With early morning classes and daily homework assignments, introductory language classes are often considered burdensome by students who come to Princeton needing one semester of Spanish or a full course of study in French to fulfill the language requirement.But for those who opt to tackle more exotic languages — ones ...

Across from Mahiri Mwita's desk in Aaron Burr Hall hangs a white marker board. Written on it is a poem by one of his third-year Swahili students. The poem, part of the student's project to translate American verse into Swahili, tells the story of a young girl who is chided ...

After her freshman year, as many of her classmates headed home for their first summer as college students, Sloan Pavsner '08 was gearing up for a very different experience: two months in China at Princeton-in-Beijing (PiB).Studying Chinese was something of an accident for Pavsner. She had planned to take Greek ...

For each Chinese-speaking westerner, East Asian Studies professor Perry Link said, there are thousands of English-speaking Chinese."That leaves the question," Link said, "why do westerners learn Chinese?"Though English is spoken virtually everywhere — Link called it "a hegemonic language" — it is not always enough, a fact that students and ...

During the Cold War, Russian was the popular choice for students interested in learning a language deemed vital for American foreign policy interests. Those who wish to do the same today are increasingly looking to Chinese and Arabic as the languages of choice.Enrollment in Arabic and Chinese has skyrocketed in ...