College students with an interest in languages should pay attention to this one: The University of Washington has received a $ 16 million federal grant to support as many as 140 fellowships a year for students who major in Chinese, Arabic, Tagalog or nearly five dozen other less-commonly taught, but politically important, foreign tongues.
The fellowships, which are scholarships available to undergraduates and graduates, cover study for the academic year and summer fellowships. The money will cover a good chunk of tuition and living expenses. It also covers courses about the cultures in which those languages are spoken. The grants will be awarded over a four-year period.
Less-commonly taught languages can mean any language other than French, German and Spanish, said Resat Kasaba, the director of the UW’s Jackson School for International Studies.
Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Russian would qualify, but the UW also offers courses in Indonesian, Tagalog, Hindi, Urdu, Vietnamese, Bengali, Khmer and about 50 others — languages that few other institutions offer, Kasaba said.
It takes about two years of college-level study for native English speakers to learn a language with roots similar to English, and about three years to learn a language that is di………….