I’m here again to let you know that applications for the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program are open! If you or someone you know is a US citizen high school student who is passionate about language learning and interested in studying abroad, NSLI-Y is an excellent opportunity!
NSLI-Y is a full scholarship program sponsored by the US Department of State. Students study abroad for either a summer or academic year with an intensive focus on one of the following critical-need languages:
Arabic
Chinese (Mandarin)
Hindi
Indonesian
Korean
Persian (Tajik)
Russian
Turkish
Keep reading for more information about some frequently asked questions!
How do I apply for NSLI-Y? Just head over to the website and look for the “How to Apply” section! It’ll walk you through all of the steps and requirements. There is NO application fee, so if you’re interested, you have nothing to lose by giving it a shot! This year’s deadline is Thursday, November 5, 2020 at 4PM Eastern.
What if I’ve never studied any of these languages before? That’s fine! NSLI-Y does not have any language prerequisites! Apply for the language that calls to you!
Is one language easier to get accepted for than another? No! NSLI-Y rarely releases exact data, but the number of finalist spots for each language tends to be roughly proportional to the number of applicants for that language. Regardless, you should apply for what you’re most passionate about. That’s the best way to write honest, convincing essays. Also remember that studying abroad is a challenge, and you’ll be living that language and culture for an entire summer or year - You’ll want to be where you’ll be happy!
What costs does NSLI-Y cover? Once you’re accepted as a finalist, it covers everything! If you become a semi-finalist, the costs of your medical form and getting a passport (if you don’t already have one) will not be covered. But finalists have their visa fees, domestic and international travel, food, lodging, and medical insurance all covered!
If accepted, would I be traveling alone or with a group? You would be with a group. The size of the group may vary based on a number of factors, but you will be traveling and studying with other NSLI-Y students.
Is NSLI-Y a safe program? Safety is a huge priority for NSLI-Y. Students have at least one English-speaking adult on-call 24/7 and are issued local cell phones upon arrival in the host country. There is always a pre-departure orientation during which the program rules and expectations are clearly explained, and teachers and host families are very caring toward their students. If any sort of emergency situation arises (extreme weather, political unrest, disease outbreaks, etc.), program staff will monitor the situation closely to make sure they can implement a proper response. NSLI-Y students are super well taken care of!
What about COVID-19? I’ve asked NSLI-Y about this, and they say that they are keeping an eye on things and hoping that students will be able to travel by next summer. However, if this is not the case, they have the experience and infrastructure available to make the program virtual again as they did this year.
I’m interested in this program, but I’m already in college. Is there anything out there for me? There sure is! Check out the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) at https://clscholarship.org/.
If you’re a high school student and United States citizen with an interest in foreign languages (or you know someone who fits that description), definitely take the time to look into the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y)! (If you’re a US citizen with an interest in foreign language but you’re an undergrad or graduate student, check out CLS instead!) NSLI-Y is a State Department-sponsored scholarship program that sends high school students abroad for a summer or academic year to study a critical-need language. It is FULLY FUNDED, which means the scholarship covers all tuition, travel expenses, visa fees, accommodations, and even medical insurance. The languages offered for NSLI-Y’s 2019-20 programs are as follows:
Arabic (summer and academic year offered)
Chinese - Mandarin (summer and academic year offered)
Hindi (summer and academic year offered)
Indonesian (summer only)
Korean (summer and academic year offered)
Persian - Tajiki (summer only)
Russian (summer and academic year offered)
Turkish (summer only)
(If you’re a student of German, you might consider CBYX.)
NSLI-Y students participate in intensive language classes, as well as cultural classes/activities and excursions. They may live with host families, in dorms, or a combination of both. Participants are sent as part of a group of other accepted students to one of a number of pre-determined host locations, so NSLI-Y is also an amazing opportunity to meet peers from around the country who share your passion for languages! NO PREVIOUS LANGUAGE OR TRAVEL EXPERIENCE IS REQUIRED! Applications opened today (August 22, 2018) and are due October 30, 2018 in order to be considered for the 2019 summer or 2019-20 academic year programs.
