The World in Words 51: The CIA’s foreign language deficit, a linguistic fantasy island, and learning Hawaiian in song

Add this to the CIA’s troubles: the agency is nowhere near multilingual enough. Despite urging from Congress and the 9/11 Commission, the CIA remains overwhelmingly English-only. Also, what Hollywood might make of one linguist’s social experiment: he proposed marooning six families who spoke mutually incomprehensible languages on an uninhabitated island to see if they would create a new language. Finally, Hawaiian language lessons from musician Keali’i Reichel.