Language Acquisition

ICLR French Lecture 5

French is estimated to have about 76 million native speakers and about 235 million daily, fluent speakers and another 77 to 110 million secondary speakers who speak it as a second language to varying degrees of proficiency, mainly in Africa.

ICLR Russian Lecture 5

The earliest known writing in Russia dates from the 10th century and was found at Novgorod. The main languages written on them in an early version of the Cyrillic alphabet were Old Russian and Old Church Slavonic. There are also some texts in Finnish, Latin and Greek.

ICLR Chinese Lecture 5

Up to the early 20th century, most of the people in China spoke only their local variety. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as Guānhuà (官话/官話, literally "language of officials").

ICLR Arabic Lecture 5

Arabic is another language with a non-Latin alphabet. Its 28 script letters are easier for English speakers to comprehend than the thousands of Chinese characters, but it's still an adjustment to become familiar with a new writing system.

iCLR Russian Lesson 4

Of all the languages of Russia, Russian is the only official language at the national level. There are 35 different languages which are considered official languages in various regions of Russia, along with Russian. There are over 100 minority languages spoken in Russia today.

iCLR Portuguese Lecture 3

With approximately 215 to 220 million native speakers and 270 million total speakers, Portuguese is usually listed as the sixth most natively spoken language in the world, the third-most spoken European language in the world in terms of native speakers.

ICLR Spanish Lesson 4

Spain, country located in extreme southwestern Europe. It occupies about 85 percent of the Iberian Peninsula, which it shares with its smaller neighbor Portugal.

ICLR German Lecture 4

The modern nation of Germany was founded in 1871. The leader most directly responsible for its creation was Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898).

ICLR Chinese Lecture 4

Ancient Chinese Culture is older than 5000 years. Chinese cultural history has enormous diversity and variety.

ICLR French Lesson 4

In ancient times France was part of the Celtic territory known as Gaul or Gallia. Its present name is derived from the Latin Francia, meaning "country of the Franks," a Germanic people who conquered the area during the 5th century, at the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.