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Macau looking for Portuguese people to work

2012-06-03T07:21:00.003+09:00

From here in Portuguese: Macau is looking for Portuguese citizens to work. The multicultural territory continues to give priorities to local citizens, but there are multiple opportunities for foreigners, especially for those who want to escape the crisis or who are unemployed. They are looking for lawyers due to having laws equal to those in Portugal, but not just this: they also need

OQLF shows slight increase of French signage in Montreal between 2010 and 2012

2012-06-02T14:15:00.000+09:00

From the OQLF website here; here is one part: The Quebec Office of the French Language (OQLF) published five studies today on the language of commerce and business as well as languages used on the internet. The display of company names shows a slight improvement between 2010 and 2012. The studies show that in 2012, 82% of shops had a company name that complies with the Charter of the French

Book believes study of Latin to be necessary for French

2012-06-01T11:04:00.001+09:00

From an article here in French (automatically translated here). No time to write any more - somehow I ended up with things to do from 5 am to 1 am today.

Portugal to ban all smoking in public places by 2020, plus cars with children

2012-05-31T10:10:00.003+09:00

From here in Portuguese: The Portuguese government will put an end to smoking areas by 2020, according to a project by the Minister of Health that would prohibit the installation of these spaces in new establishments and provide a period of eight years to do away with existing ones. The ministry is finalizing a set of proposals for "minor alterations" to the Tobacco act to guarantee a lower

Asteroids 2012 KP24 and 2012 KT42, Benny

2012-05-30T11:12:00.003+09:00

Two interesting things to write about today: --- Two recently-discovered asteroids have flown by us at a very close distance of 51,000 km and 14,400 km. Because these asteroids always sneak up on us, NASA's near-Earth flyby page never gives a good indication of what is actually going to happen in the next few weeks: for all we know there could be another asteroid on its way and due to fly by (

Confucius Institute to open in Tunis

2012-05-29T09:34:00.001+09:00

From here in French, an article about a Chinese-financed hospital to be constructed in Tunisia: The People's Republic of China will construct a new Hospital-University Centre (Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire, CHU) in Sfax, with a capacity of 300 beds thanks to a donation of 30 million dollars...the centre is one of the most important development projects carried out by China in Tunisia...(

Timelapse video of Vilnius

2012-05-28T12:21:00.000+09:00

Apparently this video (uploaded two weeks ago) was made using 25,116 pictures over three months.

Russian Alliance of Higher Education interviewing Brazilian medical students for the University of Kursk

2012-05-28T01:22:00.001+09:00

From here in Portuguese: The Russian Alliance of Higher Education has begun interviews with candidates for medical school at the State University of Kursk, considered to be one of the best in Russia. The candidate must be up to 25 years old, and students that are not fluent in English have the option of attending preparatory school, where a student is given three months to prepare, and three

Confucius Institute at University of Leon expects 200 students next year, up from 150

2012-05-27T03:15:00.000+09:00

A year ago I wrote a post about the opening of a Confucius Institute in León in Spain, the smallest city (about a third of a million) to receive one. The number of students this year was 150, and this should increase to 200 next year. Nothing else in that article is really worth going over: it discusses a prize that gives students free tuition, the makeup of the faculty there, and some other

Link roundup: 25 May 2012

2012-05-26T14:27:00.001+09:00

--- Space news is the obvious place to begin today, with SpaceX's Dragon capsule having successfully docked to (or rather, been captured by) the International Space Station. The mission so far has been flawless, aside from a delay of a few hours today when some sensors acted up. While a test mission, Dragon has also brought some useful cargo aboard as well so there is some immediate benefit to

Norwegians debating the importance and ease of German, French, and Spanish

2012-05-25T12:00:00.000+09:00

Lots of discussion on this in Norwegian. Here are a few places: -- In Norwegian, automatically translated. Subject: Learn German, Spanish or French? -- In Norwegian, automatically translated Subject: German, Spanish or French? -- In Norwegian, automatically translated Subject: Which language should I choose? Which is easiest? -- In Norwegian, automatically translated Subject: Which language

How many French people go to China every year to study?

2012-05-24T12:44:00.001+09:00

According to this article, it's 6500. No mention on which year this is based on, or how much of an increase there is in recent years (I assume it is only increasing). The rest of it is advice on how to prepare for living there - how much health insurance costs, that sort of thing. On a related note, the Globe and Mail has an article today on why being bilingual is good for you (especially you if

18% more people taking the DELE in China than in 2011

2012-05-23T10:06:00.003+09:00

From here in Spanish: At the end of the next week more than a thousand candidates will take the DELE (Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera), issued by the Instituto Cervantes. The examinations will take place on the 25th and 26th and 18% more people will take them than in 2011, according to the Instituto Cervantes in Beijing. Because of this there will be six locations to take the test,

Cross River state in Nigeria to begin teaching Chinese in public schools

2012-05-22T05:35:00.001+09:00

Found an article on this in Spanish here and English here (the two articles are mostly the same). Cross River is located here in Nigeria: and has a population of about 3 million. For something less recent but still interesting, see this forum discussion on making French an official language in Rivers state two years ago (a little bit to the west of Cross River).

