Language-learning has gone on the back burner for the time being, as we visit family, and re-explore the bit of England where we currently find ourselves.

But there are one or two things to note.

1.

Having a bit less time means that I'm really testing out that hypothesis that apps help you stay in touch with a language until such times as you can devote more attention to it again.

On the "language-stacking" principle, I'm now -- as I've been doing with Clozemaster -- really pushing the combinations with Duolingo. So in addition to Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish from English, I'm now doing Italian from Portuguese, Spanish from Italian, and Portuguese from Spanish (a fun way to compare and contrast these terribly confusable languages), German from Russian, and German and Russian from Turkish (that last combo is particularly stretching, and is best tackled via the web interface, so that I don't lose my supply of hearts in five minutes flat...).

2.

I've temporarily elevated Manx from "parked" to "being dabbled in". You definitely don't need Manx for a visit to the Isle of Man, but given that such a visit is planned, I thought I might as well get into the spirit of the thing. There are lots of resources here.

On a kindred topic, a Facebook post from one of my cousins alerted me to the "Galician question", of which I confess I was woefully ignorant.

We briefly visited Galicia last year, loved it, and would happily return. But I completely failed to realize how much of a Celtic heritage has survived there. From the playing of bagpipes to the celebrating of Samhain, there's a lot that Galicia holds in common with Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany (the acknowledged "six Celtic nations").

Also linking all these groups, of course, is a shared history of persecution at the hands of bigger nation states, since England, France, and Spain all displayed a lamentable tendency to steamroller the Celtic parts of Europe (and Franco's rule stamped on regionalism pretty generally in Spain).


Vigo, Galicia, 2020

What the Galicians don't have, however, is a Celtic language (there was one once, but it was last spoken in the 9th century). Galicia has Galician, of course, which is related to both Spanish and Portuguese. But despite its many Celtic loan words, it's not at root a Celtic tongue. And that explains why -- having been accepted into the Celtic League in 1986 -- Galicia was shown the door again the following year... As Emmett MacIntyre argues: "It is the shared linguistic heritage that primarily defines Celtic identity and drives the Pan-Celtic movement. And it is the existence of the Celtic language that defines the modern Celtic nation."

I understand this argument. But personally I'm more inclined to agree with Manuel Alberro, who maintains that "the fact is that many among the present population of Galicia do indeed believe and feel that they are Celts", and argues for self-ascription as the key determiner of identity.





3.

I'm switching from Brazilian to European Portuguese...

OK, not exclusively, as I'll still continue to use some Brazilian Portuguese apps. But it seems appropriate to refocus. The awkwardness of travelling these days means I've no idea when I'll get to Portugal again, but it certainly seems likely that it will happen before I get to Brazil...

So I'm going to be trying out Portuguese with Leo and the Mia Esmeriz Academy.



4.

I've been trying to relearn Russian cursive writing...

Why, when I have a Russian keyboard on my phone, and am a dedicated user of Typeit on my computer?

Well, it's partly because I used to be able to write Russian by hand (bear in mind that many of the letters are quite different from the printed appearance, so it's not as easy as it might sound), and I don't like losing skills. And it also struck me that if I'm currently using apps more, then taking notes manually (ie, with a pen and a notebook) might be a useful complement (I'm still assessing whether this is or isn't the case).

Of course, in looking for handy tutorials, you find all sorts of interesting stuff. See here, for example, for some truly amazing specimens of Russian handwriting...

And here's a font-to-handwriting app, so you can check your own handwriting efforts...



5.

And finally, one of the things I watched on the interminable flight from Singapore to London was language-related...

Les Traducteurs (The Translators), a 2019 movie by Regis Roinsard, follows the recruitment of a team of translators who, accommodated incommunicado in a luxury bunker, are supposed to simultaneously render a best-selling novel into their own languages, section by highly secret section. The sparks start to fly when bits of the novel begin to leak...

I'm not entirely convinced of the credibility of some elements of the plot, but it certainly made a good airplane movie. And critics' references to "a Millennium-style global sensation" sent me scurrying off to find out what that whole hullabaloo of a few years back was actually about... (Incidentally, on the translation of the Millennium titles, see here...)