Boom in Taiwan for Banned Chinese Language Books

Taiwan has seen a boom in the trade of Chinese language books in recent years. Imported and published books banned by the Chinese government in China for containing what it deems to be, sensitive subjects, can be easily bought in Taiwan. Chinese tourists and students go to Taiwan and freely buy the banned books in the Taiwanese bookshops or book exhibitions.

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Teach Yourself Business Mandarin Chinese

Do you want to win more business in China?
Do you want to serve your Mandarin Chinese-speaking customers better?
Do you want to work more effectively with your international business partners?

Teach Yourself Business Mandarin Chinese is a three-hour, all-audio, straightforward course that will help you to acquire essential up-to-date business language to use in China. Read more

‘Chinglish’ – A New York Comedy Explores Cultural Barriers

A recently opened comedy in New York’s Broadway called ‘Chinglish’, is causing a stir for all the right reasons. The play opens up conversation about the communication gap between the English-speaking world and China, but in a light-hearted way. It makes light of the cultural barriers which can happen when an English-speaking person tries to communicate or do business with a Chinese-speaking person. The play is in English and Mandarin Chinese.

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Mandarin Chinese – A Language On The Rise

China is sending over 5000 Chinese language teachers abroad in a bid to increase the number of students learning Mandarin Chinese. It is already becoming a popular language to learn around the world. Even developing nations such as Pakistan is to make studying Mandarin Chinese compulsory in their schools.

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After English, Mandarin Chinese Is The Most Useful Worldwide Business Language

According to US Bloomberg Rankings, Mandarin Chinese is the most useful worldwide business language to know, after the English language. The English language is still the most preferred business language to use around the world. However, Mandarin Chinese, which is spoken by over 845 million people, comes in a close second and is a useful language to learn when doing business in China. Read more

Happy Vietnamese New Year!

Vietnamese people all over the world welcome in the Year of the Cat with the Tet Festival.  In 2011, the festival begins on 3 February and officially lasts three days, but festivities often begin a week beforehand and continue for up to two weeks afterwards, with plenty of eating, drinking and social activities.   Read more

Tibetan Students Protest over Language Reforms

Tibetan students in Beijing and Tongren have recently demonstrated against planned education reforms in the Qinghai Province.  The reforms threaten to limit the use of the Tibetan language in schools and many believe the region’s Tibetan population will have to study in Mandarin Chinese in the future, which they see as an erosion of their own language and culture. Read more

Cabbies Learn Languages for the London Olympics

More than 3,000 cab drivers who work for Radio Taxis in London have been given MP3 and CD language courses so they are prepared for the influx of foreign tourists for the 2012 Olympics.  Under the scheme devised by Collins Language, drivers will learn useful phrases in French, Spanish and Chinese, and will have a flag on their cab to denote the language they can speak. Read more

Multilingual Sussex Schoolchildren Speak 94 Languages

There are over 3,000 bilingual school children in Sussex, on the South Coast of the UK, who speak an amazing 94 languages between them, including Wolof, which is spoken in Senegal, and Igbo, spoken in Nigeria and Niger-Congo.

New figures show the top ten tongues in West Sussex are Urdu, Gujarati, Caribbean Creole French, Portuguese, Tamil, Punjabi, Polish, Bengali, French and Pashto.   Read more

‘Historic’ Day as First Non-Latin Web Addresses Go Live

Arab nations are leading a “historic” charge to make the world wide web live up to its name.

Net regulator ICANN has switched on a system that allows full web addresses that contain no Latin characters. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to have so-called “country codes” written in Arabic scripts.

The move is the first step to allow web addresses in many scripts including Chinese, Thai and Tamil.

Read  more about the first Arabic domain names in Arabic script>>

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