How Not To Be Categorically Wrong In Foreign Languages

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People laugh at Brits for their astonishingly bad reputation for (not) learning foreign languages. It’s been a lifelong mission of mine to prove that the fatalistic we just don’t have the ear for it is nonsense. (Maybe we don’t have a culture of it, but that’s another story.)

Anyway, a new study suggests that the ear bit of that might actually be onto something – just not in the doomed, hopeless way the phrase suggests. And that’s because, as it turns out, an ear is something you can train.

Researchers at UCL and Tohoku University have found that people who are better at noticing tiny differences in sound pick up the pronunciation of a new language faster and more accurately. The lead author, Kazuya Saito-van Poeteren, even went out of his way to say: “I do not think British people are biologically bad at languages.” So that’s that excuse gone.

What the study actually did

The team tested 67 Japanese learners of English on their auditory precision: how well they could spot slight changes in pitch, length and tone in sounds that weren’t speech at all. Think beeps and tones, rather than words, at this stage.

Then they popped everyone in an fMRI scanner (one by one, mind) and asked them to tell apart two English vowels: the /æ/ of cat and the /ʌ/ of cup. Neither maps onto a neat equivalent in Japanese, which makes them a good stress test.

The results were striking:

  • Sharp-eared learners processed the new vowels much like plain acoustic signals. Their brains analysed the sound itself, with less interference from Japanese.
  • Less precise listeners leaned harder on the brain’s left sensorimotor network. In effect, they ran the new sounds through their native-language pronunciation habits – and got a fuzzier result.

In other words, the good listeners weren’t interpreting what they heard as something equivalent to a Japanese vowel. They appreciated it as a new sound, independent of their previous knowledge.

The study is published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and it builds on the same group’s earlier work linking non-speech hearing skills to better second-language pronunciation.

A quick detour into phonology (I promise it’s fun)

This is where it gets juicy for us language nerds. Your first language doesn’t just give you words. It gives you a set of sound categories – phonemes – and a brain that is very, very good at sorting incoming noise into them.

That sorting is brilliant for your mother tongue. You hear a dozen slightly different versions of the “t” in tea, stop and water, and your brain files them all as one thing – /t/ – without bothering you. Linguists call this categorical perception.

The catch comes with a new language. Japanese phonemic categories don’t quite match up with English ones, so both the cat and cup vowels tend to get filed under Japanese /a/. Two English phonemes, one Japanese drawer. The learner isn’t being lazy: their brain is helpfully “correcting” a difference it has learned to ignore.

English speakers do exactly the same thing, and not just with vowels:

  • French tu vs tout – /y/ and /u/ both get squashed towards our English “oo”.
  • German Kuchen vs Küchen – cakes vs kitchens. Choose wisely at the Konditorei.
  • Spanish pero vs perro – a tap vs a trill, and suddenly “but” has become “dog”.

Fun bonus fact: the cup vowel isn’t even universal within English. In much of the Midlands and North there’s no FOOT–STRUT split, so cup and put rhyme. Our own phoneme drawers are local, not global.

What the UCL study hints at is that some people’s sound-sorting is less aggressive. They hear the raw acoustics first and only then decide what it means. And that, it turns out, is a pretty handy trait when you’re trying to build brand-new drawers.

A pinch of salt

Before we all chuck our vocab apps in the bin, a few honest caveats:

  • It’s small. 67 people, all Japanese learners of English, tested on one vowel contrast.
  • It’s brains, not classrooms. The scans show how learners process sounds, not that ear training makes them better speakers.
  • The teaching advice is still a hypothesis. The authors argue that teaching should develop learners’ ears rather than just pile on more practice, and they’re now building combined language-and-auditory training to test exactly that.

So: a promising signpost, not a finished map. But it chimes with a decent body of earlier work, including a 2025 study by Saito and Adam Tierney suggesting that learners with weaker pitch perception get less out of real-world immersion – and could benefit from explicit phonetic instruction and auditory training.

So how do you train your ear?

