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Languages of Universities | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | College/University | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 5071 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 13 10 April 2011 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As much as I enjoy learning a second language, my primary hobby is learning about the world more generally,
and I try to find materials in the language that I'm studying to facilitate that. I've had some success in finding university courses in french online (not about french, but other courses taught using french), and I was wondering how many languages in the world offer university or college level courses. With the growth and spread of the internet, I imagine it won't be long before one can learn about various subjects in any of the major languages. Can anyone give a reasonable estimate of the number of different university level institutions teaching in various languages? I'm having trouble finding the right words, so let me start a list to be more clear: english, french, chinese, russian, etc... would all be included because they are universities which teach general courses (biology, history, economics, etc...) using those languages. But ancient greek, middle English, cree, etc... would not be included, because I doubt there are institutions who teach using those languages. (I didn't include latin in this list because the Vatican might still be teaching with it.) Anyone have any idea as to the number? I would also be interested in hearing about the smaller languages which have universities associated with them (i.e., I would be pleasantly surprised if there was a cree university somewhere.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 13 11 April 2011 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As a very rough guide, you can think of all of the countries out there (roughly 190 give or take a few). In turn count how many of these have universities, colleges or schools for professions. It's a resonable bet that each country's universities will use the official language as the main language of instruction.
I would guess that between 100 and 150 languages are used as languages of instruction for tertiary education (Arabic, English, French, or Spanish which are each official in several countries would reduce the presumed diversity when it comes to languages of instruction). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 5071 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 13 11 April 2011 at 3:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Wikipedia tells me that there are 116 offical
languages, but I suspect that the number used in post secondary institutions is a bit less than that. Can anyone say with confidence that any of the official languages don't have a university which teaches using it? I also think that the low number of textbooks sold each year per course per language would encourage the use of textbooks in the regional lingua franca... Which makes me think, do any universities use textbooks in one language but lecture in the local language? Edited by JasonE on 11 April 2011 at 3:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kiyoko Newbie United States Joined 5021 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Studies: Japanese, Esperanto | Message 4 of 13 11 April 2011 at 3:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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An easy way to find *free* courses in your target language is to search the name of your
L2 with the words "open course ware". I found a host of Japanese material that way, and I can't wait to dive into it. And I agree with Jason, there are probably quite a few universities where textbooks are in extremely limited supply in the official language, such as Dhiveli or Inuinnaqtun. Further complicating the count is countries with several official languages, such as Moldova. Is there one language that supersedes all others? Does it vary by region? By university? By subject or professor? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4982 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 5 of 13 11 April 2011 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Plus we would have to take into account that some universities teach in several different languages - Take for
example a Catalan university, the teaching is of course mostly done in Catalan, but some is done in Spanish, and much less in English. Also this changes vis-a-vis the level of teaching, with postgraduate teaching being a much more mutlilingual affair. To add to the complexion, you can take individual modules in different languages... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 6 of 13 11 April 2011 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sure, it's very common in Sweden. Many of my textbooks at Uni were in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6458 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian | Message 7 of 13 11 April 2011 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Same in my country. Maybe 2-3 books that I had to read for classes were in my language, the rest were either in English or Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 5071 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 8 of 13 11 April 2011 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I find this to be extremely interesting. Being Canadian, education comes in only two flavors, English and french, and from what I remember the french students, in my high school at least, had french textbooks. Any more information from other members would be greatly appreciated. And is anyone familiar with an officially recognized language that isn't used in higher education? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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