Ranting About Languages

I have been working on a database of resources for learners of African languages. You do not to search manually to find the best resources anymore—this site does it for you.

It includes material for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners.

Already has a wide variety of languages for you to explore—from major languages such as Amharic, Igbo and Swahili to smaller languages such as Basaa, Coptic and Moba.

You can filter by language, type of resource, rating and level.

Continually updated with more resources every day.

Honest and unbiased ratings and reviews; no affiliate links.

I do not have the new update yet but it seems that everyone else does.

It suddenly dawned on me that the skills I’d acquired over the past few months had nothing to do with holding a conversation or navigating a foreign city. Duolingo wasn’t teaching me to communicate; it was training me to become more addicted to the app.

Previously I discussed the lack of localisation for many languages but now I think it is best to focus on creating content in non-dominant languages even if the interface itself is still in a language like English.

If you have or know of a platform in either an African language or an endangered or minority language from another continent, please share it in the comments. If you speak such a language, you might feel inspired to start something with it.

The purpose of this is to encourage youth to engage with their language in a non-academic and everyday context. Most young people spend much of their lives on the Internet and so increasing the visibility of non-dominant languages on these platforms is important. Young people who speak these languages often have no real opportunity to use them in the digital world.

I will be adding content underneath these headings as I find it.

TikTok

S4C (Welsh)

Hansh (Welsh)

TG4 (Irish)

Bloc TG4 (Irish)

Spórt TG4 (Irish)

Instagram

BBC Igbo (Igbo)

BBC Yoruba (Yoruba)

BBC Hausa (Hausa)

BBC Cymru Fyw (Welsh)

BBC Radio Cymru (Welsh)

BBC Alba (Scottish Gaelic)

S4C (Welsh)

Hansh (Welsh)

YouTube

Tumblr

@nke-igbo (Igbo)

Facebook

Twitter

However, many dedicated activists have been working to counter and reverse the trend of parents deliberately not passing on the Igbo language to their children. While Igbo still is not at the level that it should be at, it is heartening to see that it is still alive and is still one of Africa’s major languages.

Some people were displeased with UNESCO but it is not UNESCO’s fault that so many of us are ashamed of who we are and desperately want to be as white as possible.

“However, we’re a colonised people. We hold everything we do to the standard of the white man, so our food, language, and culture have become gentrified. Our children learn Chinese, Spanish and other foreign languages, but there’s a need to reorient our way of life and the value of our languages. We can’t continue to be embarrassed about ourselves. At some point, our culture will become revived and fashionable again.”

Because I have certainly seen a variant of this in several articles.

However, it seems as though many young people develop a hatred for the language from a young age and it is very difficult to change the way these young people view the language once they have developed a negative attitude towards it. With so many negative outlooks on the language from young people, the question must be asked, are we really teaching it correctly or is there anything we can do to make the language more enjoyable to learn and make it something fun and exciting in the classroom?

“It’s about that perception of what’s hip, of what’s cool, I guess, and I was a victim of that when I was 14 or 15. It is that change in perception as well.”

Obviously, technology on its own will not revitalise or protect a language. But to dismiss it is rather foolish as the future of a language lies in the youth, not in the elderly or the middle-aged. If no young people decide to use the language or pass it on, then the language die. I think we all understand this.

We also probably understand that a significant part of young people’s lives is spent online or digitally. A language without a strong digital presence is one without much daily relevance for the youth.

Most social media networks and apps do not offer even some of the most commonly spoken languages in the world, let alone endangered ones. This harms these languages because even if a young person does know how to speak it or learnt at school to a tolerable level, if they cannot text their friends in it, use it to browse the web or use social media in it, they might be forgiven for viewing the language as belonging solely in an archaic or academic sphere and not well-suited for modern life. Furthermore, the likelihood of their continuing the use the language may be reduced.

When I talk about social media, I am not talking about Facebook and Twitter necessarily. I am talking about the social media that young people today use most such as TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and even Tumblr. These platforms only support a few global languages and some major national or regional ones, effectively shutting out other languages from the lives of young people.

Even the traditional social media is not so conducive for endangered languages. Facebook recently discontinued its crowdsourced translation platform and Twitter discontinued its own long ago. WhatsApp is actually available in Irish, though. Localisation does cost money but is it really too much to include even Swahili or another major African language on an app? If they do not want to pay, many language activists would be happy to contribute anyway.

Signal has a crowdsourced translations platform.

Telegram also allows you to contribute to translations.

Reddit also has crowdsourced translations.

Mozilla also uses crowdsourced translations.

You can also type in your language on your phone using SwiftKey (and with predictive text too). A handy tip for those on iOS is to go to Language Settings -> preferred languages and drag your language to the top. This means that whenever your language is an option on a website or on an app, it will be displayed. It will also display date and time information in your language and should also force Google and Bing to be displayed in your language (if these browsers have been translated into your language by the companies). Windows is also available in many languages so visit the Settings section to see if yours is available.

Here is a guide to improving your language’s digital presence:

In respect to countries with both an indigenous population and a settler population, what is the wish of language planners and revitalisers? Is the goal to maintain the language only within the native community or for the majority of non-indigenous people to be fluent in it as well?

This is relevant to places like Australia, Canada and the United States. For instance, in education, should all children be taught the language or should teaching of the language be targeted toward indigenous-majority schools?

Regardless of the answer, I think that indigenous languages should be legally protected and that indigenous people should have the right to not only receive education in their language but also to receive public services in their language and for it to be accommodated in the legal system. I also think that bilingual signage should be standard and that there should be more dual-language schools, even for non-indigenous minority languages.

In an ideal situation in these countries, supposing that it is agreed that non-indigenous people should learn indigenous languages, the school language curriculum should be like this (excepting non-English medium schools and dual-language schools): each child must learn at least two foreign languages— a modern “foreign” language (e.g. French, Japanese) / a sign language / an ancient language (e.g. Latin, Ancient Greek) and the indigenous language of the region. I think this is only fair.

Personally, I do not “stan” people, but if you do, I hope that this list inspires you to learn the languages that your favourite celebrities speak and perhaps other languages too. The purpose of this list is to play at least a small role in boosting popular perception of multilingualism, particularly in Anglophone regions, by making it appear “cool”. I am not cool and I suppose that most language nerds also are not either but I have done some research on the famous people who are considered cool so that you can emulate them (only in respect to their multilingualism, I hope—even I hear awful things about celebrities and inclusion on the list is certainly not an endorsement of the person in question).

This list will be regularly updated.

Lupita Nyong’o

The Kenyan-Mexican actor speaks English, Luo, Spanish and Swahili.

Auli’i Cravalho

She speaks both English and Hawaiian but I am not sure if she speaks any others.

Sandra Oh

The Killing Eve star can speak English, French and Korean.

Serena Williams

The legendary tennis champion speaks English, French and Italian.

Emma Watson

The Harry Potter star reportedly can speak French in addition to English, although she is not fluent in it.

The Duchess of Sussex

She speaks English, Spanish and French.

Anya Taylor-Joy

Her first language is Spanish but she speaks English as well and has some proficiency in French.

Interestingly:

If we then add to those numbers the nearly 5,000 Welsh speakers in Patagonia, then there are probably more than a million speakers of Welsh in the world today, making it one of the world’s biggest languages – Professor David Crystal has put it in the top 7%. So why shouldn’t English people learn Welsh, just as the Germanophone Swiss learn Italian.