Last month, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to include the World Language Advancement and Readiness Act (WLARA) as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2020. However, the NDAA was passed in the House without a single Republican vote, marking the first time in history that the annual defense…
Translation Commons is a social-civil society partner of the International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019 (IYIL2019) and invites volunteers to their joint projects. According to UNESCO around 40% of the estimated 6,700 languages spoken around the world are in danger of disappearing and the fact that most of these are indigenous languages puts the cultures…
Noah Webster (1758–1843) was variously called Schoolmaster to the Nation, the Father of American Scholarship and Education, and the Forgotten Founding Father. He saw the untapped promise of the new republic. He was afire with the conviction that a U.S. no longer politically dependent on England should also become independent in language. In his Dissertations…
The Google Translate camera app has long been a source of quick and convenient translation. Simply hold up the camera to text that is in a language that you don’t understand, whether it’s a menu, street sign, or poster, and the camera will (theoretically) translate the text for you into the language that you understand….
According to a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, any toddlers who have more exposure to other children, such as those in daycare, may be particularly good at certain word learning skills. Young language learners acquire their first language(s) from the speech they are exposed to in their environment. For some…
The three federally recognized tribes of the Cherokee people have declared a State of Emergency for the Cherokee language. Officials from the Cherokee Nation, Keetoowah Band, and the Easter Band met in a Tri-Council meeting at Kituwah on June 27. The Tri-Council to also passed a resolution during their meeting to work together to revitalize…
Whether or not the U.S. Census 2020 includes a citizenship question, it is likely that thousands and maybe even millions of people will not take part in the count due to concerns about how the data will be used or to misinformation about its relevance and importance. Regrettably, the people most likely to remain excluded…
In an open letter published in Le Parisien last month from the French Language Collective (Le collectif langue française) with over 100 signatories, French president Emmanuel Macron was urged to protect the French language from the “dictatorship” of English. “The French language is in a bad state. Stifled by the influence of British and American…
The Instituto Cervantes and the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID) are organizing training programs for Spanish teachers in five African countries: Benin, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, and Gabon. The program will expand to other sub-Saharan countries to “reinforce the status and presence” of Spanish on the continent. The director of…