Category: All Levels

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What’s New On the Shelf?

Pulpi the octopus invites you to have some candy and a bookmark!

I thought I’d give a shoutout to that unsung hero of local language resources, the LangLibrary – a title that I just invented to describe our humble but mighty pair of bookshelves in the Language Lab.

In addition to having a good number of printed copies of the required textbooks for language classes at Reed, the LangLibrary has a wide variety of literature for entertainment and information. From fables in traditional Chinese script to a magazine on (among other things) the Trans-Siberian railroad to a Nepali phrase book, the LangLibrary offers literature in many languages. I would say, though, that I’m most impressed with how many resources there are for learners of language classes taught at Reed. There’s textbooks, dictionaries, grammar books, script practice, and a book of idioms in Russian and English.

I’d like to give a particular shout-out to some of our newest additions as well as some items I found interesting. Yours truly brought in three Arabic storybooks for children and an Arabic script practice book that you can use dry-erase marker on, allowing you to easily and repeatedly scribble your way from alif to yaa’, as well as By Roman Hands: Inscriptions and Graffiti for Students of Latin, which I understand is in some demand in the beginner Latin classes (discipulae et discipuli, this is your hint to swing by the Lab!), and A New China for the intermediate Chinese students out there. I should mention that students in the past who felt moved to donate to the LangLibrary have just left their books on our figurative doorstep, hence how these books (and many others on our shelves) came here.

Moving away from the classroom towards beach reads (or perhaps armchair reads at this time of the year), I quite enjoy the look of Leben im Mittelalter. I might not know German, but I can identify a book on the Middle Ages when I see one. I also appreciate the Chinese translation of Der Steppenwolfe; it’s nice to see a translated work that wasn’t originally in English with a target language other than English.

Overall, I love the LangLibrary, and I hope to see it expand. Having studied Arabic at Reed, I’m biased when I say that I hope to see more comprehensive Arabic texts, whether for class or personal use. But I also hope to see a wider variety of casual literature at multiple levels of language learning across the board; from experience, I know that it can be hard to find literature that’s at your level of proficiency and that interests you personally. But who knows? Perhaps your next favorite is waiting for you in the LangLibrary…

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Montserrat Caballé: an Extremely Brief Profile of an Operatic Powerhouse

A black-and-white photograph of Montserrat Caballé, circa 1969.

Cada generación tiene sus mitos, y en el mundo de la ópera … hablar de Montserrat Caballé … es hablar de una auténtica leyenda.

Every generation has its myths, and in the world of opera … to speak of Montserrat Caballé … is to speak of a true legend. [1, translated from Spanish by me]

With a rafter-shaking voice, Caballé was one of a small handful of opera singers whose fame extended out beyond the world of opera into the public sphere. Born in Barcelona in 1933, she broke out in 1965 at Carnegie Hall to wide-ranging operatic acclaim. [1]

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Chatting with Miriam

A picture of Miriam smiling. She is in front of a railing, overlooking a city, underneath a high grey sky.

I interviewed Miriam, a Russian tutor here at Reed. You can visit her drop-in tutoring hours on Thursdays from 6-8 PM in the Language Lab.

Could you introduce yourself?

My name is Miriam, otherwise known as Masha (in Russian); that name was given to me on my first day at Reed. I’m a senior Russian major, and I’m the Russian House HA (I’ve lived in the Russian house for three years (including this year)). I came in as a linguistics major, but I switched to Russian when I fell in love with it.

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Daniel Hahn’s “If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation” and My Profit On’t

My personal favorite jacket for the book; would you say these people are about to “kiss by th’book”?

Surprising as it may sound for someone who is in the ongoing process of learning 4 different languages (yes, I’m counting my native English) and “plays o’ th’ viol-de-gamboys” (that’s Twelfth Night for you), I’ve always been daunted by the prospect of learning individual characteristics of a language that I’m not currently studying. I’ve had to memorize the trees before I can even start looking at the forest. So when I saw the latest addition to my local library’s catalogue, Daniel Hahn’s If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, I was intrigued and yet daunted. We’re old buds, the Bard and I, and I wanted to hear him speak in other tongues; but how was I supposed to appreciate the travails of translating Shakespeare into Turkish? One curious look later, and I was standing next to the bookstand reading about how to treat Mark Antony’s prophecy that the spirit of Caesar will “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war” (Julius Caesar 3.1. 280), when the nearest equivalent to the exclamation “havoc” in Portuguese is devastaçao, a word with an inconveniently large syllable count for a twelve-syllable sentence.

