The President of the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo, said that schools nationwide must revert to using English as the medium of instruction to make Filipinos globally competitive. “If we really want to compete globally, we have to bring back English as our medium of instruction because that is the language of technology,” Mrs. Arroyo said in […]

According to researchers at the University of California, putting children in front of educational DVDs does not help boost their language skills. The best boost for anyone's language skill is to speak and write.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who found himself being mocked when he refused to speak English at his first press conference after being elected, has launched a campaign called "German, the language of ideas". Seemingly lots of people are fed up of the encroachment of English into everyday life. Of course this might cause a […]

It's that time of year again: filing an income tax return. All of a sudden the meaning of the word "taxing" becomes clear as crystal. Taxing means, burdensome: not easily borne; wearing. I have to say that the German tax system is very taxing.

Google is developing a mobile phone that can act as an interpreter.  Google says its device will speech to speech translation almost instantly.  The good news for me is that language experts believe the prospect of such technology supplanting the ability to speak a foreign tongue is a distant one. David Crystal, honorary professor of […]

British anti-jargon campaigners, the Plain English Campaign, were celebrating Monday after forcing  supermarket chain, the CoOp, to change the labelling on a sausage snack which had been described as "ambient". Campaigners decided to complain about what they described as the "bizarre" title given to the roll after they were contacted by a succession of baffled […]