None of these work magic, but they all nudge you towards accustoming your ear to different sounds rather than your native-language best guess at them:

  1. Play minimal-pair games. Find word pairs that differ by one sound (tu/tout, Kuchen/Küchen, pero/perro) and quiz yourself on which one you heard (maybe try ElevenLabs to make your own sound files of these). Audio first, spelling later – spelling gives away far too much!
  2. Use lots of different voices. Hearing the same contrast from many speakers, in many words, helps your brain work out what really matters. Researchers call this high-variability phonetic training; I call it “stop listening to the same voice”.
  3. Listen before you parrot. When shadowing, have a couple of goes where you only listen. Notice the length, the pitch, the mouth shape you imagine. Then speak.
  4. Learn a handful of IPA symbols. Not the whole chart, just the sounds of your target language that don’t exist in yours. Giving a sound a name makes it easier to notice.
  5. Record yourself, then compare. Your ear is far more forgiving of your own voice in real time, in your head, than on playback, where there’s no place to hide. Brutal, but effective.
  6. Mind the music, not just the notes. Pitch and length carry a lot of meaning – think Spanish stress, Swedish pitch accent, or a German long vowel. Hum the melody of a sentence before you say it.

The takeaway

We spend ages drilling vocab and conjugations, and remarkably little time teaching ourselves to listen. If this research holds up, the ear isn’t a gift you’re either born with or not. It’s a skill, and it might be the one that unlocks the rest.

So next time someone says they “haven’t got the ear for languages”, you can tell them: not yet, you haven’t.

Happy 10 Years of Posts, Polyglossic!

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Polyglossic is celebrating a milestone this week – 520 posts, or 10 years’ worth of weekly blog posts on all things language learning, ed tech, and habit building. 10 years! I can barely believe it myself.

And it’s a case of life imitating art (well, the art of blogging, at least). Writing about positive learning habits has helped me build my own habit of regular writing. Setting a post-a-week goal has encouraged me to explore my favourite topics more deeply, find fun ways to present them to others, and trained my brain to spot links between language and everyday life. It’s helped me distil a million disparate ideas into an educational ethos over the years – what’s worth focusing on, and what’s worth sharing with others. Writing is a powerful ideas sharpener.

The power of regular writing for recycling and reinforcing your own knowledge like this is one of the reasons I’ll always recommend a diary or blogging habit to language learners. Now, regular writing doesn’t have to mean hundreds of words every week. Don’t pressure yourself to scribble reams and reams – you’ll feel like a self-nag and put yourself off. A couple of sentences every day or two is more than enough to get going. 520 posts didn’t come from 520 bursts of pure inspiration. Most of them came from just turning up every week.

So, above all, whatever you’re writing, make it regular. When writing becomes part of your routine, a bit of your mind is always switched on to it. You’ll notice things in your day-to-day, and catch yourself thinking ah, I can write about that! Next thing, you’ll be looking up key words and expressions to express that in the target language.

That goes a long way towards giving your language project a permanent home in your brain.

And to all of you, readers – regular and new – thank you for being part of that habit-building journey. I hope you’ve found something useful in these pages, just as I’ve been learning these techniques alongside you.

Here’s to writing – the ideas sharpener. And the next 520! 🎉

Kurzgesagt – in short, not just for Germanists!

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A content shout-out ostensibly just for Germanists this week – the fabulously entertaining and informative Kurzgesagt (‘in short’), otherwise known as Dinge Erklärt (‘things explained’), the online animated explainer channel that is well into its second decade.

It’s one of the social media accounts that’s been in my feed for a while now, drip-feeding short, quirky content into my algorithm and making me feel like I’m wasting a bit less time with the socials scrolling. It’s a bit what if, a bit how things work, and a very decent bit silly, too – perfect if you like your German practice served on the fun setting.

Not a Germanist? Not a problem!

