So, some US hospitals have turned to medical interpreter hotlines to help medical personnel communicate with patients who don’t speak English. Medical interpreter lines and video interpreting services not only make the staff’s job easier,  patient outcomes improve as a result.

For example, the Houston Chronicle describes the story of one elderly Korean man with an aggressive form of cancer who had a reputation for being a “bad,” uncooperative patient. When the team at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey used a medical interpreting service to talk to him, they soon figured out that he wasn’t cooperative because he had no idea what was wrong with him. Once his condition was explained, the staff easily persuaded him to agree to treatment.

Unfortunately, cost constraints keep many hospitals from offering similar services. The Chronicle notes that Parkland Memorial Hospital in Houston spends $160,000 per month on medical interpreting services. While hospitals receiving federal funding must provide access to interpreters for patients who don’t speak English, only 13 states offer funding to reimburse the cost of translation services for patients.

Unfortunately, medical mistakes caused by language barriers can be expensive, too-costing the hospital money due to litigation, costing patients and insurance companies for additional treatment and even more important, costing patient lives.

For example, the Houston Chronicle notes that in 1980, a Spanish-speaking ER patient  became paralyzed for life  when one of his relatives stated he had been “intoxicado” before he collapsed. Since “intoxicado” is a cognate for the English “intoxicated”, the ER team assumed that mean he had overdosed on drugs, but in Spanish it can simply mean “nauseous.” He actually had a brain injury. The resulting lawsuit cost the hospital $70 million.

According to the Daily Post, the fines could be as high as ₤5000, and any company that receives more than ₤400,000 worth of money per year from taxpayers would be affected by the new requirements. Second, the proposed law would scrap the Welsh Language Board in support of appointing a Welsh language commissioner with increased power to enforce language laws.

First Minister Carwyn Jones told the BBC that “The proposed measure provides us with some of the tools we need to ensure that the Welsh language can continue to prosper into the 21st Century alongside the English language.”
However, some Welsh language advocates don’t feel that the proposed legislation goes far enough. For example, the BBC quotes Menna Machreth, chair of the Welsh Language Society (Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg), who welcomed the proposal but cautioned:

“This measure doesn’t affect much of the private sector. The assembly doesn’t have the powers for shops to be included in this measure, which we’ve been calling for because they are a massive part of day to day lives, and if we want to see the Welsh language as a living language around us, I think the Welsh language should be mainstreamed and pulled into the private sector as well.”

With the keypad, which fits over a normal computer keyboard, for the first time students and others will be able to type directly in the Cherokee syllabary, which uses its own unique set of 85 characters. The new keypads will make life easier for the students at the Cherokee Nation Immersion School, where children do their lessons completely in Cherokee. It will also make it easier for people to use Cherokee outside of school, in their daily lives, and will make it easier for Cherokee living outside of Cherokee Nation territory to use their ancestral language to communicate.

The Native American Times quotes Dr. Neil Morton, Group Leader for Education Services for the Cherokee Nation, who described the potential impact the invention could have on the Cherokee language:

“The creation of this keypad has helped us leap forward in the teaching of Cherokee. Before we were only able to utilise the print media, but now our students have computers for homework, messages and more where they can actually type and text in the Cherokee language…The role of the keypad allows us to actually move the language initiative program away from the tribal complex and out into every community of the Nation and throughout the world. It also plays an important role in getting people to actually use the language in their everyday lives.”

Unfortunately, “Baby Einstein” and other instructional videos don’t actually appear to help infants and toddlers learn language.  A new study performed by researchers at the University of California in Riverside followed a group of 1 to 2-year-olds around for 6 weeks, assigning one group to watch “Baby Wordsworth” instructional DVDs. At the end of the study, there was no difference in language acquisition between the kids that watched the DVDs and the kids that did not.

In an article describing the study, the Time Magazine reports that there are two theories as to why instructional DVDs don’t work for toddlers. The first theory is that the DVD’s somehow “overstimulate” the child’s brain, so they aren’t able to pick up new words. The second theory is simply that the DVDs replace child-parent interaction, which is the main way that babies learn to recognise the sounds of their native language and pick up new words.

Time quoted Rebekah Richert, the psychologist who led the study, who explained that:

“What we are finding in our study is that the DVD itself is not a substitute for that kind of live social interaction. For children under the age of 2, social interaction is key to their ability to learning something like words.”

