Sylvain Farrel is a student nurse from Indonesia. He came to America four years ago and speaks perfect English. I asked him how that is possible, how did he learn English so quickly?
Sylvain said that he studied English during his elementary and middle school education. His national language is Bahasa (Indonesia), i.e., Indonesian.
By ethnic heritage, Sylvain is Chinese, Hokkien / Fujian on one side, and I think Hakka on the other side, but I'm not sure.
The report said English language skills were important for UN peacekeeping missions.
The People’s Liberation Army has been urged to overhaul English language teaching at its military schools and recruit professionals to improve soldiers’ communication skills on the international stage.
A Reddit thread beginning with a complaint from a student taking Spanish at a U.S. high school hinges on whether the teacher should call the student by his preferred name in English or translate it into Spanish. I never really thought about the practice of using or assigning Spanish names in Spanish class, or French names in French class, even though I did not have a French name in French class (possibly because my junior high French teacher was Puerto Rican and my high school teacher was a Hungarian refugee who had studied at the Sorbonne). But since I was in high school in the 1960s, sensitivity about names, naming, pronunciation of names, "dead names," and other assorted naming issues are a much more prominent part of advice/grievance columns and forums.
Is this a first in the whole world? Or is it already common in many countries?
The article includes links to various Ministry resources providing background (in Mandarin).
AntC says he'd be very interested to hear from LLog readers involved with teaching/examining English using this tool.
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s education ministry has added artificial intelligence to its English speaking assessment system to help students better learn and practice spoken English.
Liberty Times reported Monday that the upgraded system uses artificial intelligence to score pronunciation and analyze spoken answers in real time. Education officials said the move supports Taiwan’s 2030 bilingual policy by placing greater emphasis on practical communication skills.
From AntC: "Following the thread on South Korea’s English exam, here’s New Taipei promoting topolect diversity. “the goal is to encourage more people to learn Hakka and use the language in daily life.”
Classrooms Beneath the Himalayas: Why China’s “Migrant Learners” Are Turning to Nepal Zheng Yiwen, The World of Chinese (8/13/25)
As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, I find this phenomenon of Chinese going to Nepal to learn English to be somewhat cognitively dissonant.
Here's what goes on in one such Kathmandu crammer:
Inside, around 10 young Chinese students sit in a classroom, hunched over as they complete English listening exercises. Leon Row, the school’s British founder and lead instructor, steps out of the classroom, and with a crisp London accent, gently asks the crowd outside to keep their voices down—the noise is disrupting them.
Kid's T-shirt in a Carrefour, downtown Taichung. (I think an English-speaking kid wouldn't be seen dead in it.) [VHM: American English: "wouldn't be caught dead" — usually, in my experience]
Cantonese, Uyghur, Mongolian — they're all threatened. And you can be sure that if China invades and occupies Taiwan, Taiwanese (and all of the aboriginal languages of the island) will be under duress. What is being done to Cantonese, Uyghur, and Mongolian is the way the CCP deals with the majority languages of its various cultural regions, which together constitute approximately half of China's total land area. Tibet alone occupies roughly 13% of the total land area of the PRC (Xinjiang is 1/6th [16.6% of the whole of China]. Since seven of Asia's major rivers (the Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, and Indus) originate in Bod, and "The Roof of the World" possesses many other valuable natural and strategic resources, what happens to the native tongue of its inhabitants is no mean matter.
At the Swarthmore Farmers Market this past Saturday morning, I came upon a new stall selling onigiri, which are Japanese rice balls, a popular and versatile snack or meal component. They consist of steamed rice formed into various shapes, often triangles, and typically filled with savory ingredients like pickled plums (umeboshi), salmon, or tuna with mayonnaise. They are often enclosed in nori (seaweed).
These onigiri were wrapped in cellophane and had a label stuck on the side. As soon as I saw the design on the label, which looked like a human face, I found that I could "read" it:
The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (TPC) was first planted by British missionaries in Tainan, which later expanded to all southern parts of Taiwan, constituting the present Southern Synod of TPC. The most important pioneer among them was the Scottish missionary Rev. Thomas Barclay who worked in Taiwan-Fu (the present Tainan). He was born in Glasgow, and matriculated at the University of Glasgow. While there, he studied under Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin [according to Wikipedia]. The celebrated Lord Kelvin reminds me of the absolute zero degree in physical chemistry and the electric cable equation as the underpinning of the Transatlantic cable as well as the conduction of electric impulses along nerve fibers.
Today I'm bringing you this short article for LL. A Korean pop idol, Solar — that's her stage name, Mandarinized as 頌樂; her real name is 김용선 (Hanja: 金容仙), romanized Kim Yongsun) — has made headlines for speaking very fluent Mandarin after just 7 months of learning it. She has also released a full song in Mandarin with Taiwanese artist 9m88 and taken countless interviews with Taiwanese media in Mandarin as well (see this "What's in My Bag" interview with Vogue Taiwan.)
Yes! I won't mince words. At least in my case, multilingualism has been very good for my brain.
In my rural Ohio high school, I took Latin and French, which is what were on offer. I enjoyed both of them immensely, but they were almost strictly for reading and writing, so they didn't have much effect on the way my brain worked, at least not that I could discern.
In college, I added Italian and German, both with reasonable spoken components, so my brain began to warm up.