It must have occurred to the Kurzgesagt team pretty early on that they were on to a winner, as multiple language ports started to pop up. The first port of call is through their English-language channel, with the same name plus the tag ‘in a nutshell’ to drive the point home. Really? I’m all for importing new foreign-language terms into English without the gloss support! But that’s another blog post…

Anyway, Kurzgesagt has gone properly polyglot over the years. Sibling channels have popped up in a whole stack of languages. That means the same Duo-like cute birds and backdrop of cosmic existential dread, just in different words:

Pro tip: lots of videos appear on several of these channels. Watch one in English first, then again in your target language, and you’ve basically got a free, officially translated parallel text.

In the Kurzgesagt mould

If you’d rather go home-grown than in-translation, there are alternative native explainer and science populariser channels which match Kurzgesagt’s curious, slightly daft spirit:

  • French: DirtyBiology. It starts from pop culture or odd-sounding questions and somehow lands on proper science. If you want something meatier, try Science Étonnante, which goes deeper (think sixth form and up).
  • Spanish: QuantumFracture. Physicist José Luis Crespo’s animated physics channel is one of the big beasts of Spanish-language science YouTube. CdeCiencia is good for seconds.
  • Italian: Geopop. Geologist Andrea Moccia explains earthquakes, engineering and everyday science with slick 3D animation. Try Barbascura X if you like your marine biology with a side of satire.

Scandi bonus round

The Nordics do their science explaining mostly through their public broadcasters, so these are shows rather than channels, but they’re very bingeable:

  • Icelandic: Ævar vísindamaður (“Ævar the Scientist”). Ævar Þór Benediktsson’s science show for kids on RÚV is all experiments, famous scientists and big questions, like whether you could drill right through the Earth’s crust. For bite-sized bits, look for the short clips in Vísindahorn Ævars.
  • Norwegian: Newton, from NRK. It’s a kids’ science show that has been going since 2007 and now comes in snappy 12–15 minute episodes on NRK Super. Its motto is roughly “doing cool things scientifically and making scientific things cool”, and one episode had them redoing old YouTube challenges with dynamite. Very much the fun setting.
  • Swedish: Vetenskapens värld, from SVT. It’s the grown-up option: hour-long episodes, and one of SVT’s oldest programmes, running since 1971. If you’d rather keep it silly, look up Beppe Singer, a much-loved kids’ science presenter from SVT’s Hjärnkontoret.

Learner’s tip: kids’ science shows are brilliant for intermediate learners. They speak clearly, explain everything, and the vocabulary is genuinely useful.

In a nutshell…

So there you have it: a whole world of animated birds, exploding experiments and existential wonder, in pretty much whichever language you’re working on. The beauty of channels like these is that they sneak into your feed and do the heavy lifting for you. Subscribe to one or two in your target language, and before long the algorithm starts serving you useful scrolling. Guilt-free socials time? Now that’s a what-if worth exploring.

And if you’ve got a favourite explainer channel in another language, especially one for the Danes (I couldn’t find one!), do share it in the comments. Kurz gesagt: happy watching!

Watching Foreign TV with a VPN: What Actually Works

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Native-language TV is one of the best (and most enjoyable) input sources a learner can get. But geo-blocking keeps most of it out of reach, and a VPN is the usual workaround. Real news, real soaps, real people talking at real speed: no textbook can compete with a few episodes of a Norwegian crime drama or a German Sunday-night Tatort.

The snag is that public broadcasters like NRK, ARD, RTVE or France Télévisions usually only stream their full catalogue to viewers inside the country. That locks out learners, of course, but also the millions of nationals living abroad who just want to watch the news from home. A VPN lets you appear to be connecting from the right country. The question is which ones actually work – because a lot of the time, they don’t. Why is that?

Why VPNs so often fail for TV

Streaming services don’t need to detect VPNs cleverly – they just keep lists of IP addresses known to belong to VPN providers, and block the lot. A VPN server’s address is shared by hundreds of users at once, so once a broadcaster notices a suspicious crowd coming from one IP, that address goes on the blacklist. The result is the dreaded “not available in your region” message, even though the VPN says you’re in Oslo.

