This works well for me, too. For example, I will read in one language, watch news in another, go shopping and play tennis in another - and keep this pattern going for say a month or two. Then I will panic and notice I am losing vocabulary in a language and so switch to reading in that one for a while. It really works because the activities are quite separate and because the activities are mostly habitual,
Justin
Well Scottish Gaelic has at least a good radio service, e.g. todayās schedule:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radionangaidheal/programmes/schedules#on-now
It seems to be as full as Radio Cymruās.
For Scottish-Gaelic TV, there is BBC Alba. Just found the schedule, and it is fuller than I had realised:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/schedules/bbcalba/20160325
I had got the impression that it was not as good as S4C. Not sure if I can actually back that up except to note that English subtitles seem to be hard-wired in, so you canāt turn them off, and Iāve not seen the option of Gaelic subtitles.
Sadly, the TV service will almost certainly be geo-restricted, but the radio should be available internationally.
Thereās also a good choice of interesting textbooks for Scottish Gaelic, apparently. I hope SSI will do a course in it one day. It should get more recognition worldwide than it does now.
It wouldnāt help you, Bach! It didnāt have to be anything a Russian would recognise, as we were merely translating scientific papers! Our very English Prof wrote the alphabet on the board and told us the sounds. I am totally sure he had a terribly English accent!
To @mikeellwood BBC Alba is comparatively new. It is presumed that so few people actually speak Gaelic (the Galic!) that English subtitles are necessary to get any decent viewing figures, All Scots are taught to read English, so deaf Scots in Gaelic areas will speak sign-language and read English, I suppose!
I wish I had your gift - but I donāt. Neither do I have a very good ear for music, so I am wondering if I should even attempt learning a tonal language. I am trying to choose a language to learn in 2017 and one on the short list is Thai which is tonal. Has anyone in the Forum experience in learning a tonal language like Chinese Mandarin or Thai. I donāt want to spend a year of my life trying to climb a mountain that is impossible for me to climb. On the other hand, I would hate not to try if it were possible for me to do it.
Iām mostly interested in conversing - I know that the glyphics with these languages are another level of complexity but I am less interested in writing or reading in these languages. I just want to be able to speak.
Can anyone shed any light on the practicality of undertaking learning conversational Thai for a Westerner without a great ear for music,
Justin
Iād suggest that you should if you want - musical ability is limited to being able to between four (I think in the case of Thai) ascending and descending sound patterns - certainly no perfect pitch requirements. An Australian friend of mine has managed to learn Thai fluently
Someone suggested that I might be able to sing!! No!! Before my lungs were shot I had an interesting baritone (Yes, I am female!)
[There was a small boy on radio when I was young, called Horace, with a very deep voice and I got called Horace because I sounded like him!]
People who did not know me got the giggles in church when they realised I was singing below the altos! But I was never endowed with perfect pitch. In fact mine was so bad I had to calculate where to find a harmonic in sound experiments in physics and if I got the maths wrong, woe betide me!
But I pick up accents, even when I donāt want to. (Story of return from Paris with strong Quebecois accent! 
)
However, I gave up trying to learn Chinese because I couldnāt tell the tonal differences! I realised Iād be likely to say, āYou look like a rubbish sack!ā when I meant to say āYou look lovely in that!ā - or words to that effect!!
Have I already confessed to you, @henddraig fach, just how much I love your posts? I always wait for them:)
Blushing muchly!! Mmmā¦ Coining words too!! Still, Dylan Thomas did that, so I donāt feel bad about it! Mind, he had better reason and better words! But thanks. Iāve been writing rubbish for more years than youāve lived, so practice does help!
Iāve revived my interest in Norwegian, mainly thanks to a recent trip where I enjoyed hearing announcements in Norwegian, English and German - quite a multilingual treat - and began to appreciate more fully than before quite how tonal it is. Of the 3 closely related Scandinavian languages, Norwegian and Swedish are tonal, while Danish achieves a similar linguistic effect using a glottal stop rather than tones. Norwegian only uses 2 tones; Swedish is probably the same, but Iām not 100% sure. SSi would be perfect for this, because although you can explain how the tones work on paper until you are blue in the face, the only way you can hope to āgetā them is by hearing them. And hearing them a lot, I should think.
