On Buton Island in eastern Indonesia, children in Baubau are using the Korean alphabet, Hangul, to learn their indigenous language.

The Cia-Cia language, spoken by about 80,000 people in south-east Sulawesi, didn't have its own written form.

Being a syllable-based language, it presented challenges in adapting to the Latin alphabet, the predominant script used for Indonesia's official language.

Hangul, the Korean alphabetic system, was introduced after a cultural exchange between Baubau and Korean scholars in 2009. Teachers and students were even sent to South Korea to learn the script.

Abidin is one of the pioneers. He spent six months in South Korea for training and has even penned a dictionary for it.

"However, with the implementation of Hangul, people say our Cia-Cia language has become global."

Educators attribute a national trend of fading interest in Mandarin among Americans to a weaker Chinese economy and strained US-China relations.

Consider one of the most bilingual cities in the US, Miami consists of a majority Hispanic and Latino population. In recent decades, the Spanish languages has mixed with American English, resulting in a new dialect consisting of its own expressions and phrases.

Adam Aleksic, 23, a Serbian American linguistics content creator who is based in Barcelona, Spain cites Asian Americans speak with a higher pitch, or breathier articulation, but raises questions about which of the many Asian identities this accent could cover.

Everyone seems to agree that, if it exists, the Asian American accent is hard to define. It’s not that of first-generation immigrants; rather, it’s something in the speech of those who speak perfect English, but with a flavor that lets you know the speaker is of Asian descent.

Nearly 90 percent of websites are written in just 10 languages (English, Russian, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Turkish, Portuguese, Italian, and Persian).

The impact of Gen AI on minority languages is complex and has the potential to be both positive and negative

On the one hand, Gen AI can be used to create new and original content in minority languages, preserve and revitalize these languages, and make them more accessible to speakers and learners worldwide. On the other hand, Gen AI models can be biased and inaccurate, and their use could exacerbate existing social inequalities.

A 2011 study by researchers at the University of Lyon looked at seven different languages and ranked them on their syllables per second. Japan came out on top with 7.84 syllables per second, followed by Spanish (7.82 syllables per second), French (7.18), Italian (6.99), English (6.19), German (5.97), and Mandarin (5.18).

Intergenerational learning is defined as learning that happens across different age groups and generations. Integral to concept is the multi-directionality of learning: children can learn from adults, adults from children, younger children from older siblings, and from other relatives. It is a collective learning process in which the whole family learns together.

Toki Ponda developed by Canadian linguist Sonja Lang - Drawing upon Dutch, English, Finnish, Mandarin, Cantonese, and other languages from around the world, it’s an attempt to create a super-simple language that maximizes meaning while minimalizing complexity.

As Lang explains on the official website of Toki Pona: “Toki Pona is a human language I invented in 2001. It was my attempt to understand the meaning of life in 120 words. There are now thousands of speakers and 137 essential words.”

In the United States, more than 12 million children hear a minority language at home from birth. More than two-thirds hear English as well, and they reach school age with varying levels of proficiency in two languages. Parents and teachers often worry that acquiring Spanish will interfere with children's acquisition of English.

Results of the study, published in the journal Child Development, show that children with the most balanced bilingualism were those who heard the most Spanish at home and who had parents with high levels of education in Spanish.

Importantly, these children did not have lower English skills than the English-dominant children. Children's level of English knowledge was independent of their level of Spanish knowledge. U.S.-born children who live in Spanish-speaking homes and who also are exposed to English from infancy tend to become English dominant by age 5-but some more so than others.

"Some Taiwanese stigmatised the language and believe that it should not be used in formal situations,"

“You often hear construction workers or police officers speaking Taiwanese… so there’s always been these environments [to speak it], even though it’s been formally suppressed,” Catherine Chou, a Taiwanese-American history professor, told HKFP.

Although census figures show Taiwanese is spoken by around 80 per cent of the island’s inhabitants, most younger Taiwanese, particularly in the capital, use Mandarin in public and among themselves.