A few other things can give you away:

    • Leaks. Your real location can slip out via DNS or IPv6, even with the VPN on.
    • Your device. Phone and TV apps may also check GPS, the app store region or your device’s language and time zone.
    • Stale cookies. The browser or app may remember where you were before you connected.

It’s an arms race, and it means today’s working server can be tomorrow’s dead end. Annoyingly, it also catches out overseas users who are perfectly entitled to the content – collateral damage in the war on VPN users.

So what works best?

The best options for foreign TV

In my experience, Proton VPN is the cheapest reliable option for foreign TV – but every provider here gets blocked sometimes. A word of warning before you read any “best VPN” list: most of them are stuffed with affiliate links, and NordVPN tends to top them all. Real-world results with smaller public broadcasters can look rather different.

VPN Price bracket My verdict for foreign TV Worth knowing
Proton VPN (Plus) Budget on a 2-year plan My go-to: the most reliable I’ve used, and the cheapest The free tier doesn’t support streaming — you need Plus
NordVPN Budget to mid Hit and miss — works one day, blocked the next Huge server network; tops most review lists
Surfshark Budget A popular cheap alternative Unlimited devices on one account
ExpressVPN Premium Consistently well rated for streaming You pay noticeably more for it

Whatever you pick, make the most of free trials to test the specific channels you care about. Working with Netflix tells you very little about NRK, RTVE Play or the ARD Mediathek.

When it fails: what to try

That said, even the best fail from time to time.

The quickest fix is often the dumbest one: disconnect and reconnect, and you may land on a fresh IP address that isn’t blacklisted yet. That’s exactly what got NRK’s TV app working for me recently, after it had flatly refused to believe I was in Norway.

Here’s a roundup of fixes you can try, ordered roughly from least to most effort:

    • Restart the VPN connection. Disconnect, reconnect, try again – you’ll often get a different address.
    • Pick a different server or city. Choose a specific server in the same country rather than letting the app auto-select.
    • Clear the evidence. Force-quit the TV app, or clear cookies and cache (a private browser window is a quick test).
    • Switch between app and browser. Some broadcasters check apps more strictly than websites, or vice versa.
    • Plug the leaks. Turn on the VPN’s leak protection, disable location access for the app, and check your IP on a leak-test site.
    • Change protocol. Swapping between WireGuard, OpenVPN or a provider’s “stealth” mode sometimes helps.
    • Consider a dedicated IP. Some providers (NordVPN among them) sell an IP that only you use, which is far less likely to be flagged.

If all else fails…

It’s not all about the geo-blocking. Plenty of target-language TV needs no VPN at all:

    • French: TV5MONDEplus is free and built for viewers worldwide.
    • German: DW broadcasts internationally, and a good share of the ARD and ZDF libraries is available outside Germany.
    • Several languages: Arte streams much of its catalogue in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish and English. I’ve only recently discovered this myself, and it’s really excellent for documentaries!
    • Everything else: broadcasters’ YouTube channels are often not geofenced, and great for news and short clips. Instagram too is great for bite-sized TV programme chunks.

The bottom line

Get a paid VPN with a decent spread of servers, test it on the channels you actually want, and don’t give up at the first “not available in your region” – a quick reconnect fixes it more often than you’d think. For me, that’s Proton for reliability and price, with NordVPN as an occasionally temperamental backup.

Now go and binge something in your target language. It counts as studying!

German idioms, the fun way

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Back in the ‘90s, when I was just a wee language learner, there was a fab series of books:  the “101 … Idioms” books for French and Spanish (sadly no German).

They took the form of jolly, paperback handbooks, which presented colourful but frequent everyday phrases. Not just the text – most also featured a quirky, literal illustration. Sayings like raconter des salades (to tell tall tales – literally, to tell salads) became instantly memorable through the slightly mad pictures.

Sadly, those books are no longer in print – a shame, as the best idioms never really go out of fashion – although they are still available if you’re a second-hand fan (I just found the French and Spanish versions on eBay, and they’re well worth a couple of quid).