As an alumna of NSLI-Y’s Chinese summer program, I’m more than happy to try and answer any questions you might have! (You can send your questions to either of my blogs: @adventuresofyifen or @zhongwenstudieren.) You can also head over to my Wordpress blog for a compilation of past NSLI-Y blogs from all languages to get an idea of past program locations and participants’ experiences!
If one want to start learning mandarin where should one start?? I am having an exchange year in shanghai next year and want to learn a few necessary basics, but I don't know where to start, even with the alphabet because there's thousands apparently....
Hi there! It’s so exciting that you’ll be going on exchange in Shanghai - it’s an amazing city!
As far as learning some basic Chinese, I would recommend that you first decide on your priorities. While you’re on exchange, will you be taking Chinese language classes? Will any other classes you may take be taught in English or in Chinese? Will you be living with a host family, in a dorm with other (Chinese or international) students, or on your own somewhere? All of these may influence your decisions about exactly what you need to learn RIGHT NOW. For example, if your program is going to provide you with Chinese classes, you may want to focus your energy on some basic speaking for now and wait until you get there to get too much into reading and writing.
As far as learning to speak goes, I think it’s very important to pay close attention to pronunciation and tones at the beginning, otherwise it’s very easy to get complacent or to feel like you’ve learned so much vocabulary already that it’s too much work to go back and re-learn all the pronunciation. For help with that, you can look at this post and this post on my langblr for some tips!
And for learning to read and write, there is actually no alphabet in Chinese, except for pinyin, which is only the romanization system and not used so much in daily life except for typing (for example, you can type nihao and get 你好). Each character is one syllable and represents its own meaning: 你 is pronounced nǐ and means “you”, 好 is pronounced hǎo and means “good”. Put together they mean “hello”. Luckily, Chinese characters aren’t just thousands of totally different sets of arbitrary lines; they’re actually a lot more like mix-and-match, with recurring parts that lend meaning (aka radicals) or pronunciation. For more on that, check out this post. Many characters are also pictographs - they look like the thing they are supposed to represent. This video is a helpful visual introduction to some basic Chinese characters!
Here are some other resources and previous posts of mine that may help you get started:
Basic Chinese vocab grouped by theme (There’s not much English on this site, but every word has a picture, a recording of how to pronounce the word, and a feature that shows you how to write the character with the correct stroke order - just click the little four-squared grid under the picture, then click the yellow play button!)
Best of luck to you, and feel free to ask me if you have any other questions!
National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y)
It’s that time of year again: NSLI-Y application time! If you or someone you know is a United States high school student with an interest in foreign languages, definitely check out this opportunity!
NSLI-Y is a US Department of State FULL SCHOLARSHIP to study one of eight critical languages abroad for a summer or academic year. Students can choose from:
Arabic
Chinese (Mandarin)
Hindi
Bahasa Indonesia (New this year! Summer only)
Korean
Persian (Tajiki, summer only)
Russian
Turkish
The applications for NSLI-Y’s 2018-19 programs are now open and are due November 2. You can find more information on the NSLI-Y website: http://www.nsliforyouth.org/ and check out blogs from past participants here. You can also feel free to message me ( @adventuresofyifen or @zhongwenstudieren ) with questions! I’m a 2012 Chinese summer alumna and am happy to help however I can!
National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y)
It’s that time of year again: NSLI-Y application time! If you or someone you know is a United States high school student with an interest in foreign languages, definitely check out this opportunity!
NSLI-Y is a US Department of State FULL SCHOLARSHIP to study one of eight critical languages abroad for a summer or academic year. Students can choose from:
Arabic
Chinese (Mandarin)
Hindi
Bahasa Indonesia (New this year! Summer only)
Korean
Persian (Tajiki, summer only)
Russian
Turkish
The applications for NSLI-Y’s 2018-19 programs are now open and are due November 2. You can find more information on the NSLI-Y website: http://www.nsliforyouth.org/ and check out blogs from past participants here. You can also feel free to message me ( @adventuresofyifen or @zhongwenstudieren ) with questions! I’m a 2012 Chinese summer alumna and am happy to help however I can!
