I doubt it’s surprising to anyone that the library staff likes to learn new things. One of the joys of answering questions (about 1,700 each month) is learning with our patrons. We’ve learned crafts, recipes, repairs, trivia and more thanks to the questions that come to our desks. We also get to learn about the various cultures in our community and hear the languages that are spoken here. Thanks to this inspiration, several of us are brushing up on some non-English languages. Spanish, German, French, and American Sign Language top our lists right now.
We have an online resource, Mango Languages, available to anyone with a Pryor Library account that we’re using for our spoken language lessons (we’re using other resources to learn ASL). Mango has more than 70 different languages available online and through their app. It’s very user-friendly and the lessons are geared to get new speakers into conversations quickly.
Mango also offers English courses for non-native speakers. These courses use various mother tongues as their foundations to make them more useful for non-English speakers. I took enough French in school that I can confirm the English lessons (at least the ones based in French) are just as useful and easy to navigate as the other language lessons are.
While Mango is our most robust language learning resource, we also have materials to help you learn various languages on our shelves (books, audiobooks, and videos) and available through our digital library, Overdrive. American Sign Language lessons and information are available both in the library and on Overdrive. (I highly recommend everyone learn a little American Sign Language, but it’s especially great for babies! It’s fun and useful!)
Let us know what languages you want to explore and we’ll help you get started!