Fast forward a few decades, and I’m in a Paris fnac. Always after a new language tome, I spot 200 expressions allemandes on the German shelf, pick it up for a leaf through, and realise that it’s pretty much the francophone incarnation of 101 Idioms. Easy choice – it was straight to the counter with that one and it’s now in my (not-so-)little language library.

200 expressions allemandes - German idioms via French

200 expressions allemandes – German idioms via French

That’s not to say the UK market was entirely done with quirky idioms books. Collins have kept that tradition going with their fun Easy Learning… Idioms range. The language provision (and lack) match, too, as they’re available in French and Spanish, with a cheeky English guide as an consolation for the lack of German. While they’re not quite as chock-full of amusing images as their spiritual ancestors, they’re still great alternatives (and still in print!).

If you’re still hankering after German and have some French, then 200 expressions allemandes is well worth a punt.

Note that the product links in this article are associated with Polyglossic’s affiliate account, so purchases generate a small amount to help keep the site running. Thanks! (That said, 200 expressions allemandes was about 25% cheaper direct from fnac than Amazon UK – much better if you happen to be in France!)

Be A Low-Stakes Polyglot

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Just a quick catch-up this week, as I’ve been travelling for a conference. But it’s the mode of that journey I thought was worth sharing – I decided to travel over land this time, rather than fly straight to my destination (Salzburg). It’s something that turned a one-language trip into a glorious multilingual one.

German is one of my main foreign languages, as the first I really focused on, back at school, and the one I studied at uni. It’s probably the one I’m still most confident in. French and Italian, on the other hand, are more ‘picked up as I’ve gone along in life’ languages. They’re just enough to get by, particularly my sketchy italiano. But it’s been a fun challenge having to use them to get by – something I’d have missed by flying straight to Austria.

But there’s something about low stakes languages – the ones you’re not supposed to be good at – that takes away a bit of the performance nerves when trying to speak abroad. It flips the script from producing perfect utterances to achieving goals, like getting a croissant or finding out which platform a train is leaving from. My ego is bruised less when I ungrammatically get that breakfast pastry than if I mess my word order up doing the same in German.

The trick is – and I don’t have any magic advice here, as I’m still trying to do the same myself – to carry that goal-oriented focus over to your ‘good’ languages. Care more about the outcome, less about the form. Perhaps the multi-language format of the trip, serialising shakier languages alongside stronger ones, is a good way to keep that lesson in mind.

Sit, stay… siarad! About the language books that put your pet to work

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Sitting on my language shelf is a rather strange book, for someone who doesn’t have a cat: a copy of Teach Your Cat Irish that I picked up on a trip to Dublin a while ago. Whether it was the new angle on Irish or the cute cat pics, I don’t know – I couldn’t resist it. 

It turns out that the book belongs to a wonderfully charming series by Welsh artist and illustrator Anne Cakebread – and the story behind it is every bit as sweet as the books themselves.

Cakebread began learning Welsh after adopting a dog who understood commands in Welsh. Talking to her new companion gave her a friendly, judgement-free way to practise, and eventually inspired 2018’s Teach Your Dog Welsh. You can hear Anne recount the story in this lovely BBC Wales News video.

The original became a bestseller, and the family has since expanded to include such delights as Teach Your Cat Welsh, Teach Your Dog Gaelic, Teach Your Cat Manx and even Teach Your Dog Korean. Publisher Y Lolfa says that the series has now sold more than 143,000 copies.

For Humans, Too!

They may look like novelty gift books, but they’re genuinely handy little resources for human learners too. Each one contains more than 60 everyday words and phrases, accompanied by pronunciation help and Cakebread’s affectionate retro-style illustrations. Much of the language – greetings, encouragement, instructions and useful expressions such as “wait”, “come here” and “well done” – works perfectly well away from the pet basket.

More importantly, talking to an animal removes one of the biggest obstacles in language learning: embarrassment. Your dog is unlikely to correct your mutations, and your cat was probably going to look disdainful whatever language you used. That makes them excellent audiences for repeating unfamiliar sounds and building the habit of speaking aloud.

