Chinese Mandarin is clearly the number one language for native speakers, who number approximately 800 million. But when that figure is combined with non-native speakers, English wins out.

How do we learn a foreign language? First and foremost, adults learn languages in a radically different way from children: neurologically speaking, the information acquired is 'stored' in different places in the brain.

Beneath all the traditional media publicity and right-wing outcry about public examinations results in England this last Thursday, there was one statistic that for me was very worrying indeed.

An online "school" based in China has recruited nearly-naked models in a bid to encourage foreigners to learn Mandarin. These "teachers" are a far ...

A schoolboy who speaks seven languages has been named the most multilingual child in the UK. Bruce Baillie-Hamilton, 14, can speak Russian, Mandari...

English, the UK's blessing and its curse. Our national language is a blessing because it has evolved and continues to evolve as a powerfully expressive tool full of surprise and joy. English is also our curse because is has become the business lingua franca. English is the Martini of languages - anytime, anywhere, anyplace.

Forget the Teletubbies and Spongebob Squarepants, children can now tune in to the television and learn Mandarin, thanks to the BBC's latest production...

There are many reasons why keeping Welsh on the school curriculum is important, but to me it is vital as it is part of our ancestry. Cultural imperialism and social snobbery forced our grandfathers to murmur Welsh in the playgrounds, but they did, and it is only because they did so that we can speak it out loud all over Wales today.