Thatās so interesting - I wouldnāt bat an eyelid if someone suggested I learn Norwegian or Swedish - Iād start straight away. Yet, Iām paralysed with fear while thinking about learning Chinese Mandarin or Thai.
I just need a gentle push or a kick up the āben olā to pick one of these for my project for 2017. You can tell I really want to convince myself to do it, canāt you!!!
Justin .
Make it Vietnamese and Iāll learn with you 
I have a good friend who is Vietnamese - so if you need help I will ask her if she will give a hand. Eirwen and I are in love with the Thais and Thailand. Having said that some of the best food we ever had was in Saigon and Hanoi.
Justin
Yes, I LOVE Vietnamese food. I actually have a friend from Vietnam who lives in Alberta, Canada with her French Canadian husband. Their two children have been trilingual from birth, but theyāre still young and my friend is very busy so combined with the time difference I canāt see us getting many practice sessions in. I think Iād like a learning partner initially as that would help me to be motivated. But itās a 2017 plan as well. My 2016 plan is to bring back the languages I used to speak reasonably well and get those up to speed before tackling another.
My brother has learnt some Thai as his partner is Thai and they spend quite a lot of time in Thailand. He is tone deaf though, has never been able to sing in tune, and struggles to hear the difference between the various tones. His partner can understand him in context though she does giggle a lot about his pronunciation. He confesses that others in Thailand seem to find him hard to understand and he gets a lot of blank looks, but he keeps plugging on.
Thatās interesting, I did not know that. How are they tonal, e.g. do they have phonemes that are distinguished on tone alone, like Chinese, Vietnamese, etc?
Hi - I think I need a āprobationary periodā prior to making a decision to commit a whole year to learning a tonal language. Perhaps a two month test that would also serve to build a strong foundation - so itās time well spent if hopefully I go ahead.
So Iām thinking early Winter 2016 of doing some sort of really intensive pre-work on practising 'tonal" phrases. If I find Iām insulting people when I mean to compliment them - then maybe pause for a re-think at that point - which should be around the end of 2016.
Justin
Well, you gave me hope:) Maybe one day I will become that eloquent too)
Perhaps we need a tonal tune-up for tonal language lovers 
Justin
Itās not quite the same; to my knowledge, the tones donāt operate on a syllable basis but on a word basis there. So only words with at least two syllables can have a tone on them.
My favourite example is anden, which depending on the tone means āthe duckā or āthe spiritā (though I always forget which of the two sounds is which). I believe it has something to do with whether the root word was one syllable in Old Norse or two ā the indefinite forms in modern Swedish are and āduckā and ande āspiritā.
How the tones sound depends on the area, but the version I learned has a falling tone on the first syllable and neutral tone on the second for one tone, and falling tone on both syllables for the other tone (so it goes down-up-down: both falls start from roughly the same pitch).
If I read Wiktionary right (entry for anden), then 'anden is āthe duckā and 'anāden is āthe spiritā.
In Norwegian, I think this particular pair doesnāt work (āspiritā is Ć„nd rather than ande), but bĆønner ābeansā versus bĆønder āfarmersā is a minimal pair there, I think
Well for Norwegian, and bear in mind that Iām not much more than a beginner, there are 2 tones:
Tones can change the meaning of a word:
Hender (single tone) = hands
Hender (double tone) = happens
Ć„nden (single tone) = spirit
Ć„nden (double tone) = the breath
The above is from TYS Norwegian and also describes how to sound these tones with some example words, but I find their instructions impossible to follow from the text alone.
Here is a popular Norwegian author, Erlend Loe talking with a female student. Iāve been told she is probably speaking with an Oslo accent, and he with a Trondheim one. Dialects/accents are a big deal in Norwegian:
The main feature that I notice are the words ending on an up-tone, but I canāt distinguish single tones from double-tones.