Creating your own language learning material with chess books!

It's hard to find language learning material for very niche topics like chess, in particular if you don't just look for a page with all the names of the pieces. In this article, I want to show you how your chess books can help you!

First of all, in case you are actually looking for a list of names of chess pieces in German, English, Portuguese, Spanish or Italian, I actually do have a page for you to download in my personal website. Check out this link for an overview for the chess pieces in 5 languages (including extra info for the algebraic notation in those languages). But let's come back to the topic of this article: How to use your general chess material for language learning.

A few weeks ago, my coach recommended a wonderful book about endgames to me: "100 endgames you must know" by Jesus De la Villa. When we were speaking about the book, my coach told me about the German version of the book as we are doing the chess classes in German, living in Germany, always talking in German to each other etc. Later, when I was looking for the book online, I realized that the author is Spanish, so, most likely the German book is just a translation. Following that, I was looking for an English version that I found quite quickly. Next step: Is there a Spanish version, too? Yes, that one does really exist! My language learner heart blew up!

In another article, I have already explained how a monolingual book about a topic can be a great source for language learning ("Fachsprache lernen: Schachbegriffe mit der kleinen Schachschule"; article in German). In that case, I was discussing the German book "Die kleine Schachschule: Regeln, Strategien und Spielzüge verständlich erklärt" (2023) by Jonathan Carlstedt.

If you reach a certain point in your language learning path, you will be able to learn new words or concepts by simply reading in, talking in, writing in, listening to your target language. There might be no need for you to get bilingual material. But what until then? What if the original text is just a bit too difficult to get the gist of it? If you can get the text in another language that you are more familiar with, you can check for expressions and words there and you can double check if you understood the gist of the text correctly.

In the English version of "100 Endgames you must know" by Jesus de la Villa, 6th improved edition from 2023, [the Spanish one is "Los 100 finales que hay que saber" by Jesús de la Villa], they quote Elisabeth Vicary, USCF Online, who says that Alexandra Kosteniuk learnt the 100 endgames from the book with flashcards. The position was on one side, the solution on another.

If you are already a language learner, you are definitely familiar with flashcards and how to learn with them. Why not creating some bilingual fun with these chess flashcards?

Step 1: Understanding and learning the endgame idea,
Step 2: check for the description/chess terms for the position in your target language and in your own language.
Step 3: Create flashcards with position + description & description language A + description language B.
**Step 4: Have some bilingual fun **

Sidenote: I don't think my coach had any idea what can of language worms I would open when he recommended this book to me to improve my endgame knowledge but I'm very grateful that he did!