After spending hours and hours reblogging langblr posts, I decided to create one myself!
About me:
- I’m 21
- Bi
- Majoring in Spanish and Chinese
- Studied abroad in Spain and China last year
Languages:
- I’m bilingual in English and Russian
- I’m going to use this blog as my French journal to log my progress for motivation. I’m at around B1 right now and hoping to get to B2 this summer! I want to post what I do to study every day, resources, methods, etc.
- I’m also learning Spanish and Chinese, but I will focus on those when school starts
Some langblrs I like:
@lemonadeandlanguages, @fuck-yeah-french, @languagenerds, @bonjoursluts, @languageaddict, @aspoonfuloflanguage, @frenchaise, @afuturepolyglot, @adventuresofyifen
hey, you answered one of my posts about reading/writing chinese, and you mentioned studying radicals. why is that? (my guess would be for mnemonic purposes and maybe using a chinese dictionary?) thank you!
Hi! Radicals (and just common parts of characters in general) are really helpful for learning to read and write Chinese. Chinese characters are usually constructed with a rhyme and reason, with parts that lend meaning and parts that lend pronunciation. Familiarizing yourself with radicals can sometimes help you guess meanings of new characters while reading and can also help you decide which of a set of similar-looking characters is the correct one to choose.
Let’s take a radical as an example. I like the radical 讠(the simplified version of 訁, which comes from the character 言 yán, meaning “speech” or “words”). Here’s a bunch of characters with that radical:语 yu3 - language话 hua4 - speech; dialect说 shuo1 - to say; to speak诗 shi1 - poem讲 jiang3 - to talk谢 xie4 - to thank课 ke4 - class; lesson词 ci2 - word请 qing3 - please; to invite读 du2 - to read讽 feng3 - to satirize谅 liang4 - to show understanding; to excuse议 yi4 - to comment on; to discuss谓 wei4 - to say谈 tan2 - to discussThis is by no means an exhaustive list, and some are more of a stretch than others, but see how these characters all have something to do with words or speaking? So knowing some radicals helps associate meaning with an otherwise fairly arbitrary character, and can help you guess at new words when you’re in a pinch.
And the more Chinese characters you get familiar with, the more you’ll find that radicals aren’t the only parts they can share. There are many characters that remain the same with only the radical switched out, changing the meaning but keeping the pronunciation similar or even exactly the same. Let’s take, for example, 里 li3:理 li3 - logic; to pay attention to/to manage哩 li - (final modal particle)厘 li2 - one hundredth; centi-狸 li2 - fox-like animal鲤 li3 - carp锂 li3 - lithium俚 li3 - rustic娌 li3 - (used in 妯娌 zhou2 li to mean sisters-in-law)浬 li3 - nautical mileSo you can take 里 and add different radicals to it and still have it be pronounced like “li” (though sometimes with different tones). This gives you a fair chance at guessing pronunciation when reading new words aloud, and it gives you a familiar base to build from when learning new characters - you don’t really need to “learn how” to write it so much as just remember what parts go together. Occasionally you may come across an exception (for example, 埋 mai2, meaning “to bury”, which sounds nothing like “li”), but generally speaking, you can usually get close.
Of course, this kind of familiarity is something that comes with time, so try not to overwhelm yourself with it. I’m still learning myself and did a fair amount of dictionary-checking while writing this response. Take it a few radicals at a time, and also don’t feel pressured to learn every character you can find with a given radical, especially if you’re using an online dictionary or dictionary app - Some of the characters you find there may be obscure or archaic and won’t be of much use to you.
I hope this helps! Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions!
Every time I feel stressed about school I think to myself "I didn't ask for this" but then I remember not only DID I ask for it I'm paying actual money for it and I just
Hello I was wondering if you could tell me what do the numbers in romanized chinese words mean? Thank you! 😄
Hello! Here’s an intro to Chinese numbers that I made a while back, I hope it’s what you’re looking for!