Spanish second-most used language in business...in the same way that Linux is the second-most used OS

2012-05-21T16:21:00.001+09:00

From here in Spanish. The numbers here are reminiscent of a lot of other areas where there is a huge dominance by one element while the others fight over the remainder: Qwerty vs. Dvorak vs. all the rest, Windows vs. Linux vs. all the rest, Esperanto vs. Ido and Interlingua vs. all the rest. Spanish is the second-most spoken working language in the world, according to a study done by IPSOS in 24

Most requested interface languages on Twitter: Catalan, Afrikaans, Ukrainian, Greek, Czech, Basque

2012-05-21T03:34:00.001+09:00

This refers to currently unavailable languages, of course. Twitter has recently announced that it has begun translating these six (or rather, has begun allowing people to translate these six for them), which will mean 34 languages compared to the current 28.

For some light reading this Saturday night

2012-05-20T14:21:00.000+09:00

there is quite a bit of interesting content on archive.org. You might want to check out this book for example: Philosophica da Lingua Portugueza, Comparada com a Latina, para ambas se aprenderem ao mesmo tempo. If you're learning Russian I found an old textbook with some interlinear translations near the middle. Most of the other search results for interlinear translation are old languages: Greek

Majority in Portuguese parliament rejects proposal to "defend Portuguese language abroad"

2012-05-19T07:12:00.002+09:00

From here: Most of the PSD/CDS-PP (Partido Social Democrata / Centro Democrático e Social - Partido Popular) rejected today the draft resolutions of the PCP (Partido Comunista Português) and BE (Bloco de Esquerda) on the defense, valuation and investment in the teaching of Portuguese abroad, with the PS joining in the vote against the communists. The PCP's draft resolution recommended that the

Small link roundup: Vesta, Chinese in Brazil, François Hollande, Russian in the EU, Korean language students doubled in four years

2012-05-18T09:55:00.001+09:00

--- Let's begin with a virtual flight over Vesta taken by Dawn and made recently (a week ago) using that footage: Quite amazing when you think that just a year and a bit ago our best image of the protoplanet was this: --- Next is another "Chinese is super useful and more and more people are learning it" article here in Portuguese. Two numbers worth noting: a Chinese

French minister of national education: Chinese is being learned throughout the territory

2012-05-17T09:57:00.001+09:00

This article begins with an introduction to a school called Hauts-Grillets in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (west of Paris), an international school with English/German/Polish/etc. sections and where a Chinese section has just opened. Nothing notable there so moving on... Indeed, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, one can begin learning Chinese in elementary school. As indicated by French education ministers, the

Three German cities make list of top ten European destinations for Italians

2012-05-16T09:11:00.001+09:00

A short article here in Italian references the top ten cities in Europe preferred by Italians for travel, and seems surprised that 1) a full three German cities have made the list, 2) only three Spanish cities made the list, and none of them in the top three. I can't say whether there is too much significance here (i.e. that Italians are flocking to German cities because they want to learn the

Dongdaemun in Seoul has new Chinese-language garbage disposal signs

2012-05-15T09:13:00.001+09:00

From here in Korean: Seoul's Dongdaemun-gu announced on the 13th that it was making Chinese-language signs on how to dispose of garbage due to the increasing number of non-Koreans residents living there. The number of foreign nationals in the country is increasing, but many do not know how to dispose of garbage and are leaving it on the streets in black plastic bags. In order to solve this

Parents in Ticino (Switzerland) may not send daughter to English private school

2012-05-14T07:41:00.002+09:00

From here in French: The federal court dismissed parents from Ticino who wanted to enrol their daughter in a private English school. The court said that linguistic freedom, guaranteed under the federal constitution, was not absolute. The official language of Ticino is Italian and teaching there is done, with rare exceptions, in that language. Though the third national language is not

Link roundup: 12 May 2012

2012-05-13T14:07:00.001+09:00

--- We'll begin with this article from BBC, one of many on the recent Dawn press conference detailing what they know about the protoplanet so far. The term protoplanet seems to be being used more and more to describe it, as the term asteroid just doesn't seem to fit quite as well considering its makeup. One look at Vesta compared to all the other asteroids we've visited so far shows this to a

Mondial grammar has now been published online

2012-05-12T14:31:00.001+09:00

About a year ago I was able to get a hard copy of the grammar for the language Mondial, which I wrote about in an announcement here. Since then I have unsurprisingly not been able to do too much to promote the language, as since the beginning of 2011 I have spent the majority of my time working full time, further studying a few languages I have only learned to half fluency, and practicing the