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After Great Britain left the European Union this year, its said that it would try to trade more with China. However, Mandarin Chinese education in Britain is not very extensive, and both the government private industries are taking a new approach - immersion and bilingual schools - to try to teach young children Mandarin. The UK hopes for 5000 fluent students by 2020.

This article discusses how "trendy slangs" are becoming more appealing to foreigners wanting to learn english. In the UK a survey was conducted to determine the type of slang these foreigners are hearing amongst social media platforms. This article relates how many slangs have a root in Multicultural London English (MLE) or African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). This article informs those learning english the type of slangs to use and when appropriate to do so. The slangs range from an older generation to current-ish slangs.

Jaber George Jabbour, a Syrian banker living in the UK, has invented SaypU, an alphabet with none of the indecipherable squiggles of traditional phonetic alphabets. A simplified universal alphabet would end not only misunderstanding, he asserts, but would help foster world peace. SaypU contains 23 letters from the Roman alphabet as well as a back to front e. The article also addresses larger issues of language and phonetic standardization and utopian language plans.

A very short article on how The Saith Seren Welsh centre in Wrexham has become the first location in Wales chosen to be a "bilingual town" in a scheme to promote the use of the Welsh language.

"We've also had wars on drugs, obesity, idleness, poverty, oil-price speculators, science, saturated fat (part of the "battle of the spreads"), and Waitrose (the aggressor was M&S)... Then, of course, there's the "war on terror", George W Bush's response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001."

Hey, I thought I bookmarked this one and now Diigo is crediting you!

Interesting blog: Observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK

Throughout the world, languages are going extinct at a rapid rate. Many people have been investigating to see if the internet is to blame for language extinction, or if it is simply a reflection of what is happening in real-world. Some linguists even believe that small languages are given an advantage on the internet because it is a place for languages to be expressed.

Long lost footage documenting the deaf community's fight for civil rights is being shown in cinemas across the UK. The British Deaf Association is marking its 125th anniversary with a film made from footage dating back to the 1930s which was rescued from a skip.

The British Broadcasting System (BBC) World Service recently began producing digital news content in Naijá (Nigerian Pidgin). Though Naijá originated as a pidgin, trade communication between Portuguese and English speakers and natives of the Niger Delta, linguistically-speaking, its modern incarnation is actually a creole exhibiting systematic grammar and syntax. The service will bring language diversity to the news and current affairs that West and Central Africa audiences receive, where Pidgin is one of the most widely-spoken languages. The decision to make the service digital only was based on the fact that African people prefer to read content on their mobile phones. Itʻs also interesting to note the transformation of Pidgin, once solely an oral language, into standardized text-based language.

Launches a flash application in which you can watch muscles of the face engage to reveal certain emotions...useful in detection of lying or "fake smiles."