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. 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.” Alice Hoffman was right that “books may well be the only true magic.” They transport and transfix—and they teach. His work was very much informed by his World War One experiences, and there is a lot of military slang in his book. 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)

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. 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?

Tips for Adding Bilingual E-books to Your Language Program

In Other Words: An Illustrated Miscellany of the World's Most Intriguing Words and Phrases (Hardcover) Early Years Exellence Award for Communication and Language resources Early Years Exellence Award for Communication and Language resources, EY Award Judges, 2017

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? Mantra Lingua’s own patented PENpal technology also means language teachers, parents, guardians, librarians and storytellers can all add sound to the texts of dual language books, increasing the levels of familiarity for readers or listeners. With dual language or bilingual books, you can actively learn your target language and enjoy a good story at the same time.Eric Partridge was the leading English language slang lexicographer of the 20th century. His Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English appeared in 1937 and editions continued to appear until the posthumous edition of 1984. 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. Partridge begins by offering a discussion of the linguistic phenomenon that is slang. Then he puts forward his own opinion on the etymology of the word “slang”, and suggests what constitutes a slang word – he gives 17 qualifications – as opposed to a colloquial or standard English one. He follows these theoretical chapters by a succession of chronological ones, in which he lays out both the major slang lexicographers from the 16th century onwards and the authors who up until the date of his writing had made the greatest contribution to the recording of slang vocabulary. The ODILO app lets you have easy to access multimedia content (eBooks, audiobooks, magazines, videos, podcasts, courses and more formats) on your smartphone and tablet. Italian language learners will fall into the rabbit hole with Alice in “Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie” (“Alice in Wonderland”)—and have no problem at all understanding every bit of the adventure! I doubt Lewis Carroll could have imagined that this beloved tale would ever be available in a format that provides both English and Italian text side-by-side.