The books also attach new language to small, memorable routines. Saying the same phrase whenever it is time for food, a walk or an unsuccessful attempt to remove the cat from the kitchen counter gives vocabulary a real context – and plenty of repetition without it feeling like revision. Add to that the fact that you’re weaving the language into everyday life at home, and they’re just gold, really.

So, will Teach Your Cat Irish produce a fully bilingual feline? Almost certainly not (and I don’t have a cat, bilingual or otherwise, so it’s a moot point). But it might help its human become a slightly more confident speaker.

And that seems a very good result indeed.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through one of these links, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you, and it all helps keep Polyglossic running!

Four Languages, Thirteen Years Younger? The Multilingual Brain Strikes Again

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Now here is a language-learning headline calculated to make every serial polyglot feel a wee bit smug: people who speak four languages may have brains that appear up to thirteen years younger than those of monolinguals.

As somebody rapidly approaching 50 with a language list that stubbornly refuses to shrink, I naturally decided to investigate.

The findings were presented at the 2026 Forum of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies. Researchers worked with multilingual speakers in the Basque Country, using combinations of Spanish, Basque, French and English.

First, they used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure patterns of brain activity in 728 people. Artificial intelligence then helped the researchers construct a “brain-age clock”: a model of what neural connectivity typically looks like at different ages.

They applied that model to a separate group of 144 people who spoke between one and four languages. The results, reported by the Federation via ScienceDaily, were striking:

  • Bilingual participants’ brains appeared about six years younger than those of monolinguals.
  • For trilingual participants, the difference was around seven years.
  • For speakers of four languages, it reached roughly thirteen years.

Higher proficiency and earlier acquisition were also associated with younger-looking patterns of brain connectivity.

A Brain Age, Not a Birth Certificate

Before we all add another three languages to Duolingo, there are some important caveats.

“Brain age” is an estimate produced from particular patterns of neural activity. It does not mean that a multilingual 50-year-old literally has the brain of a typical 37-year-old in every respect.

The study also shows an association, rather than proving that multilingualism caused the difference. The researchers accounted for age, sex and education, but could not completely separate language experience from other potentially protective factors.

Multilingual people may, for example, be more likely to read widely, travel, socialise across different communities or engage in lifelong learning generally. As one independent expert pointed out in The Guardian, activities such as exercise, music and social engagement could all be part of the picture.

These are also findings presented at a conference; the fuller published analysis will give researchers more opportunity to prod the methods and conclusions.

Depth Beats Language Collecting

Still, one detail feels especially useful for learners. The apparent effect was not simply binary—monolingual versus multilingual. It varied with the number of languages, how well participants spoke them and how long those languages had been part of their lives.

That suggests the important ingredient may be sustained multilingual experience: recalling words, selecting between competing forms, following different sound systems and continually switching one linguistic network on while damping another down.

In other words, merely collecting beginner courses may not be the neurological elixir we language dabblers would like it to be. Active use and depth seem to matter.

But maintenance need not mean sitting an advanced grammar exam every Tuesday. Conversation, reading, listening and regular retrieval all keep a language working rather than merely stored away. And if those activities also bring social contact, curiosity and enjoyment, they may tick several healthy-ageing boxes at once.

The study doesn’t prove that downloading a language app will turn back time. It does, however, add to an encouraging body of evidence that multilingualism is not simply knowledge we carry around: it is something that continually activates the brain.

So perhaps we all do have room for one more language, after all. Purely for health reasons, obviously.

Remembering King Harald V: Norwegian Podcasts for Learners

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Norway lost a deeply loved national figure when King Harald V died on 28 August 2026, at the age of 89.

In the days since, Norwegian broadcasters and podcasters have produced a wealth of thoughtful audio reflecting on his life: his childhood during the Second World War, his long fight to marry Sonja Haraldsen, his love of sailing, and his 35 years as Norway’s king.

Of course, this is not a moment to turn a nation’s mourning into just another language-learning exercise. But listening carefully to Norwegians tell King Harald’s story can be a respectful way to learn more about the country, its recent history and the affection in which he was held.

