Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe

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Dual language books are useful in all kinds of situations, including learning both native and target languages, settling into a new location, helping children gain literacy skills, and simply encouraging readers to understand the joy of language. They’re useful in the classroom or other language learning arena; they’re useful as an addition to a child’s bookcase (or an adult’s collection, come to that); and they’re useful as an aide-memoire. They’re an excellent next step up from a simple dictionary or vocabulary chart, and a great stepping stone to reading longer texts in the target language. For me, of course, Partridge is the great mentor. I may not agree with everything he did, and as his successor I have naturally tried to improve on his foundations. But without his example I would have never even considered that slang was something to which I could enthusiastically devote my professional life. It’s now almost a year on from the invasion of Ukraine and sadly it seems that this conflict is not about to end any time soon. The UK has welcomed almost 200,000 Ukrainian nationals [1] so far and had offered school places to 20,500 children by the end of September 2022 [2]. Many of these children arrived with limited English and teachers and support staff were understandably looking for appropriate resources to ease their transition into school. First, while looking at what’s out there, consider all types of books. Don’t limit yourself to just one “scholarly” source or even a language learning text. With bilingual e-books, all reading genres are represented. Choose something that piques your interest. Start slow

French readers will appreciate Victor Hugos’s “Les Misérables.” The translation from the French version keeps true to the original version, so the vocabulary and idioms are authentically presented. Russian Bilingual E-books Moving on to your second book, Eric Partridge’s Slang To-day and Yesterday which was published in 1933. With dual language or bilingual books, you can actively learn your target language and enjoy a good story at the same time.I had always enjoyed looking at slang dictionaries and books that had slang in them. In 1981, when my first slang dictionary was commissioned, I saw that not only did this subject interest me but that there was also a gap in the market. The great slang lexicographer Eric Partridge had died a couple of years earlier. In 1937 he had written the hugely influential Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English and that had gone through a number of editions. But when Partridge talked about English, he meant English English and not American. By the late 1970s, when it was still being published, it was absurd that it did not include any American slang. Partridge also just didn’t get the 20th century. He certainly didn’t get teenagers, drugs and the counterculture. I thought: I know about that stuff, I’m younger, I shall have a try. Bilingual families and multilingual families, those teaching multilingual classes and learners, librarians with multilingual and bilingual collections and library users – all would benefit from having access to dual language books.

Six titles that have proved hugely popular with primary and secondary schools. A mix of fiction and non-fiction titles were selected especially with refugee children in mind, featuring positive stories and non-fiction with a wide appeal that avoids potentially triggering subject matter. These books are expertly levelled and use simple short sentences and controlled language — ideal for language learning. Because bilingual resources make stories in your target language way more accessible and hassle-free, they’re truly an ideal tool for language learners. For language learners, anything that increases the potential for trouble-free reading is a resource that needs to be explored. You can even use the same bilingual approach for other types of media in your target language.

What language are you learning?

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Hardcover) Well, the sky’s the limit, really. You could simply use dual language books to tell a story in one language or the other. You could cover up the target language, leaving the more familiar words accessible, and ask the reader to retell the story in his or her own words. You could single out individual words or phrases, or particular word groups, like nouns or verbs, and encourage the learner to memorise them. You could cover up the more familiar language, and ask the learner to translate from the second language (often, but not always, English). Or you could use them as a bedtime or afternoon story, to help and comfort new arrivals to a country, particularly when so much around them might be confusing and unfamiliar. Japanese learners will be impressed with the stunning drawings in “Yuko-chan and the Daruma Doll: The Adventures of a Blind Japanese Girl Who Saves Her Village” because they beautifully portray the sweet story. The tale is told in English with the Japanese kanji directly below the corresponding text. French Bilingual E-books Whatever your situation, dual language books offer a bridge between cultures, generations and divisions. Your final book is not as crude and vulgar as the title might suggest. There can’t be many words that have whole books written about them.

Your next book is something quite different. Set in the 1990s, it’s a true account of a West Baltimore family destroyed by drugs, co-authored by David Simon who went on to create the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire. Why did you choose this book? Let’s turn to your first book, Jon Camden Hotten’s A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words. This was first published in 1859 – why is it still relevant today? As a small educational publisher, we do have to charge for the new resources, but we will continue to offer the original six eBooks for free. We have used native Ukrainian translators and proofreaders to ensure that the text uses natural language and vocabulary along with utilising professional design and printing, so children have the best possible experience when reading them.The book is set in Baltimore. If you went to another American city where there are people selling drugs on corners, would the slang be radically different? Are some languages worse than others? The question might sound silly, but in this entertaining exercise in “language tourism” (the book’s original Dutch title), the author isn’t frightened of making judgments. He thinks lenition – the habit in Welsh of “changing a word’s first letter for no apparent reason” – is just “mindboggling”, and generally that “Gaelic spelling is flawed … wasteful, arcane and outdated”. The “ludicrous” variety of cases in Slovak amounts to “chaos”, while Breton’s system of naming numbers makes mental arithmetic unnecessarily difficult. A Whale Who Dreamt of a Snail” is the ideal beginning dual-text Portuguese story. The illustrations are charming, the story is encouraging for both children and adults and the text appears in both English and Portuguese. Chinese Bilingual E-books Early Years Exellence Award for Communication and Language resources Early Years Exellence Award for Communication and Language resources, EY Award Judges, 2017 Since many dual language books are picture books, you might think that they are mainly aimed at children, but that isn’t always the case. A picture, so the saying goes, is worth a thousand words, and dual language books have also been used in recent years to disseminate information on agricultural techniques in Papua New Guinea, for example. Many parts of the NHS also produce dual language resources to help patients access healthcare services in the UK.