10 Tools for Lifelong Learners

Do your New Year resolutions include the usual "self-improvement resolutions"? If so, here's a list of free educational resources and start planning! There are free audio book classics, language lessons, university lectures, film libraries and more.

Save on travel and language books

Travelling this summer? Borders is currently offering 25% off a host of travel books including guidebooks, travel journals and classic travelogues. You can also save 50% off Take Off in Language Courses - multimedia courses which allow you to work at your own pace and provide a compact and complete language course. All orders over £10 come with free UK delivery.

Language Cafes

Language Cafés are being set up all over Europe to take language learning in an exciting direction. In a Language Café you can meet people to practise speaking other languages, share cultural interests or just simply socialise. Language Cafés can be found in real cafes and also in cinemas, bookshops, libraries and even online. They haven't reached Leicestershire yet, but its a great idea...

Checkout other blog posts on languages

Word Spy

The Reader's Digest used to carry a regular feature on "How to improve your word power". Now you can do this online with Word Spy - a Web site devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren't "stunt words" but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources.

Burns Night and the Scots language

Last year we held an Infusion Burns Night, albeit on the 27th January. Some of Rabbie Burns' poetry was read and we enjoyed our haggis, neeps and tatties - though sadly only as a starter.

I was pleased to read a recent Guardian piece on In praise of ... Scottish words but I recognise that not everyone has the privilege of growing up in Scotland. I'm therefore pleased to say that the The Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL) is freely available on the Internet. It comprises electronic editions of the two major historical dictionaries of the Scots language: the 12-volume Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) and the 10-volume Scottish National Dictionary (SND). These 22 volumes provide a comprehensive history of Scots, and are essential research tools for anyone interested in the history of either Scots or English language, and for historical or literary scholars whose sources are written in Scots.

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin'-race!

2007 Word of the Year

The Word of the Year in 2007 is locavore. Never heard of it? “Locavore” was coined two years ago by four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. Other regional movements have emerged since then, though some groups refer to themselves as “localvores” rather than “locavores.” There are echoes of Christian Ecology’s LOAF principle.

Technology and mission

In Plugging the Planet into the Word, the Washington Post reports on how mission agencies are using technology for evangelism and Bible translation work: An excellent overview of 21st century mission work, the article discusses how innovative uses of

"technological devices ranging from simple cassette tapes to solar-powered audio players and an iPod-like gadget called the Bible Stick, [enable] Christian groups ... to make one of the world's oldest books accessible in remote corners of the planet."

The article also drew my attention to the Mission Atlas Project - a website with a range of resources including maps, tabular data sets, and written descriptions. It is a constantly expanding site that seeks to produce a strategically significant World Missions Atlas, and the information is helpful in assessing the current status of missions work throughout the world.

Lingua Latina

Sections of Wikipedia now appear in about 250 languages, serving communities across the world, making it one of the world’s most translated documents. However, one project serves a language most people think of as "dead": Vicipaedia. Contributors to the site have translated more than 15,000 Wikipedia entries into Latin! The Wall Street Journal offers a profile of Vicipaedia’s editors, who admit that the project is “a slightly odd thing to do in this century”. The site’s content is eclectic as most readers and contributors use Vicipaedia to test their language skills, rather than to conduct real research. There’s plenty of debate about neologisms as editors can’t seem to agree on the proper Latin word for “computer”! [Spotted in The Wired Campus]

Half of world’s languages may become extinct by 2100

Languages are now becoming extinct faster than birds, mammals, fish or plants. Of the estimated 7,000 unique languages spoken in the world today, nearly half are likely to disappear this century, with an average of one lost every two weeks. Losing a language often means losing the knowledge and history of an entire culture, especially when there is no written record available. For this reason, the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages have engaged in an impressive undertaking to identify and record the most endangered languages in the world.

If you want to follow this up, another resource is Ethnologue: Languages of the World, a comprehensive catalog which alphabetically lists all known living languages (Ethnologue lists 6,912), documenting the world’s complex language situations, including endangered languages. Ethnologue is produced by SIL International, a faith-based organization that studies, documents, and assists in developing the world’s lesser-known languages.

Language learning from the BBC

My father is a bit of a silver surfer, and he recently asked me if I could find some free German lessons for him on the Web, so I directed him to the BBC Languages website. I then investigated the website a bit more fully myself and discovered that it offers a wide selection of languages and different learning options including audio and visual files, games, and crib sheets you can print off and take with you. If you're heading out of the UK this summer, the website is well worth checking out if your language skills are like those of most British people!