According to a new study, twenty-five percent of Hawaii's citizens speak a non-English language at home. (For contrast, the national average is 21%.) The number of non-English speakers in Hawaii has risen by 44% over the last thirty years, proving Hawaii's language diversity.

There are already many language-learning apps, with Duolingo being one of the most popular. A new app, Lingohop, aims to teach people more than just simple vocabulary and grammatical structures; it wants to customize vocabulary and grammar for each person.

University of Washington students have created gloves called SignAloud. These gloves sense hand motions and translate the meanings, allowing more people to understand sign language.

Linguistic scientists have now identified the most confusing sayings in the British-English language. Most of these phrases come from historical events and military slang.

The French language is about to change. Scores of words are being tossed out, and many more are being simplified. Even an accent, the circumflex (ˆ) will no longer be used. I have to wonder why.

Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer, two linguists who have been studying the Disney princess franchise, have discovered that, in the average "modern" Disney princess movie, male characters have three times as many lines as women in Disney princess movies. Though Snow White has a nearly equal split, Cinderella actually features more women, and Sleeping Beauty gives almost three-fourths of the lines to women. On the other hand, The Little Mermaid has 68% of lines delivered by males, Beauty and the Beast males have 71%, Aladdin males have 90%, Pocahontas males have 76%, and Mulan males have 77%. Fun Fact: Frozen has two heroines, but women still have only 41% of the lines.

The University of Southampton recently discovered that there is "no difference in the time it takes people from different countries to read and process different languages." If reading in their respective native languages, two people from different countries will take the same amount of time to read text. In other words, languages are all equally efficient in conveying meaning.

Teacher Vidya Tandanki brings children ranging from 9 to 14 into her home three days a week and teaches them Telugu. Telugu, a common tongue in India, is rare to hear from the mouths of second- and third-generation Indian Americans. (Los Angeles Times)

In late January 2016, the British government revealed a plan to invest $28 million in English classes for immigrants. If unable to pass a language test after 36 months in Britain, immigrants will risk deportation. Britain's plan soon became a laughingstock after its Home Office announced a "New English langauge test for family route migrants." The Washington Post covers the criticism and the viewpoints of those who have seen the mistake - and those who have made it.