Representatives Cheri Bustos (IL-17) and John Katko (NY-24) recently reintroduced the bipartisan Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Program Act. The bill would establish a competitive grant program, run by the Department of Education, for colleges and universities to expand study abroad opportunities for undergraduate students. It is named after the late Illinois senator Paul Simon,…
Toward the end of next year, the Cervantes Institute will open its first center in Los Angeles, which will be “the home of Hispanic cultures,” according to Cervantes director Luis Garcia Montero. Announcing the project at the Los Angeles Central Library last week, Garcia Montero said that Los Angeles was a bilingual city “where Spanish…
From 2020, high school graduates in Hungary are required to possess at least one upper-intermediate language certificate or a higher-level Hungarian Matura from one language to be able to meet new university admission standards. Until now, the system worked slightly differently—university students had been expected to submit their language certificates in order to be able…
Some say love is the universal language of humanity, but fear can work just as well. We’ve compiled a list of foreign language movies to both expose viewers to foreign languages and scare their pants off. While it may be difficult to find foreign language horror films in theaters, thanks to streaming services like Netflix…
A new app called Taleemabad is bridging the gap of students overlooked by traditional schooling in Pakistan. While 51% of people in the country are expected to own smartphones by 2020, only 52% of children can read a simple sentence by the time they reach secondary education. Even in areas with no electricity supply, people…
The national Inuit organization of Canada has decided on a new standard of writing for a unified Inkutut writing system. The system is called Inuktut Qaliujaaqpait and uses Roman orthography (the alphabet used in English) rather than syllabics. Syllabics look like rows of circles, squares and triangles. The written language will be able to be…
Univoice Corporation, the developer of a language-learning platform that teaches languages exclusively through music, has started its first learning class in Tijuana, Mexico. This inaugural class focuses on teaching Spanish to English speakers in an immersive, collaborative, and fun environment. The free classes began in August at Espacio Migrante, a cultural center and shelter for…
Multiple recent posts on Facebook and Twitter that claim that the United Nations (UN) has officially defined Cantonese as a language and not a dialect and that it is not recognized as one of the six “leading languages in daily use” has turned out to be false. The UN told AFP Fact check that the…
On Sept 18th, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5 (CA AB 5) into law which will take effect in January. The new California state law reclassifies a large number of independent contractors as employees, making them entitled to labor protections, such as minimum wage and unemployment benefits. While AB 5 was written with…
People whose first language is not English deal with additional hurdles to their healthcare. For non-native English speakers, talking to a doctor or dentist can mean listening to unfamiliar medical terms that may be difficult to understand. Trained medical interpreters can bridge the gap between patients, doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. Often, unqualified but well-intentioned…