The Secret Languages of Great Britain (with Simon Ager from Omniglot)

Episode 37 is brought to you by italki, where you can find a language partner for any language. We tested it with rare languages like Icelandic, and it totally delivered. Get an awesome free lesson deal at italki.

Today's Topic: Multilingual Britain

Britain is not monolingual at all, but in fact it is teeming with languages. In this episode, we present you the real landscape of languages spoken in the British Isles.

Can you guess how many languages are indigenous to this country?

We discovered some amazing things, not lastly you'll NEVER guess what Irish and Spanish bears have in common!

You'll be surprised to find that more than 2 million people in the UK speak British languages other than English. Here is a quick summary of the bigger groups of languages spoken in the UK - not just British languages, but also the immigrant languages most popular in the UK today, for example Polish, Gujarati and Urdu.

Listen to our podcast episode to get a wonderful tour of the British languages, including:

• What does it take to keep a minority language alive?
• Did you know there was a Scots dictionary - and how it's influenced the English language?
• Our pondering of the true official languages of Great Britain
• Turns out children really are the future when it comes to reviving languages that don't have native speakers anymore, for example Cornish

Lindsay does some amazing demonstrations of the Scottish language and accent. And Kerstin says her first "goodbye" in Welsh!

Links and Tips from This Episode

• Don't Neglect the UK's Indigenous Languages in the UK Guardian
• Blood of the Irish documentary series
• Speak Irish To Me, a podcast episode of "The World in Words"
• Irish PM refuses to speak English in parliament
• Language Death by David Crystal, a book covering endangerment and death of many minority languages across the world
• Ffasiwn Bildar "Fashion Builder", Welsh Language reality tv
• Omniglot, Simon Ager's absolutely amazing language encyclopedia on the internet - for example check out the Cornish language
• The British Term "chav"
• Why There Are Two Ways To Pronounce "Celtic"
• Hugo Scottish Gaelic in 3 Months - this is a link to Lindsay's old version
• Collins Gem Scots Dictionary

Which British Languages Did You Know?

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