I came across interesting data on home language use (hat tip, Rich Robin) here:

A few highlights:

Of all the states, California has the highest percent (42%) of the population speaking a language other than English at home.
In the US the top ten languages spoken at home are (in order) Spanish, Chinese, French, Tagalog (!), [...]

Are you a.) creative b.) artistic c.) romantic d.) disposessed e.) expressive, or f.) just plain cool? Tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket Day!!! Here are the instructions (thanks, Billette!!):

Print/write out your favorite “pome”, tuck it into your pocket (wallet, purse, thong, etc.) with it poking out, and [...]

Oui, oui….Mais

Oui, oui, je voise le « P »

Mais ça suffit de me comprendre quand je crie « resBect resBect »

Oui, oui je ne comprends pas l’esprit de ta société très bien

Mais sache-le : Toi, tu ignores le mien

Oui, oui je porte une kippa, une croix, un voile cela crée pour [...]

This article in the Washington Post raises an important dilemma facing a new generation of American spies:  How to speak Farsi like a native when University Persian studies programs are built around antiquated notions of academic scholarship:

Fewer than a dozen universities grant degrees in Persian, said Pardis Minuchehr, a [...]

In his column in the Washington Post, “Why waste time on a foreign language?” Jay Mathews argues that much foreign language education in high school is a waste of time–this after mentioning that two of his own children “were serious Spanish students…and today, as adults, use the language at [...]

The event will take place in 370 Dwinelle from 3:00 to 5:30pm.

Check out this article!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/arts/25abroad.html?pagewanted=3&ref=general&src=me

To all who attended the talk by Usree and Dave at the UC Consortium Conference at UC San Diego, thank you for coming! Here is a list of references on blogging and language education that we drew from in the presentation (list is currently being updated):

Abbas Ali Rezaee & Samaneh Oladi. 2008. The [...]

“Girl Wakes From Coma Speaking New Language”

A Croatian teenager from the southern town of Knin awoke from a 24-hour coma speaking fluent German. She had been studying the language in school and watching television programs in German but was just a beginner.” see article for more ….

I don’t consider myself a very eloquent speaker. When it comes to thinking on the spot, I often find myself stumbling over words, struggling to find the right way to express the jumble of thoughts in my head. Considering my struggle to communicate, it’s ironic that I am so eager to take a [...]

Oh, the possibilities of writing a blog entry on absolutely anything at all in any language I so desire. Ordinarily, I detest such open-ended assignments. I like concrete prompts, assignments with bulleted instructions. Yet, the solution to this assignment came to the forefront of my mind quicker than I imagined possible. To take French 4 [...]

Il est peut-être un peu bizarre de parler de ma exerience d’apprendre l’anglais en français, mais ça c’est un project pour mon cours français. Alors, j’essaie de écrire en français.

En chine, apprendre l’anglais est quelque chose de grande importance. J’assistais au cours anglais parascolaire quand j’avais seulement sept ans.  Les leçons étaient comme les jeux [...]

There’s a new blog on campus: The Golden Bears Blog features a dozen student volunteer bloggers organized by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to depict student life at Berkeley and attract new students. It was featured in this article from the UC Berkeley NewsCenter, and we just added [...]

Last Monday, I joined in the Jewish ritual feast of Seder, an event which marks the beginning of Passover. It was my very first time being a part of the celebration of Seder, and so I “prepped” by thumbing through a pop-up explanatory children’s book (in English): and of course, Wikipedia was an [...]

A recent article in the Times of India discusses the state of English education in India, a language which is one of the focal points in discourses around “development.” Progress, one hears often, depends on our English skills-the nation’s very future depends on how well we speak/read/write the language.  So much so, that [...]

Gml rlsd ths sttmnt v ts ffcl blg ths mrnng:

“At 6:01 am Pacific Time, during routine maintenance at one of our datacenters, the frontend web servers in that particular datacenter started failing to render the letter ‘a’ for a subset of users. As error rates escalated, the strain spread to other [...]

Incredibly exciting news for those of us who’ve been waiting with bated breath to find a device that will translate what our pets are saying. Communicate with animals with this groundbreaking technology courtesy of Google, in only 8 steps. Click on the image to find out more!

And, oh….