The original post was written by Kevin Matthews and can be found on the link provided below:

The National Heritage Language Resource Center at UCLA hosts a major, first-of-its-kind conference on how to teach languages that are sidelined and stigmatized around the world [...]

The country we are looking at is China, and the charge is “inciting to subvert state power” which can carry a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. Despite Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution which guarantees freedom of expression, in the last few years at least 29 people in China have been convicted [...]

I can think of no better example of the relationship between laws and languages than censorship. Censorship results from many different factors, but mainly, it results from fear. Fear that if certain words are uttered together in phrases they will shape the thoughts that will question and ultimately threaten certain interests. What better way to [...]

And that new meaning is one that allows the government to deprive some of its citizens of a fundamental human right: the right to political participation. As Ivory Coast prepares for its very first presidential election in a decade, international pressure to set a date for the elections rises. Apparently, the condition for voting in [...]

Just last month we looked at a UWS Research that revealed the Importance of Accurate Court Interpreting in criminal trials. The research had found that without proper specialist training, court interpreters tend to make technical/linguistic mistakes that can lead to inadequate legal outcomes.

Beyond Words just published a great post on the language needs of Hmong hunters in California and since I found it so interesting, I thought I’d share it here.

The question: What is the name of the body of water that separates Iran from Saudi Arabia?
The answer: has proven to be quite complicated…

Indiana University’s William Fierman gives a tour of language in post-Soviet Central Asia, describing how individual governments have responded to an altered political landscape in part by trying to control written and spoken usage.

The Ikema Project: An Attempt to Preserve an Endangered Language of Ryukyu, UCLA International Institute