Here are some of the best, most elucidating recent Norwegian-language episodes I’ve come across in the past week or so. The suggested levels are only approximate – archival recordings, regional accents and multiple speakers can make individual sections more challenging (but also more rewarding).

1. Oppdatert: Kong Harald – Slik var livet hans

Length: 1 hour 2 minutes
Suggested level: B1–B2
Best for: A comprehensive overview

NRK’s Oppdatert is always a good follow anyway, and on the day of his passing, released a full-length special to the King’s life. It places his personal story alongside many of the defining events Norway experienced during his lifetime.

At just over an hour, this is the most substantial of the recent broadcast retrospectives. NRK’s polished narrative style makes it reasonably approachable, although the length and any changes of speaker may require a couple of sittings.

Listen to “Kong Harald: Slik var livet hans”

2. Forklart: Kong Harald V (1937–2026)

Length: 29 minutes
Suggested level: B1–B2
Best for: A clear first listen

Aftenposten’s Forklart is another excellent choice for intermediate Norwegian learners. Each episode takes one subject and explains it through a structured conversation between a presenter and a knowledgeable guest.

Here, presenter Marte Spurkland speaks with veteran commentator Harald Stanghelle about the different sides of King Harald: folkekongen, the people’s king; idrettskongen, the sporting king; and a monarch unafraid to show emotion. It also covers the long struggle that preceded his marriage to Queen Sonja.

The combination of clear studio audio, a strong narrative thread and a manageable running time makes this my recommended starting point.

Listen to “Kong Harald V (1937–2026)”

3. Historier som endret Norge: Kong Haralds liv – Plikt, kjærlighet og krone

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes
Suggested level: B2–C1
Best for: The fullest biographical treatment

This extensive conversation with historian and royal commentator Ole-Jørgen Schulsrud-Hansen was originally recorded for King Harald’s 89th birthday, before his death, and respectfully republished afterwards.

It follows Harald from his birth in 1937 through wartime exile and post-war reconstruction, placing his childhood within the development of Norway’s relatively young modern monarchy. There is plenty on the famous Sonja eller ingen ultimatum—“Sonja or no one”—as well as his accession following the death of King Olav V.

Because it was recorded as a historical discussion rather than a breaking-news response, this is perhaps the best choice for learners wanting a rounded biography. The spontaneous conversational style and historical vocabulary make it better suited to confident listeners.

Listen to “Kong Haralds liv – Plikt, kjærlighet og krone”

4. Historisk podkast: Kong Harald V – Vår egen folkekonge

Length: 52 minutes
Suggested level: B2
Best for: Personal memories within modern Norwegian history

This special episode remembers both the monarch and the man. It combines the broader story of King Harald’s reign with memories of his visits around Norway, presenting his life as part of a chapter in the country’s modern history.

One especially useful feature for curious learners is the detailed source list accompanying the episode. It offers plenty of avenues for follow-up reading on subjects including the royal family’s wartime escape, Harald and Sonja’s relationship, the transition of 1991 and the King’s response to national events.

Listen to “Kong Harald V (1937–2026): Vår egen folkekonge”

5. Stopp verden: Vi levde i kong Harald Vs tid

Length: 43 minutes
Suggested level: B2–C1
Best for: The bigger historical picture

This is not a straightforward biography. Instead, historian Tor Bomann-Larsen joins political editor Torbjørn Røe Isaksen to consider the long development of Norway’s modern monarchy, from Haakon VII to the new King Haakon VIII.

The conversation explores the world over which King Harald presided and how the monarchy evolved with Norwegian society. It also traces the history of the royal motto Alt for Norge—“Everything for Norway”.

The speakers assume a fair amount of cultural and historical knowledge, making this the most demanding episode in the list. For an advanced learner, though, it offers an exceptionally rich blend of biography, history and political vocabulary.

Listen to “Vi levde i kong Harald Vs tid”

6. A Short Listen: Slik husker folket kong Harald

Length: 7 minutes
Suggested level: B1–B2
Best for: Hearing ordinary Norwegians remember the King

If an hour of historical Norwegian feels daunting, this short Oppdatert episode is a more manageable alternative. It gathers some of the moments and qualities for which people across Norway remember King Harald.

