like total failures.

The best guiding principles are ones that are realistic about the limits of our distractible, whimsical, faddish human brains. They respect our energy and concentration levels, as well as acknowledging when and how we work best.

Below are some of the most sure-fire scaffolding tricks I’ve personally used to guarantee realistic resolutions for 2025!

Daily tactics for Realistic Resolutions

The old adage little and often really is your best friend. Daily tactics are just this – short, snappy and non-negotiable habits that keep you learning and improving all the time. They can be super short, in fact – five minutes completing a lesson on an app, for example – but they must be easy enough to perform regularly. Think about putting together a little regime of three or four tactics that you can perform each and every day.

Tactics can evolve over the year, too, as they’re easy to tweak if something isn’t quite right. The most important thing is to have your core of easy tide-me-overs, and stick to them.

Lark or owl?

Talking about regularity of habits, an important question to ask yourself is when are you at your most effective and energetic? My biggest mistake when making any kind of self-development lists in the past was over-optimism about my energy levels. I’d see myself getting up at dawn for a learning session, working all day, then scheduling classes and activities at night. I love learning – so why wouldn’t I plan learning into my entire day?

You can guess what this leads to: burn-out.

Over time, I’ve come to accept that I’m a lark, through and through. My energy is morning-loaded. After a certain point (usually about 6pm), I am done for the day. What this acceptance gives me is a more realistic attitude towards procrastination. Before, I’d kid myself that I could postpone task X or Y until the evening, and allow distractions to creep into my morning. Embracing my inner lark reminds me that the only thing I’m doing in the evening is recharging!

Would-Like-To-Do Lists

Finally, a bit of self-kindness is key to tackling goals without stress. As a friend of mine always says, don’t make to-do lists. Make would-like-to-do lists. These are things you’d love to see yourself mastering in the long-term, but not do-or-die obligations on yourself.

Think of them as a mood board for the future you – ideas for a new you, some of which will make it, and some of which will change over time. There’s no ‘must’ about self-development – it’s a network of roads and your route can change at any time.

The main thing is that you have an open positive, and explorative mindset!

Someone cooking beans by a campfire. Preparedness reading can be great for your languages!

Dystopia Warning: Reading Preparedness Booklets for Language Learning

Dystopia warning: there’s a lot of doom-mongering in the news lately. Much of it (we hope) is newspapers sensationalising for clicks. Now, you could just limit the flow of all this in the name of sanity. But, since all that reading material is there, why not turn that negative into a positive?

That’s my thinking with one type of foreign-language literature reflecting the current Zeitgeist, anyway: the preparedness booklet. This is a type of public information pamphlet that pops up from time to time when the news gets hairy.

If you grew up in the 70s or 80s, you’ll remember these as the ‘nuclear survival’ leaflets that, to be honest, frightened, rather than reassured people. These days, they’ve resurfaced, thanks to a rather dicey new geopolitics.

This time round, however, they’re less When the Wind Blows, and more about general preparedness for anything from power cuts to cyberattacks. They’re also a lot more accessible than back in the day, since they’re largely downloadable PDFs rather than locally distributed leaflets now.

Oh – and they’re also completely free.

Reading Preparedness Booklets

So why are these rather alarming publications so good for language learners? Well, first off, in terms of vocabulary, they are all about basic items. That’s the kind of stuff that’s useful to know in many situations, let alone emergencies. Food, water, utilities… All great stuff to know how to talk about when visiting a target language country.

Also, they’re accessible in terms of language, too. They’re meant to be read and understood by everybody, which means the language is clear, direct and unfussy. That’s great for a bit of intermediate reading practice.

If I’ve convinced you that a bit of prepping lit is good for your languages, then here are some links to preparedness booklets I’ve come across in other languages:

Hopefully we’ll never need these for real. For now, at least, they’re great reading practice, and offer some insights into public life in your target language countries.

Have you found any more of these online? Please let me know, as I’m always glad to add them to the list!

New Year Bells

That was 2024 : (Almost) a year of language learning

As things wind down for Christmas, it’s always worth pausing to take stock of what went well over the last twelve months.

Language learning can be both a high-focus undertaking as well as a lower-key, background constant, especially if life is busy. But sometimes, just listing what you’ve managed to do in twelves months will reassure you that you’re on track.

For me, it’s been an incredibly busy year. It’s been one where I’d have loved to find more time for languages, and felt that pang of underachiever guilt. That’s probably me being far too harsh on myself — it’s been a year of product launches, presentations, and from September, a PhD too!

Adding it up

When I add it up, though, I haven’t done too badly despite the calendar crush. Here’s what I’ve managed to keep up in spite of it all:

Granted, that’s less than I’d have wanted. It’s a focus on fewer languages than I wanted, for sure. But it’s not a bad haul at all, given how packed the year was with other stuff.

And there’s a pattern here.

Recipe for success

My 2024 language achievements fall into three categories:

  • Occasion-based motivators (building language skills in the lead-up to holidays)
  • Social motivators (learning languages with people – your class, or a favourite teacher)
  • Everyday habits / daily tactics (five minutes on a language app, for example)

They’re all things that make squeezing an hour in here, half an hour in there, worthwhile. The rewards are things I value: lovely experiences, having fun, making friends, having a quick gamified language escape on the bus.  And they’re the reason I’ve not fallen off the wagon despite my protestations of I’m too busy all year!

