Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe

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Gordon, D. (2018), Using dual language story books to foster biliteracy, EAL Journal Blog, 12 November 2018, https://ealjournal.org/2018/11/12/using-dual-language-story-books-to-foster-biliteracy/ (accessed 16 June 2019) 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. Domke, L. M. (2018). Probing the Promise of Dual-Language Books. Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 57 (3). https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol57/iss3/3 (accessed 16 June 2019) You started your professional life writing for the underground press, and then books on the counterculture in the 1960s. How did you end up specialising in slang? She touches on the general fascination that existed in the 18th and 19th centuries with criminals, and writes at length about the language they used. Why is that?

All the titles are beautifully illustrated, many by artists who work very regularly with the publisher and have extensive experience in the teaching and caring professions.For many years, the “immersion” theory of language learning was held up as the most appropriate; but no one learning technique works for everyone and recent research shows that the dual language approach is very effective. Much of the research in this area has been carried out for English language learning, not in languages other than English. Most of those who translate dual language books have a good understanding of the nuances and traditions of both languages and in many cases are writers and storytellers themselves. Rather than translate directly, word for word, with no interpretation, dual language translators take into account the cultural and linguistic differences and similarities all the way through. Dual language books can act as a bridge between cultures, a context-sensitive way to translate and transpose stories and instructions, a way for parents, teachers and guardians to bond with children, and a comforting reminder of home for those who might find themselves displaced. 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 Because bilingual resources make stories in your target language way more accessible and hassle-free, they’re truly an ideal tool for language learners. One of this book’s simplest but most reliable pleasures, by contrast, is the suggestion of one or more words in each language for which English doesn’t have an equivalent, but might benefit from. Dutch, for example, has uitwaaien, which means to “relax by visiting a windy place, often chilly and rainy”. Dorren adds, characteristically: “Since the British, like the Dutch, display this peculiar behaviour, the word would be useful.” The Cornish word henting, which means “raining hard”, is, the author gently suggests, “useful for a Cornish holiday”. We might also want to adopt omenie (“a Romanian word for the virtue of being fully human, that is: gentle, decent, respectful, hospitable, honest, polite”), or, from Channel Island Norman, the evocative Ûssel’lie, which names “the continual opening and closing of doors”. The running joke is capped by the one language in which the author can find nothing enviable: “No Gagauz words have been borrowed by English and none that I’ve come upon seem especially desirable.” 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.

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. 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 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-booksI 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. 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?

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. Slang is difficult because everything about it defies simple classification. Nobody knows the etymology of the word slang. If you take slang to a linguist they try to define it within the boundaries of what they know as linguists, and very soon they discover they can’t find a specific register into which it falls. There is some mystery surrounding his cause of death. Some said brain fever, others claimed a surfeit of pork chops.No matter what you encounter in life, there are six questions that are invaluable: what, when, where, who, how, and why. 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? Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount. It’s full of slang. There are 350 different uses of slang in it, which is a lot for a single book and that makes it exciting to me. It’s also slang that I haven’t come across before in many cases, and it’s slang of a certain culture. As a slang lexicographer one is an appalling voyeur. And there’s no doubt that if you’re white, middle class and live in England, then reading The Corner is a very voyeuristic experience. I have varied opinions at different moments about how I feel towards the voyeuristic side of what I do, but The Corner is a fascinating book because of the language that is used. There is no artificiality, there is no putting slang in for its own sake. This is how the characters are speaking. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” in this Russian-English bilingual volume is a snap to read. The individual paragraphs are translated, so going between languages requires minimal work. Reference the corresponding paragraph if there’s a question, and then continue reading! Italian Bilingual E-books