The short running time makes it ideal for repeated listening. However, naturally spoken contributions and changing voices can sometimes be harder to follow than a single studio presenter—so do not be discouraged if this brief episode proves surprisingly challenging.

Listen to “Slik husker folket kong Harald”

Reading Alongside the Podcasts

For further Norwegian reading, the National Library has created a beautifully illustrated overview of King Harald’s life through items in its collections.

King Haakon’s deeply personal memorial address to his father is also available from the Royal House. Its language is clear, heartfelt and dignified.

Taken together, these recordings offer something more than listening practice. They allow learners outside Norway to hear the country remembering a king whose warmth, humour and humanity meant a great deal to its people.

Hvil i fred, Kong Harald.

MFL GCSE Results 2026: Green Shoots of Regrowth for Languages?

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Late August always brings its usual flurry of exam news. And for the first time in a while, this year’s Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) GCSE results feel like a genuine milestone. This summer’s cohort was the first to sit exams under the newly overhauled specifications for French, German and Spanish — a shift that, not without controversy, moved the focus away from broad topics and towards mastering a prescribed vocabulary list of 1,700 words.

So how did the new exams land, and what do the numbers actually tell us about the health of language learning in the UK?

Spanish Keeps Its Crown

The headline from this year’s entry data is a changing of the guard, now well and truly cemented. After Spanish overtook French as the most popular language GCSE last year, the 2026 figures show it consolidating that lead further.

  • Spanish keeps climbing, helped along by its practicality and cultural reach — everything from Latin pop to La Liga gives students a reason to care.
  • German offered a bit of hope for once. After years of worrying decline, entries have stabilised – nothing to throw a party over, but a genuinely welcome sign for Germanists.
  • French, sadly, remains the one losing ground, dropping again relative to Spanish. The Guardian’s editorial on the 2026 results put it well: the decline of “traditional” school languages is an alarming trend that risks turning language learning into a preserve of the affluent.

The Grades: A Welcome Turnaround

One of the biggest worries heading into 2026 was whether the new, vocabulary-heavy specs might cause a dip in attainment while teachers and students found their feet. Thankfully, the transition has gone about as smoothly as anyone could have hoped.

Top grades have held remarkably steady – credit to hard-working teachers, for sure, but also to the grading adjustments Ofqual introduced a few years back to stop marking French and German more harshly than other subjects. Language advocates campaigned for years against MFL being graded more severely than other EBacc subjects, and it’s genuinely satisfying to see that finally paying off.

  • Across German, French and Spanish, the share of students hitting grade 7+ has held up well against the national average.
  • And there’s been no spike in ‘U’ grades among Higher Tier candidates — a good sign the new papers are fair and accessible, not a nasty surprise waiting to happen.

Next Up: Cracking the A-Level Problem

The drop in GCSE entries overall is still a real problem the sector needs to grapple with — but there’s plenty to be optimistic about here. The new specs have bedded in safely, and the old “languages get marked too harshly” narrative is finally losing its grip.

The next challenge is turning this GCSE momentum into A-Level uptake, which is notoriously hard given how expensive small sixth-form language classes are to run. But there are some genuinely clever ideas emerging — the ‘Languages For All’ initiative, a partnership between The Reach Foundation and Royal Holloway, is a good one to watch.

Rather than leaving individual schools to fight their own funding battles, the initiative sets up collaborative ‘hubs’ where schools and colleges pool teachers, resources and centrally taught classes. The results from their Hounslow pilot speak for themselves: between 2022 and 2025, the number of state schools offering A-Level languages tripled, from four to twelve, and enrolments doubled.

For anyone working in languages education, this year offers a solid, encouraging foundation to build on. With fairer grading at GCSE and scalable, resource-sharing models proving themselves at A-Level, there might just be a new blueprint for persuading more students to keep languages going into higher education and beyond.