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Second Confucius Institute in Switzerland to begin in September 2012, in Zürich

2012-02-10T12:43:00.001+09:00

A bit from this article in German: In autumn in Zurich a Confucius Institute is to open its doors. Some professors from the University of Zurich voted against the project for fear of Chinese influence. Since the government of the People's Republic of China made the decision seven years ago to promote the Chinese language and culture in the world, over 90 Confucius Institutes have been

Link roundup for 8 February 2012

2012-02-09T11:09:00.000+09:00

Today's links are: --- This National Geographic article on Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan. While I assume I would still prefer Almaty for its larger size and better climate, if this happens then I would consider living in Astana for a time: With the core of the capital near completion, Nazarbayev has ordered his architects to explore the possibility of building another huge tent that

Looks like Persian has a language learning podcast too

2012-02-08T11:23:00.000+09:00

It's called Chai and Conversation. It seems to be pretty much the same excellent format that these language learning podcasts use - two people get together to record a podcast together, listening to it is free, and bonus materials cost a tiny bit of money. The podcast is recorded biweekly, and the latest lesson is Lesson 22. They are still going over some pretty basic concepts by then (how to

Otto von Bismarck's voice now known not just to the dead

2012-02-07T11:40:00.000+09:00

Nice! It was lost for 123 years: the only audio recording of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815 - 1898). The recording was found in a dark corner of the New York Edison archives, and can be listened to, albeit only very poorly. The audio can be heard here, and it really is bad. Apparently it's an excerpt of Gaudeamus igitur, Allons, enfants de la Patrie (Marseillaise), and an exhortation to his

20% of South Karelian police are learning Russian

2012-02-06T05:56:00.000+09:00

From Voice of Russia here (found it on the Portuguese version of the site), referencing a report from the Finnish YLE: According to the television agency YLE, Finnish police on the Russian border are beginning to learn the language of their neighbors. There are 40 policemen in the courses, which represents 20% of the personnel of the Police Department of South Karelia. The interest in the

Deutsche Welle's design has just changed

2012-02-06T05:49:00.000+09:00

Looking at Deutsche Welle today, the site now has an entirely new design (plus a new logo). It comes as a bit of a surprise at first but it is not too hard to navigate, and finding programs, podcasts and German learning material in each language is somewhat easier. Besides that there don't seem to be any fundamental changes to the site, and the number of languages is still the same. Italian is

Nantes says yes to Ya d'ar Brezhoneg

2012-02-05T16:48:00.000+09:00

That's according to this: The Nantes city council voted last Friday for the membership of the village to Ya d'ar Brezhoneg (Yes to the Breton language)...the five selected actions are: the development of bilingual education; the purchase of Breton books in media centres; the implantation of bilingual signs at the entrances to the city (these already exist); bilingual cultural programming; the

Number of students learning Chinese in Réunion: at least 1300

2012-02-04T14:45:00.001+09:00

More numbers from an article here, this time in French and on the number of students learning Chinese in Réunion. No surprise that numbers are up compared to ten years ago: For the 2011-2012 school year, nearly 1300 students have chosen Mandarin, compared to just 177 in the year 2000. To this figure, one must also add about 100 students at the University of Réunion, individual learners as well as

Link roundup for 2 February 2012

2012-02-03T13:44:00.000+09:00

No time to write much today so here are some interesting links from some open tabs of mine: -- This one is by far the most interesting, a super-Earth in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star just 22 light years from here. I'll have to read more on that tomorrow. -- This article says that Deutsche Welle's Latin American Spanish content has grown from 2 to 20 hours a day. -- Ahmadinejad said

433 Eros makes (relatively) close pass of Earth

2012-02-02T13:22:00.000+09:00

Slightly different from most near-Earth asteroid news involving a tiny asteroid a few metres in diameter at a distance around that of the Earth to the moon, today the asteroid 433 Eros passed by at an extremely safe distance of about 27 million km. A pass at this distance is uninteresting for most asteroids, but not this one, because of two things: 1) its huge size, 2) the fact that this

More French students learning Chinese

2012-02-01T13:43:00.000+09:00

We already knew that, but here are some more numbers from an article here: Today it is possible to learn Chinese in 30 primary schools and 535 middle and high schools. At the beginning of the school year in 2011, 29,505 students learned Chinese in high school, compared to 9,328 in 2004. Mandarin today holds the 5th place among languages studied in secondary schools. At the same time, some 6,000

Euronews in Portuguese might not be cancelled thanks to Brussels

2012-01-31T13:10:00.000+09:00

A continuation of a story from November on how Euronews in Portuguese is in danger of cancellation: Representative Ribeiro e Castro acknowledged today the possibility of the European Commission supporting the broadcasts of Euronews in the Portuguese language, a scenario that he said would be "indispensable" and of high value to the country and the language. "It would be a tragic retreat if

False alarm: President of East Timor website is actually going to be in Portuguese too

2012-01-30T11:14:00.000+09:00

The President of East Timor now has a new website, moving from www.presidencia.tl to http://presidenttimorleste.tl. Not worth mentioning, unless you are the Portuguese press and notice that the new site is now only in English and Tetum. Below the article are 50 comments. Two days later, it turns out that the site is being translated into Portuguese: As traduções em Português do nosso site ainda

