In 2005, dozens of US language experts got together and set up an excellent website about languages: The 5-Minute Linguist

Six years ago, the US Senate agreed on something, and declared 2005 "The Year of Foreign Language Study."

The concept, while certainly based on good intentions, does make me smile a bit -- the US could well afford to declare a Decade of Foreign Language Study in order to catch up with some other nations.

I'm not sure what concrete results, if any, this Year-with-a-capital-Y produced, but it did bring about an excellent website: The 5-minute Linguist.

In honor of the Year, dozens of top language experts diligently produced 52 weekly audio reports about many aspects of language, downloadable as MP3 files, and also published as scripts in blog form.

The site covers such intriguing questions as:

Is British English superior to ours? (Yo, I dunno

Why do linguists love Icelandic? (Interesting, I didn't know they did...)

How many languages is it possible for one person to speak?

(Apparently the world record is 72!)

Little on the site is outdated -- even the program about machine translation rings quite true today.

If you love languages, The 5-minute Linguist is definitely worth a look -- or a listen.

Betty Carlson

See Also

• Language Translation, Inc.
  A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.