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Multilingualism

city scape drawing

Can endangered languages be saved? This new book may have the answer.

Books

New York City is home to over 700 languages, but some will soon cease to exist. Is there still time to save them? The World’s Carolyn Beeler talks to linguist and author Ross Perlin about his new book, “Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York.”

Multilingual liaisons work as "cultural brokers" to support students who are refugees in Vermont.

Multilingual liaisons are ‘cultural brokers’ for refugee students in this Vermont school district 

On Course
Dutch-born author of Lingo Gaston Dorren. Dorren is pictured here in Turkey reading the German translation of book originally written in English: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. Dorren's first language is Limburgish.

In parts of Europe, speaking six languages is no big thing

Culture
Sign in Beirut celebrating the hybrid Arabic/French/English that many Lebanese like to speak.

Three mother tongues in one

Culture
A second-grader leads her class in a Chinese exercise at Santa Clara Elementary School in southern Utah.

Utah bets big on foreign language learning, but not everyone is on board

Education
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Enter the school that’s raising the bar for bilingual education

Education

“We need to catch up with the rest of the world,” says a high school principal in Oregon. His school is part of a national push to offer students a bilingual seal on their diplomas.

The benefits of being bilingual

Environment

Fluency in just one language in the 21st century is a competitive disadvantage, and it could be holding back your brain. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, Yudhijit Bhattacharjee wrote that bilingual people outperform single language speakers in cognitive tests of all kinds.

The Bilingual Advantage

Americans have long debated whether the U.S. should have an official state language. The issue has been back in the spotlight in recent days since Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said, “There are other states with more than one language, like Hawaii, but to be a state of the United States, English must be the […]

English Immersion: The Bilingual Education Debate

In the last 15 years, California, Arizona, and Massachusetts have all replaced bilingual education with English immersion programs as a way to address the achievement gap between native and non-native speakers. Statistics show that only 11 percent of California's English learners reached proficiency last year. How to teach new immigrants English has become an increasingly […]

The World

Up Close With Language Super Learners

The World in Words

The latest World in Words podcast continues a conversation with Michael Erard about his new book, Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners.

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