Of course, if you need a little bit of time to yourself, there’s nothing wrong with using the TV to distract your toddler temporarily while you regain your sanity. Just don’t pop in the “Baby Wordsworth” DVD and expect your toddler to start writing poetry.

Also, if you’re feeling a bit ripped off, the LA Times notes that Walt Disney Co is offering refunds on Baby Einstein DVDs through Thursday.

Although the opening of the Games was announced in French and then in English, the speech given by Games CEO John Furlong was almost entirely in his native tongue, English. Also, there was only one French-speaking performer in the line-up, which also included English and First Nations performers.

Complaints have been voiced by Canadian government officials including Quebec Premier Jean Charest, Heritage Minister James Moore, and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. The Official Languages Commissioner’s office has also begun an investigation.

Adele Mercier, a professor of philosophy specializing in language at Queen’s University, told CTV.ca that:

“I think the problem is that the French were treated . . . as just another subculture that Canada has, that we are all happily tolerating. This is irksome for official and historical reasons…It strikes a chord among French Canada because French Canadians have a historical memory…the first colonists’ approach to French Canadians was to try to assimilate us and this was almost as good a representation of the fact that it has succeeded.”

Hopefully, the closing ceremony will be enough to make up for the opening ceremony for those who felt slighted. The Globe and Mail quotes executive producer David Atkins:

“The closing ceremony actually [has] a little more French in it, to be honest, and it was a creative choice we made right from the outset. I think that the critics of the amount of French content, hopefully, will find the closing a little more palatable.”

UNESCO declared the day a holiday in 1999, but its roots go back much deeper into the past. According to Wikipedia, International Mother Language Day started in 1952 in what is now Bangladesh. At this time in history, Bangladesh was still part of Pakistan. Most of the people in what was then called East Pakistan spoke Bangla, but in 1948, Urdu, a language spoken primarily in West Pakistan, was declared the official language for the entire country.

On February 21, 1952, Students at University of Dhaka and Dhaka Medical College started a peaceful protest of the decision, despite the government having banned any sort of meetings and gatherings in the area. Police fired on the protesters, killing some of the students.

Since then, East Pakistan and later Bangladesh have celebrated “Language Movement Day” on February 21. In 1999, UNESCO made it an official worldwide holiday to celebrate linguistic diversity.

The holiday is celebrated with local celebrations in many communities, and at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. This year, UNESCO is holding a 2-day symposium on Translation and Cultural Mediation on February 22nd and 23rd.

The focus of the symposium will be using translation to bring together people from different cultures across the world, allowing a more balanced exchange of ideas while still promoting linguistic diversity.

In a statement promoting the event, Irina Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO, stated that:

“Multilingualism, the learning of foreign languages and translation are three strategic axes for the language policies of tomorrow. On the occasion of this 11th International Mother Language Day, I am appealing to the international community to give the mother language, in each of these three axes, its rightful, fundamental place, in a spirit of respect and tolerance which paves the way for peace.”

That may sound incredibly cheesy, but consider this striking statistic: language learners who have either a significant other or a parent who is fluent in the language they are trying to learn will become fluent themselves in about the half the time it takes someone without a parent or romantic partner who speaks the language.

In the article, Philip Sweet, a professor of German at Radford University in Virginia, explains why becoming involved with someone who speaks another language can help you become fluent so much more quickly:

“Emotion is the printing fluid of memory. If you’re with somebody that you’re in love with, it makes a lot of things – really everything – that you’re doing exciting. Those phrases that you hear … you’re more likely to remember them.”

The article follows two Italian/American couples who met in Italy. Both couples found that their fluency in each other’s languages blossomed along with their relationships. In fact, when Italian Alessandro Cannali moved back to the US with his American-born wife, he tried to take an English As a Second Language class but was advised he was already too fluent, and would need to take an English class for native speakers.

Of course, if you’re already happily settled with a fellow native English speaker, there’s no need to indulge in an illicit affair to learn a new language. Being “in love” helps, but according to Chiara Crippa, the managing director for an Italian school called Italiaidea, you can just as easily fall in love with the culture:

The student doesn’t need an Italian sweetheart, Crippa insisted. Infatuation with the country’s language, food or music will suffice if it pushes a student to learn, for example, indirect object pronouns.

