NEWSWORTHY
Facebook adds Alaska's Inupiaq as language option among community translation tools
Britt'Nee Brower grew up in a largely Inupiat Eskimo town in Alaska's far north, but English was the only language spoken at home. Today, she knows a smattering of Inupiaq from childhood language classes at school in the community of Utqiagvik. Brower even published an ...
America is one of the few cultures with insults for smart people
Americans enjoy the dubious distinction of having a high degree of linguistic diversity it comes to mocking the smart and the educated.
Trump calls Comey a 'slime ball,' sparking rush to dictionaries
U.S. President Donald Trump's denunciation of former FBI Director James Comey as a "slime ball" on Friday triggered a jump of 60,000 percent in look-ups for the word on the website of dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's. The disparaging term was among the top words looked up ...
English school chain ECC Co. will launch a Japanese course in the Philippines in June in partnership with a local college amid growing interest in the language among Filipinos. The Osaka-based firm and the University of Perpetual Help plan to provide a 6-month e-learning program, ...
Two Koreas' Olympic ice hockey team faces unexpected challenge: language
The unified Korean women's ice hockey team faced an unexpected challenge at their first joint training session, reports said Monday — vastly different hockey terminology on either side of the divided peninsula. Seven decades of almost total separation after the 1950-53 Korean War, with all ...
Iran bans English in primary schools after leaders' warning of 'cultural invasion'
Iran has banned the teaching of English in primary schools, a senior education official said, after Islamic leaders warned that early learning of the language opened the way to a Western "cultural invasion." "Teaching English in government and non-government primary schools in the official curriculum ...
Rural Gunma city to start English-immersion program targeting urban students
A rural city in Gunma Prefecture will launch a program next year offering a year-long English-immersion dormitory experience for junior high and high school students. A three-month trial course set to run from this August has attracted more than 1,900 applications from across the country, ...
'Gamified' language app Duolingo finally adds Japanese
Just as many readers are swapping paperbacks for tablets, many language learners are trading in their textbooks for apps so they can study on the go. One of the most popular language applications on the market is Duolingo, a program that "gamifies" learning by rewarding ...
Shiga city offers Spanish, Portuguese classes for children of migrant families
A public-private program has been underway in a Shiga Prefecture city to teach Spanish or Portuguese to children of migrants from Latin America working at local manufacturing plants. The program in Konan, launched in 2013, started after local officials found many children of Latin American ...
From high school nightmare to living the baseball dream
When Taira Uematsu returns home after the big league season, the San Francisco Giants' bullpen catcher spends a lot of time teaching baseball, and the most important lesson may be, "Have fun." Uematsu rediscovered that fun for the game in the U.S. after three years ...
China to push Mandarin for minorities, protect dying tongues
China will "unswervingly" stick to the promotion of Mandarin for ethnic minorities, the government said on Tuesday of a policy that has ignited sporadic protests. The government will also step up protection for threatened tongues on the verge of extinction. Language politics have long been ...
Want to learn Arabic, Korean or Swahili? Refugee language tutors can help
As university students mill around a bright and airy study hall in London, Eiad Zinah converses in his native Arabic with a female student from Germany. It is the first time the pair have met for a language tuition session — and it is the ...
