Keeping Up-to-Date with the Linguistic Times
At Esperanza Education, we often share news and articles about language from other sources on our social media pages. These include the latest studies and trends in language acquisition, language learning ideas, and interesting stories about linguistic communities. Here is a round-up of some of my favourite sites to find language news (besides Esperanza Education of course!):
1. Global Voices / Rising Voices
Global Voices is a citizen media site, offering grassroots stories on all kinds of topics from around the world in multiple languages. Often, the stories are about language too. For example, in the last few days alone there have been stories on a Bengali programming language, the newly created Tulu language Wikipedia, and phrases you might hear on the streets of Buenos Aires. Also, Rising Voices is an project of Global Voices dedicated to promoting endangered and Indigenous languages, and all Rising Voices articles are about awesome language initiatives from around the globe.
2. UNESCO
Although UNESCO’s news articles often focus on their own programs, I find it to be a good place to start to get a basic understanding of some of the linguistic challenges and initiatives internationally. News can be filtered by country or topic, and often includes information about interesting language programs, peace-building and education resources in multiple languages, and interviews with global language education leaders.
3. Fluent in 3 Months
For language learning tips, I am a fan of Fluent in 3 Months. With contributions from speakers of many languages (including several polyglots), Fluent in 3 Months does a great job of collecting high-quality articles with great resources for learning specific languages, and lots of advice for “language hacking“.
4. New York Times, The Guardian, and Other Newspapers
Often the articles that we re-post come from well-known news sites such as the New York Times, The Guardian, or CBC. While these sites do not focus exclusively on language news, they are often a good place to find the latest research written in a format that we can all understand. For example, earlier this year the New York Times published an article titled “The Superior Social Skills of Bilinguals” which explained some benefits of bilingualism originally revealed through Psychological studies and published in academic journals.
5. Ministries of Education
Sometimes I find the most interesting language news comes from the language departments of various Ministries of Education or similar government agencies. For example, I follow the Intercultural Bilingual Education Department of the Peruvian Ministry of Education on Facebook. They publish the latest news on Indigenous language education in Peru, and often link to related articles and resources from other countries engaged in similar work.
I find that following organizations doing language work on social media is the way I get most of my language news. I follow all of the above organizations, and also non-profits doing language and/or progressive education work. What about you? Where do you get your language news?