Unfortunately, they also provide a lot of fodder for their critics. Take, for instance, the case of Nicholas George, a student who wants to become a foreign diplomat someday and is studying Arabic.

According to the Los Angeles Times, George was detained for four hours at the Philadelphia airport for trying to learn Arabic on the plane. Intending to get some studying done, George had packed Arabic flashcards. The flashcards included a variety of common Arabic words, including “bomb” and “terrorism”- understandable when you consider how common those particular events are in the Middle East, and therefore in Arabic-language newspapers.

The TSA confiscated the flashcards during the pre-flight screening, and began questioning him. According to CNN, the questions they asked included things like “Who did 9/11?” and “Do you know what language he spoke?” “Do you see why these cards are suspicious?” Then, they called in the FBI.

According to George, he was held for 4 hours and cursed at by an FBI agent, who also asked him if was a Muslim, a member of a “pro-Islamic” group, or a communist. George told the LA Times that if he was detained for his flashcards,”then we’ve got a real 1st Amendment issue here. I have a right to study Arabic.”

It probably wasn’t just the flashcards-the stamps on his passport showed that the young man had been to Arabic countries like Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, and travel to Arabic countries tends to cause you to receive extra scrutiny in the airport. Still, he didn’t have anything dangerous on his person or in his bag, so detaining him for 4 hours and making him miss his flight seems a little excessive.

The US needs more people who understand the Arabic language and who are interested in using that knowledge to serve their country. It would probably be best if the TSA didn’t treat automatically treat the Arabic language as a security threat.

With the help of the ACLU, George is suing the TSA, the FBI and the Philadelphia police department.

Although she was born in the USA, her parents were loaned to the Atlanta Zoo by the Chinese government, and under the agreement, all giant pandas and their cubs must go home to China after a specified period of time.

In the Los Angeles Times, Huang Xiangming, director of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding’s animal management department,explained that “Mei Lan has been living in the United States since she was born, and she must be unfamiliar with Chinese.”

In an article posted on China Daily, Cui Kai, a worker at the breeding center, said that “She will be taught Chinese with a Sichuan dialect. She will become familiar with some simple phrases. For example, she will be taught the phrases for returning to the cage or coming out from the dormitory.”

According to China Daily, 14 people have already applied for the job of teaching Chinese to the panda. The US sent back another panda, Tai Shan, on Friday as well. However, there is no need for a Chinese tutor for Tai Shan-he will be kept at the Bifengxia Base of China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, and handlers there are bilingual, able to speak both English and Chinese.

Both pandas are expected to be introduced into the breeding program, and the Chinese government has set up a website to allow citizens to vote on a “boyfriend” for Mei Lan.

The Bo language, of which she was the last surviving speaker, died with her. The Bo tribe is believed to have inhabited the islands for over 65,000 years.

Boa Sr was born in the northern Andamans, when her tribe still lived traditionally in the jungle. However, in the 1970’s, the Indian government forced all of the Greater Andamanese tribes to give up their traditional way of life and move to a single island. There, the Bo tribe’s’ numbers dwindled due to alcoholism and other diseases, until only Boa Sr remained. According to linguist Professor Anvita Abbi, she spent the last 30 to 40 years of her life, after her parents died, unable to speak her native language to anyone. However, she was able to communicate using a local dialect of Hindi and by speaking Great Andamanese, a lingua franca made up of bits and pieces of all 10 Great Andamanese languages.

Professor Abbi told Bernama.com that the loss of the Bo language was important because the language, one of the world’s oldest, was “a vital piece of the jigsaw” that could have helped scholars piece together how languages have evolved. She further explained that “The Andamanese are believed to be among our earliest ancestors,” with many of languages on the islands believed to be 70,000 years old.

When the British began to settle on the Andaman Islands in the late 19th century, the island was already inhabited by the ten Great Andamanese tribes, with a total population of about 5,000, as well as other, smaller tribes. Now, there are only 52 Great Andamanese tribes people left. However, some of the smaller tribes still survive, with varying degrees of contact with the outside world.

Before she died, Professor Abbi recorded Boa Sr singing and telling the story of the 2004 tsunami in the Bo language. You can watch the video below.