零，〇 - líng - Zero
一 - yī - One
二 - èr - Two
三 - sān - Three
四 - sì - Four
五 - wǔ - Five
六 - liù - Six
七 - qī - Seven
八 - bā - Eight
九 - jiǔ - Nine
十 - shí - Ten
十一 - shí yī - Eleven
十五 - shí wǔ - Fifteen
二十 - èr shí - Twenty
二十八 - èr shí bā - Twenty-eight
一百 - yī bǎi - One hundred
三百一十六 - sān bǎi yī shí liù - Three-hundred sixteen
八百四十九 - bā bǎi sì shí jiǔ - Eight-hundred forty-nine
一千 - yī qiān - One thousand
一万 - yī wàn - Ten thousand
Notes:
The characters and pinyin shownabove are the numbers as they would be when counting (i.e. 1-10).
When counting objects (for example, “oneapple”, “two people”), the number two/2 changes from 二 èr to 两 liǎng. So, to say “two people”: “两个人”liǎng ge rén,NEVER “二个人”èr ge rén.
Remember that when counting objectsin Chinese, a measure word is always needed. There are many different measurewords used for many different categories of objects, but if you don’t know one,you can usually default to 个(ge) and be understood.
You would never count “yī, liǎng,sān, etc.” but always “yī, èr, sān, etc.”
When reading a string of numberssuch as a phone number, some Chinese people will pronounce 一 (1) as yāorather than yī.
When counting numbers 11-19, theyshould be shí yī (11), shí èr (12), and so on. But when counting 111-119 (and1111-1119, etc.), an “yī” should be added before the “shí”: yī bǎi yī shí yī (111),yī bǎi yī shí ér (112)…
Hello I was wondering if you could tell me what do the numbers in romanized chinese words mean? Thank you! 😄
Hello! Here’s an intro to Chinese numbers that I made a while back, I hope it’s what you’re looking for!
零，〇 - líng - Zero
一 - yī - One
二 - èr - Two
三 - sān - Three
四 - sì - Four
五 - wǔ - Five
六 - liù - Six
七 - qī - Seven
八 - bā - Eight
九 - jiǔ - Nine
十 - shí - Ten
十一 - shí yī - Eleven
十五 - shí wǔ - Fifteen
二十 - èr shí - Twenty
二十八 - èr shí bā - Twenty-eight
一百 - yī bǎi - One hundred
三百一十六 - sān bǎi yī shí liù - Three-hundred sixteen
八百四十九 - bā bǎi sì shí jiǔ - Eight-hundred forty-nine
一千 - yī qiān - One thousand
一万 - yī wàn - Ten thousand
Notes:
The characters and pinyin shownabove are the numbers as they would be when counting (i.e. 1-10).
When counting objects (for example, “oneapple”, “two people”), the number two/2 changes from 二 èr to 两 liǎng. So, to say “two people”: “两个人”liǎng ge rén,NEVER “二个人”èr ge rén.
Remember that when counting objectsin Chinese, a measure word is always needed. There are many different measurewords used for many different categories of objects, but if you don’t know one,you can usually default to 个(ge) and be understood.
You would never count “yī, liǎng,sān, etc.” but always “yī, èr, sān, etc.”
When reading a string of numberssuch as a phone number, some Chinese people will pronounce 一 (1) as yāorather than yī.
When counting numbers 11-19, theyshould be shí yī (11), shí èr (12), and so on. But when counting 111-119 (and1111-1119, etc.), an “yī” should be added before the “shí”: yī bǎi yī shí yī (111),yī bǎi yī shí ér (112)…
it will forever confuse me that the german tumblr app now says “… hat deinen Eintrag gelikt” and not “… hat deinen Eintrag als Favorit markiert” which is just shortened and very nice but I don’t read gelikt as [gelaikd] but as [gelikt] and that sounds as if someone licked my post and i really wish i could unread/unhear that
My Brazilian friend told me that in Portuguese sand dollars are called "sea cookies" and spooning is called "sleeping like two little seashells" and honestly it's almost enough to make me want to learn Portuguese
So there is this idea that when you’re bilingual you like to show off and use foreign words on purpose but tbh when I can’t remember a word in French but know it in English I just feel completely stupid, like come on brain it’s our mother tongue, don’t tell me you can’t remember, I’m going to sound like an idiot now