Modern Indo-European assimil-like course (version 0.1 released)

2012-01-29T16:20:00.000+09:00

Looking at Dnghu's site for the first time in quite a while, I was pleasantly surprised to see an update for January (the last one was in June 2011). The gist of the update is as follows: 1 - a learning course (Assimil-style) has been published, 2 - Syntax of Modern Indo-European is still being worked on, 3 - the grammar is being translated into French, 4 - Paypal sucks, going to try using

Asteroid 2012 BX34 to fly by the Earth today

2012-01-28T12:35:00.000+09:00

As is sometimes the case, a newly discovered yet small asteroid is set to fly by the Earth at a very close distance and is making some headlines. This new asteroid is called 2012 BX34 (2012 = discovered in 2012), is about 11 metres in diameter, and will fly by at a distance 0.2 times that of the Earth to the moon. You may remember the flyby of asteroid 2005 YU55, a quite large one at 400 metres

Naver's next online dictionary: Spanish

2012-01-27T13:10:00.000+09:00

Korea's Naver has recently added a new language to its set of online dictionaries, adding Spanish to the current selection of English, Japanese, Chinese, and French. Naver's dictionaries are slow to be released because they are quite thorough, with plenty of example sentences as well as audio. The Spanish dictionary is here. The first thing one wonders with a dictionary like this is what type of

Vatican news (News.va) soon to be available in French and Portuguese

2012-01-26T13:22:00.000+09:00

From here yesterday in Italian: News.va, the the site that collects sources of information of the Vatican, will soon be available in Frenche, and in a month in Portuguese. This is in addition to the three languages already available: Italian, English and Spanish. With this, a year after its birth, the site will have five languages. This was announced to journalists today by Msgr. Claudio Maria

Link roundup for 24 January 2012

2012-01-25T12:33:00.000+09:00

--- First of all from the department of I told you so: this article on possible cooperation between NASA, Russia and the ESA on moon colonization. Aside from the terrible launch windows to Mars, the fact that the moon is the only area that so-called second-tier spacefaring nations can help to colonize will make it the inevitable choice for first permanent manned colonization. In other words, if

Chinese media companies expanding in New York

2012-01-24T13:02:00.000+09:00

From here in Portuguese: Four large Chinese communication companies are expanding their presence in New York, seeking to establish the foundations to begin to compete on the world stage. Xinhua, one of the major news and propaganda agencies of the Chinese government, moved last year to the top floor of an office building in Broadway with 30 journalists, and installed an 18-metre video screen

Interest in Chinese increasing among businesspeople in Portugal

2012-01-23T04:52:00.000+09:00

From here in Portuguese a week ago: Interest in the Chinese language and culture is greatly increasing in Portugal, particularly among businesspeople, said the dean of the University of Lisbon (António Sampaio da Nóvoa) to the Lusa news agency. "We are opening intensive courses for businesspeople [because] the demand is impressive." he said when asked about the activity of the Confucius

Dawn distance to Ceres now vs. in July when it leaves Vesta

2012-01-22T04:21:00.000+09:00

According to Dawn's official website, the distance from Dawn to Ceres is 0.9536 AU, a distance that is slowly decreasing as Vesta begins to catch up to the slower-orbiting Ceres. A closeup of the current position is as follows: In addition, the current relative speed of Dawn to Ceres is 8.36 km per second. This rate will begin to slow down as the two approach each other, but Dawn will continue

Beijing University of International Business and Economics opens Centre of Portuguese Language Country Studies

2012-01-21T14:34:00.000+09:00

From here today in Portuguese: A ceremony today (16 January) at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing marked the inauguration of the Centre of Portuguese Language Country Studies. The centre is the first non-governmental and non-profit institution in China directed exclusively to academic studies of Portuguese-language studies. The initiative's objective is to promote

Romania now 19th member of European Space Agency, will launch microsatellite next month

2012-01-20T13:25:00.000+09:00

I didn't notice this last month but Romania is now the 19th member of the European Space Agency. Following promulgation of the law on ratification of Romania to the ESA, Romania officially became the 19th member state on 22 December 2011. It is the second former socialist country after Czech Republic to do so. The leadership of the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) will respond to questions from the

Macau to act as a currency hub between China and Portuguese language countries

2012-01-19T12:50:00.000+09:00

At least I think that's what this means. The sentence in bold is unclear to me - does it mean that a country that buys X amount of Chinese yuan is now able to use that X amount of money to buy bonds and whatnot? In any case, the fact that Macau is to be China's gateway to the Lusophone world in yet another aspect is the most interesting part for me. The news is coming soon, says the Monetary

Le Huffington Post arrives in 4 days

2012-01-19T12:22:00.000+09:00

Now we have an exact date for Le Huffington Post: 23 January. Despite my general dislike for its over-dramatic style, I expect I'll be referring to the one in French very often simply because one thing the Huffington Post is good at doing is TELLING YOU IN BIG FONT WHAT'S IN THE NEWS RIGHT NOW.