As a native Portuguese speaker and professional translator, Hahn may appreciate Antony’s use of matança in that particular translation, but he doesn’t know most of the featured languages, so he has to rely mostly on his colleagues from around the world and linguistic detective work such as noticing visual and vocal patterns in the translated text to understand and enjoy the translations. Since Hahn isn’t telling one story, each chapter is relatively stand-alone, only connected by how they bring up some of the literary, linguistic, and social components that make Shakespeare, well, Shakespeare. Each section has a certain topic, such as verse, alliteration, metaphor, rhyme, or humor, and each topic is allocated several examples from distinct languages. Hahn shares corresponding anecdotes, translation histories, and personal opinions on relevant topics in his field such as ‘fidelity’, ‘“literal” translation’, and of course, what kind of process translation really is.

In particular, I feel like his analogy of translation (itself a borrowed analogy), as a body that renews millions of cells over so and so many years’ time while remaining the same creature, is one that cuts to the quick of debates over the goal of translating creative literature. An instruction manual may be appropriately reduced to simply informing about a subject, but a play may involve poetry or prose, comedy or tragedy, songs and music, and a bevy of spoken and embodied devices that may shun even giving information at all for the sake of an effect. Honoring the writer/playwright involves recognizing what choices were made to achieve that effect and recreating them in the target language. And sometimes, in the case of works in Early Modern English, the target language is Modern English!

But I can’t cover all of the points Hahn makes, so I highly recommend you read his book and learn a little more about translation, especially if you enjoy Shakespeare’s plays or sonnets. Even if you find the Bard hard to understand or enjoy, I would still say check it out. Hahn’s writing is really approachable, and he doesn’t usually expect the reader to know the entire scene, play, or stanza that he covers, just as he doesn’t expect you to recognize all of the languages at play. Whether you go through the whole book front to cover or flip to a random chapter like I did, I’m sure you can delight in multicultural, multilingual Shakespeare.

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You, yes, you, can go abroad!

It’s no secret that immersion is one of the most helpful methods to learning a language, and what better way to immerse yourself in your target language than spending time abroad?

Though it might be scary to think about going to a country you’ve never been to before and that speaks a language you aren’t as familiar with, never fear! Reed has many opportunities (and information on so many more) to get out there, see the world, and learn.

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Media Resource Recommendation

Long ago in my salad days at high school, I remember using tv5monde for outside practice after I had watched all the French films my library had to offer (alas, not that many). Although you now need a subscription to tv5monde to watch shows, tv5monde edu and tv5monde info remain wholly accessible online for free; no subscription needed to engage your French. Additionally, its lessons are separated into several levels ranging from beginner (débutant) to advanced (avancé), so you can find exercises suited to you. And not all of the activities are multiple-choice blank fill-ins; little puzzles are thrown in to mix it up! My favorite part about the network is that it maintains an international focus, covering events around the world, especially, of course, francophone countries.

Whether you’re looking for news or try finding a new edutainment medium, check out the website!

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Leilani’s final blog post… it’s been a good run!

Dearest Language Lab,

It is so sad to see you go… or me go? Perhaps I’m glad and relieved that I’m graduating. I will sincerely miss this basement, with its lack of sunlight and abundance of candy. Before I leave, I would like to impart some sage wisdom (thank you Patricio for the inspiration) from someone who has taken an unreasonable number of language courses and still wants to learn more.

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Writing entire papers in French… yet struggling with small talk?

Truthfully, the idea for this blog post came from my own experiences from learning French as a second language. I noticed that I could speak and write fine in my academic work, but when it came time to engage with small talk or casual conversation, I felt like a mess! There seemed to be some kind of gap between my proficiency in formal situations versus that in informal situations. On the flip side, I noticed that my peers who were heritage learners—students who learned French at home as a child, not academically as an adult—seemed to flourish in small talk, but appeared to struggle more with formal academic contexts. These questions made me curious about how L2 learners versus heritage learners approached their target language, depending on linguistic register—language used in a particular setting or context. This post is a bit more technical than the usual television recommendation, but hopefully, you’ll learn something new about how our environments affect the way we speak!

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Embrace embarrassment!

A Tweet reading: "How it feels to speak French to French people" with the cartoon image of a court jester dancing in front of a queen sitting on a throne.

Do you find learning a language to be embarrassing? It’s a very normal human emotion, but embarrassment seems to be worse than death for some. Just thinking about embarrassment makes me feel embarrassed! So why do we feel embarrassed when we learn languages, and what can be done about it?

I read a paper titled “Embarrassment in English language classrooms” by Khajavy et al. (2025) to learn more about what embarrassment is and why it stops me in my tracks during my language classes. Embarrassment is defined as “a social, self-conscious emotion in which a person feels some level of discomfort and awkwardness” (Khajavy et al. 2025:182). I hate to say it, but embarrassment is just all in our heads. It can feel difficult to even explain why we feel embarrassed since it’s entirely based on how we imagine what others are thinking. Overall, it’s an emotion that depends on how we assess situations that we’re experiencing in the moment, so it might vary from person to person. For me, I get super embarrassed when I’m unprepared for class, but others might not feel the same way. This isn’t to say that feeling embarrassment isn’t valid—we all experience it, whether it’s visible or not.

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