English

English is a modern lingua franca. It is a leading language in so many areas: from global affairs and science to entertainment. One of the reasons for that lies in the colonial history of the British Crown in the 17th century, when the British Empire became the biggest empire in history. With colonialism, trade relations boomed, following the progress in science, industrial manufacturing and literature. However, there were many other competing languages, such as French, Spanish and German.

Decoding cryptograms is a great way to sharpen your English. A cryptogram with a simple substitution code is fairly easy to decipher, but it forces you to think carefully about spelling and vocabulary. As your English improves, you can move on to harder codes, like ones that don't put spaces in between the words so you have to figure out yourself where one word ends and the next begins.

This simple code uses the English alphabet. Letters are swapped for letters:

Languages generally develop organically, following changes in culture. But sometimes we have to purposefully change our language to create the culture we need.

Take, for example, sexism. In English, seeing the masculine form of a word—e.g., adding "-man" to a job title, and using he/him/his pronouns—as neutral had been accepted as the norm since the 19th century and still often is. In the 1970s, however, women began to demand equal representation in all things, and that meant in the language, too. 

More and more elementary school teachers in Japan are turning to English language schools with native speakers, as they seek to gain confidence in teaching the language before it is formally added to their curricula in the academic year starting April 2020.

Many teachers admit to lacking confidence in their English, in areas from vocabulary to grammar, expressiveness and pronunciation. Elementary school teachers say they are afraid of teaching their students “the wrong thing.”

Japan began introducing bilingual traffic signs on Saturday as the number of foreign visitors increases ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

By the time the games open, about 35,000 of the 140,000 stop signs in the capital will have been replaced with ones in both Japanese and English near the Olympic venues and in other areas, the Metropolitan Police Department said.

Along with the new stop signs, bilingual slow-down signs will also be introduced.