The Nagoya YWCA School of Japanese Language in Aichi Prefecture has added a "Bambina" course to its curriculum. Targeted at foreign parents with preschool children, the lessons cover expressions useful for daily life with a focus on those helpful for looking after toddlers in Japan. The ...
An elementary school teacher from Aichi Prefecture has developed a unique new way for foreign children to learn Japanese from flash cards. The Niwatori-style kanji cards created by 56-year-old Noriko Niwa let elementary school children learn kanji with their first language. Niwa has also developed tests ...
Masao Kunihiro, a former Diet member and renowned interpreter who conducted simultaneous interpretation during the live TV broadcast of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in 1969, died of natural causes Tuesday evening at a Tokyo nursing care facility. He was 84. A Tokyo ...
The Oxford English Dictionary named "vape" — the word used for drawing on an electronic cigarette instead of a burning stick of tobacco — as its 2014 word of the year. "You are thirty times more likely to come across the word 'vape' than you ...
Jamaican sisters come bearing victuals and vibes
Baye McNeil profiles two Jamaican women who have built thriving careers for themselves in the Land of the Rising Sun, half a planet away from the Land of Wood and Water.
Catalans in Tokyo: How did you vote in the Catalonia referendum and why?
Independence-minded Catalans at a polling station in Tokyo explain why they voted in defiance of Madrid in a referendum that had already been ruled invalid.
Alaska's indigenous languages now official along with English
Alaska's governor signed a bill on Thursday to officially recognize the state's 20 indigenous languages in a symbolic move that gives a nod to tribal efforts to save Native American tongues at risk of dying out. The move would make Alaska only the second U.S. ...
Sidney Shapiro, famed U.S.-born translator and Chinese citizen, dies at 98
Sidney Shapiro, a famed U.S.-born translator who was one of the few Westerners to gain Chinese citizenship and become a member of a high-level parliamentary body, died over the weekend in Beijing, his granddaughter said. He was 98. Shapiro was born in New York in ...
DeafJapan opens up the world to the hearing-impaired
DeafJapan provides opportunities for hearing-impaired people in Japan to enjoy activities in English while also linking them up with the global community.
Various cities in Aichi Prefecture have started offering language classes to children of foreign descent in their first language. It is rare to find that type of language class in Japan, but first-language education is an integral part of the Aichi Multicultural Society Promotion Plan. Aichi ...
Decline of French language could cost half a million jobs: report
A decline in the number of people worldwide who speak French could cost France 120,000 jobs by 2020 and half a million by 2050 due to missed economic opportunities, a report commissioned by President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday. "Unless there is a major effort, ...
Use them or lose them: There's more at stake than language in reviving Ryukyuan tongues
With the last speakers of the Ryukyuan languages dying out, an identity is vanishing too.
