According to José Luís Carneiro, Portugal’s secretary of state for Portuguese communities abroad, “By 2060, the Portuguese language is predicted to be spoken by 380 million people, and by the end of the century that number could increase to 500 million Portuguese speakers worldwide.” Carneiro claimed that “there are very clear indicators related to [Portuguese’s]…
Lauren Cortinas presents a solution for the youngest learners of Mandarin In October 2014, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing entirely in Mandarin Chinese. While his delivery was not perfect, the speech itself was a nod to what so many business and community leaders already know: Mandarin Chinese, the most…
The United Nations celebrated its ninth Chinese Language Day last month at its offices worldwide. Celebrations in New York included lectures on Chinese culture, film screenings, panel discussions on education, and art exhibitions. Lectures on Chinese poetry, calligraphy, and painting attracted UN staff from around the world. The event also offered them an opportunity to…
Last month’s Zurong Dialect Film Festival, one of China’s campaigns to preserve language diversity, received 582 entries featuring various dialects in just its second year. The number of entries doubled from last year, coming from all over the country. Zhao Yuhe received the Best Actress Award at the festival hosted by Zhanjiang, in south China’s…
A team from the U.S. has won the 15th “Chinese Bridge” language proficiency competition for secondary school students in Kunming, the capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province. During the final round on Saturday evening, U.S. team beat out the winning teams from each continent: Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Mozambique, and Australia. The series of contests, which focuses…