It’s a nice reminder that language learning works best when it works with you. Ideally, your learning should be frictionless. If you feel resistance, then you should think about reframing your approach to your person interests (books and podcasts that grab your fancy in your ‘non-languagey’ life definitely help). If in doubt, use the motivator mix above to make your recipe: event goals, people goals and everyday mini-habits.

As the year ends, it’s clear that language learning isn’t about perfection—it’s about persistence. Whether it’s for travel, connection, or the joy of discovery, the key is finding what keeps you coming back. So, take a moment to reflect on your own journey this year. You might be surprised at just how much you’ve achieved, even when life was at its busiest. Here’s to more languages, more moments, and more fun in 2025!

Christmas 2024

Christmas Gifts for Language Lovers : 2024 Edition!

Linguists in your life and lost for present ideas? It’s that time of year again, when I crack open the bubbly, grab a seat by the fireside, and list my favourite language learning Christmas gifts of the year. And it’s been another cracking year for learners!

Here’s my round-up of gifts (that includes gifts to yourself, remember!).

Christmas for Linguists, 2024 Edition!

SCOTTISH GAELIC : A COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR

Christmas gifts 2024 - Scottish Gaelic - A Comprehensive Grammar

Christmas gifts 2024 – Scottish Gaelic – A Comprehensive Grammar

I won’t lie – this was my highlight of the year. On the surface, it’s clearly one for Gaelic learners, but Indo-European typologists and other fans will also be cheering for it.

We’ve been waiting for a Gaelic grammar as comprehensive as this for years, and this volume by William Lamb does not disappoint. It’s as thorough a take as I’ve ever seen, and chock full of real-world examples. While not for beginners (a little knowledge of basic syntax would be recommended for some chapters), it’s pretty much an essential companion for anyone studying the language seriously.

It’s another gem in the crown of Routledge’s long-loved grammar series. And with a second edition of Turkish being added to the Comprehensive cache next year, it looks bound to keep growing.

THE TRUTH ABOUT ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Christmas gifts 2024 - The Truth about English Grammar

Christmas gifts 2024 – The Truth about English Grammar

If the usual stuffy old style books leave you reeling, then this could be the grammar guide you’re looking for. It’s a really refreshing look at what counts as ‘good’ English, without the moralising and with an eye to language as a developing, living thing, and not a relic.

THE LANGUAGE PUZZLE : HOW WE TALKED OUR WAY OUT OF THE STONE AGE

Christmas gifts 2024 - The Language Puzzle

Christmas gifts 2024 – The Language Puzzle

We all love a good language origin story, and this year’s offering to the fray is Mithen’s excellent The Language Puzzle. It’s a great synthesis of current thinking on how we became talking apes, and very readable with it.

EUROVISION 2024 DVD

Christmas gifts 2024 - Eurovision DVD

Christmas gifts 2024 – Eurovision 2024 DVD

If you experienced this in the moment, you’ll remember as one of the most contentious contests of the show’s nearly 70 years of history. But it was also a great one for non-English entries, which you can enjoy in full HD in the peace of your own home now the dust has settled.

BRAVE NEW WORDS: HOW AI WILL REVOLUTIONIZE EDUCATION (AND WHY THAT’S A GOOD THING)

Christmas Gifts 2024 - Brave New Words

Christmas Gifts 2024 – Brave New Words

It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t squeeze an #AIEd book in here too, and Brave New Words is one of the best amongst a bumper crop. The clincher with this one is that its positivity is palpable. True, there’s a fair bit of plug for the author’s resources, but overall it’s a book full of ideas that look forward with excitement, rather than apprehension. Nice title too, playing on the currency of LLMs.

CHATGPT ADVANCED VOICE MODE

And of course, on the topic of AI, the big game-changer in AI for language learning this year was ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode. For a start, it much more closely mimics real conversation with more humanlike turn-taking. But it’s leagues better at speaking languages other than English, too. Impressively, this includes varieties of other languages. Just ask it to speak German with a Bavarian accent, or French as in Marseilles.

It will blow your socks off. Well worth the upgrade to Plus.

 

Robots sitting an exam - it could even be the JLPT exam!

Making It Official : The Joy of JLPT and Other Language Accreditations

Sometimes a language chooses you by sheer dint of the wealth of resources, and a wonderful organisation of tutoring and testing around it. I got a sneak peek of this while assisting at local JLPT exams recently, the benchmark Japanese proficiency exams administered from Japan and held all over the world.

The local JLPT team in Edinburgh run exam days like a well-oiled machine. Everything has a place, and everything is in its place, down to the neat answer sheets and thread-tied packing folders proctors sort them into at the end of each session. It feels like a real academic event, and a joy to watch it taking place without a hitch.

Lots of national cultural entities have similar systems, of course. The Goethe Institute has its own set of tests in German, for example. Chinese is covered by the graded HSK tests available at centres worldwide. And then there’s Norskprøve, which will give you accreditation in Norwegian (although you’ll likely have to go to Norway to sit that). Whatever your language, it’s worth looking into national testing. They offer the perfect opportunity to mark your progress with an official stamp.

Beyond the certificate, though, there’s a great sense of community in joining an exam class. It’s a lovely thing to see students excitedly swapping stories at the end of a session. What went well? What was tricky? And, of course, good luck for the results. It’s made me eager to join a course with accreditation again (and maybe learn some more Japanese – if only I had the time!).

Either way, it’s a reminder that learning for an exam can be hard work – but so rewarding.