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Africanized versions of the Arabic alphabet are collectively called "Ajami." Much as the Latin-based alphabet is used to write many languages, including English, Ajami is not a language itself, but the alphabetic script used to write a language: Arabic-derived letters to write a non-Arabic-in this case, African-language. "Ajami" derives from the Arabic a'jamiy, which means "foreigner" or, more specifically, "non-Arab." Historically, Arabs used the word to refer to all things Persian or non-Arab, a usage they borrowed from the ancient Greeks. Yet over the last few centuries, across Islamic Africa, "Ajami" came to mean an African language written in Arabic script that was often adapted phonetically to facilitate local usages and pronunciations across the continent, from the Ethiopian highlands in the east to the lush jungles of Sierra Leone in the west. The use of Ajami is tied to the religious spread of Islam. From its beginning, Islam was a literate religion. Iqra' ("read") is the first word of God's revelations to Muhammad that became the Qur'an. Knowledge of Islam meant knowledge of the revealed word of God: the Qur'an. Consequently, wherever Islam went, it established centers of learning, usually attached to mosques, where children learned to read and write Arabic in much the same way that European and American children have often been taught literacy by using the Bible. For members of African societies where oral tradition predominated, Arabic was the first written language to which they had been exposed.

Babies only hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language, scientists have discovered. The study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought.

An important area of the field of second/foreign language teaching and learning is pragmatics -- the appropriate use of language in conducting speech acts such as apologizing, requesting, complimenting, refusing, thanking. Meaning is not just encoded in word semantics alone, but is affected by the situation, the speaker and the listener.A speech act is, according to linguist Kent Bach, "the performance of several acts at once, distinguished by different aspects of the speaker's intention: there is the act of saying something, what one does in saying it, such as requesting or promising, and how one is trying to affect one's audience". Speech acts can be broken down into 3 levels: 1. locutionary: saying something 2. illocutionary: the speaker's intent in performing the act. For example, if the locutionary act in an interaction is the question "Is there any salt?" the implied illocutionary request is "Can someone pass the salt to me?"; 3. In some instances, there's a third perlocutionary level: the act's effect on the feelings, thoughts or actions of either the speaker or the listener, e.g., inspiring, persuading or deterring. The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) at University of Minnesota provides a collection of descriptions of speech acts, as revealed through empirical research. The material is designed to help language teachers and advanced learners to be more aware of the sociocultural use of the language they are teaching or learning. These speech acts include: Apologies Complaints Compliments/Responses Greetings Invitations Refusals Requests Thanks

This article explains a little bit about a study done testing how well people could learn Hungarian words in two different ways: listen to spoken words and repeat them back or listen to words said rhythmically or sung. The study found that those who listened to the rhythmically or sung words were better at remembering the vocabulary both short term and long term. This shows that perhaps music can help students trigger memory recall.

The Waverly Pilot is claimed to be the first "smart earpiece" capable of translating between two languages, similar to the BabelFish in Douglas Adams' sci-fi novel, _The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy_, providing instantaneous translation to its wearer. While this first generation device works only when speaking to someone also wearing an earpiece, future generations could listen to everything happening nearby, so pairs of devices won't be needed. It is designed to work offline so it won't incur data charges when used overseas.

An article that argues that a good way to become proficient in a foreign language is to practise writing in it.

Tibetan Entrepreneur detained for one and a half months according to his family. He writes and posts things to his Sina Weibo account and many of his posts express how he feels about the gradual extinction of Tibetan culture, he wants to enhance bilingual education. Chinese-ruled Tibetan regions have Mandarin taught as the main language and teach Tibetan like a foreign language.

Although not spoken, it counts as an actual language.

Chinese characters have been an obstacle preventing the development of Chinese proficiency for learners of Chinese whose native language does not have characters. A substantial literature review identified linguistic, pedagogical, and political factors as causes of those difficulties. Tone changes represent different meanings of a word. Compound characters include the phonetic component radicals that do not always sound the same as the phonetic radicals. These unique linguistic features of the Chinese language add even more challenges for learning of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL).Technology integration has been found to facilitate the teaching and learning foreign languages in many efficient and effective ways.

"Learning a foreign language is never easy, but contrary to common wisdom, it is possible for adults to process a language the same way a native speaker does. And over time, the processing improves even when the skill goes unused, researchers are reporting. ... the immersion group displayed the full brain patterns of a native speaker." Full study: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0032974

Fascinating article on language learning using an app called Memrise. The company's goal: to take all of cognitive science's knowhow about what makes information memorable, and combine it with all the knowhow from social gaming about what makes an activity fun and addictive, and develop a web app that can help anyone memorise anything. Two takeaways for language learning, and acquiring and retaining any subject matter: 1. Elaborative encoding. The more context and meaning you can attach to a piece of information, the likelier it is that you'll be able to fish it out of your memory at some point in the future. And the more effort you put into creating the memory, the more durable it will be. One of the best ways to elaborate a memory is to try visually to imagine it in your mind's eye. If you can link the sound of a word to a picture representing its meaning, it'll be far more memorable than simply learning the word by rote. Create mnemonics for vocabulary. 2. "Spaced repetition". Cognitive scientists have known for more than a century that the best way to secure memories for the long term is to impart them in repeated sessions, distributed across time, with other material interleaved in between. If you want to make information stick, it's best to learn it, go away from it for a while, come back to it later, leave it behind again, and once again return to it - to engage with it deeply across time. Our memories naturally degrade, but each time you return to a memory, you reactivate its neural network and help to lock it in. One study found that students studying foreign language vocabulary can get just as good long-term retention from having learning sessions spaced out every two months as from having twice as many learning sessions spaced every two weeks. To put that another way: you can learn the same material in half the total time if you don't try to cram.

Fred Zindi Music Have you ever thought of the reasons why our music finds it an uphill struggle to make it in neighbouring countries? In October, last year, I gave 10 copies of Jah Payzah's "Jerusarema" CD to delegates at a music conference in Brazzaville, Congo and asked them to listen to it, then give me feedback on what they thought about the music.

The Académie française, established in 1635, is the official authority on the French language, establishing the standards for proper French. One of the aims of the Académie, whose 40 members include writers, linguists, historians and philosophers, is to protect French from foreign, notably "Anglo-Saxon" invasions. To that end, it comes up with French equivalents to pesky Anglicisms that slip into French, for example changing email into courriel.

When learning a second language, studies show that people exposed to more than one foreign language will have an easier time acquiring one of them. Subconsciously, our brains are always working to learn new information by taking information from "the background." Researchers at the University of Washington held an experiment to gain more information on this theory.

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For even more delicious, globally-inspired phrases, check this link out: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3639409/Drachenfutter-Saudade-Onsay.html.

Abstract : According to Byram (1997), intercultural competence means to be able to interact efficiently with persons from various countries in a foreign language. The paper introduces a new (...)

Think you haven't got the aptitude to learn a foreign language? New research led by Northwestern University neuroscientists suggests that the problem, quite literally, could be in your head.