U.S. President Donald Trump signed a measure that extends federal grant programs aimed at preserving Indigenous languages and expands eligibility so more tribes can participate. The measure cleared the House with bipartisan support, while Senate approved the measure in June this year. The legislation, named the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Programs Reauthorization Act, was…
Humans have a breadth of emotions and are on a constant search to express them through language, though sometimes we find that words in one language don’t have a translatable counterpart in another. Norwegians say forelsket, which describes the feeling and experiences at the very beginning of falling in love, while the indigenous Baining people…
China’s giant tech company Baidu, has surpassed both Microsoft and Google when it comes to AI and language learning. The company, which is sometimes referred to as China’s Google, achieved the highest ever score in the General Language Understanding Evaluation (Glue), which is widely considered to be the benchmark for AI language understanding. It consists…
Boclips for Teachers is a video platform that offers an extensive library of engaging content to bring academic topics to life for all ages while deepening students’ understanding of a variety of subjects. Videos that support language learning across English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Mandarin, and Sign Language are available. The platform is a school-safe alternative…
New research suggests that speech may not be dependent on the “descended larynx” which could mean that our ancestors were talking 20 million years ago Baboons raised in semi-liberty produce about ten vocalizations, associated with different ethological situations, that may be considered as proto-vowels, at the dawn of the emergence of speech. © Laboratoire de…
On December 9, 2019, the House and Senate agreed to establish a new world language grant program as a part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The program, called the World Language Advancement and Readiness Program, directs the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Education to create a competitive grant program for…
December 18th is World Arabic Language Day and this year’s theme is “Arabic Language and Artificial Intelligence.” Celebrated since 2012, World Arabic Language Day marks the anniversary of the United Nation’s 1973 adoption of Arabic as one of its official languages. In a message to the public, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said, “While it poses…
In November, the California Department of Education (CDE) was awarded a $37.5 million federal Comprehensive Literacy State Development grant which will allow for the expansion of current literacy efforts statewide over the next five years. “Many of the students who are struggling with reading comprehension or are not reading at grade level are our most…
The U.S. dictionary Merriam Webster has announced that the gender-neutral singular pronoun ‘they’ is the word of the year for 2019. The word, which only entered the dictionary to be used as a singular term this year, is often used by people whose gender identity is nonbinary. The singular, nonbinary they was also prominent in…
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. House Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Members of Congress, and advocates celebrate the passage of the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Programs Reauthorization Act, a bipartisan bill to safeguard and revitalize Native American languages. The bill honors Esther Martinez, an Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo traditional storyteller and Tewa language advocate who passed…