Languages

Coming of age during the 9/11 attacks and war in Iraq, some of the students in UCLA's advanced Arabic class want to launch diplomatic or military careers. Others seek to delve into the Koran and Islamic culture. And some simply love a mind-stretching, tongue-twisting challenge. No matter the reasons, they help fuel a trend that has made Arabic the fastest-growing spoken language of study at U.S. colleges and universities.

Nearly a decade ago, an improbable dream came true for Deaf West Theatre and its founder, Ed Waterstreet. The small, L.A.-based company went to Broadway with its signed and spoken version of the musical "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. " Even as he savored their success, Waterstreet had another dream - creating an original musical inspired by Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac. " What better tale for his theater to tell than one that explores the universal desire to express oneself?

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

Deep inside my writerly brain, down where my earliest memories reside, there is a voice. It speaks to me in Spanish. I write in the language of Shakespeare and Steinbeck. That's the language I was educated in, here in L.A. The language of the British Empire, of American Manifest Destiny, of California and the West. But Spanish gave me my first words: mamá, agua . And it was the language on the covers of the first works of grown-up literature I held in my hands, the Guatemalan novels my immigrant father brought into our Hollywood home.

In "Languages on the Brink of Extinction" (April 3), you bemoan the fact that half the world's 6,000 languages are dying. A University of Alaska linguist says that only 600 languages are considered safe. I say why even 600? Why not 60 or six? Why not one? Since God created us as one, why don't we act like it? One language would be a start. I don't care which one. LEE J. MAAT Woodland Hills

Twitter now comes in 28 languages. The newest ones -- Hebrew, Farsi, Arabic and Urdu -- were added just this week. Those four languages posed a particular problem to Twitter's team of translation volunteers because they are read from right to left, rather than left to right. Therefore the translation required not just word challenges, but technical and design challenges too. For example, before Monday, Twitter couldn't support hashtags in right-to-left (RTL) languages.  Wrap your brain around that!

The words come out in abrupt breaths, as if Felipe Lopez were whispering to the chalkboard. "Rseidy. Rseidy ," he asks his students to repeat. "Learns. " "And Dizh. Dizh , say it with me, is 'language.' " In unison, the students in the UCLA classroom follow, training their tongues to the rhythm of Zapotec, an ancient language that few people in Los Angeles have ever spoken or even heard. It comes from Oaxaca, on the southern tip of Mexico, a state known for its elaborate, historic traditions.

The group was discussing Britney Spears and everyone wanted to know the same thing: How do you say "paparazzi" in Gujarati? They settled on the term phota levavara, or photo takers. "I figured that to bring Gujarati into my everyday life, it would have to fit the things that I do," like discussing pop culture with friends, said Chitavan Patel, who founded the Gujarati language group two years ago on meetup.com.

Learning a new language can open your mind to novel ways of experiencing the world. The Inuit tribe's multiple words for snow give insight not only into their environment but also into their culture. Explore cultures from around the globe by getting acquainted with languages through these direct links on The Times Launch Point Web site: http://www.latimes.com/launchpoint/ Here are the best sites for getting your schoolwork done or for just having fun.

If language limitations have kept Asia off your destination list, smart-phone applications can help you overcome those barriers. Before you go abroad, try testing apps that use the Internet or GPS to determine how much data roaming they do. Adding an international data plan may minimize the risk of your wireless carrier socking you with expensive international data charges. Language translation Google Translate: Translates words and phrases for 57 languages but requires Internet access.

NEW YORK — Spanish-language media giant Univision Communications touted something that its English-language broadcast rivals cannot: Prime-time ratings at its flagship TV network, Univision, have grown 7% during the current season. Ratings gains in an era of shrinking TV audiences are uncommon as major broadcasters struggle to maintain their standing. Cable channels, social media and advances in technology — including digital video recorders — continue to nibble away at viewership, particularly among younger audiences.

If Carlos Fuentes could have invented the perfect character to star in one of his novels, he might have come up with a protagonist named Carlos Fuentes. That character would be a glamorous global citizen who was born in Panama as a diplomat's son, then hopscotched to Washington, D.C., London, Paris and other glittering power centers. A dapper ladies' man who married an actress and claimed to have had affairs with screen sirens Jeanne Moreau and Jean Seberg. A lifelong adventurer, like the tragedy-haunted journalist hero of Fuentes' novel "The Old Gringo," played by Gregory Peck in the 1989 film version . A man who, like many of Fuentes' characters, overcomes personal tragedy of near-mythic proportions partly through the sheer power of his own relentless drive and productivity.

At first, the email rants from readers expressing their distress about Hollywood's increasing reliance on foul language were a mere trickle. Like the way one couple lost faith in one of their favorite actors, Paul Rudd, mortified by his graphic pep talk to his private part in"Wanderlust. " Before those complaints could be chalked up to a prudish few, they grew into a steady stream of frustration, such as the distinct distaste for the dialogue in writer-director-actress Jennifer Westfeldt's indie comedy"Friends With Kids.

Already the largest cable television provider in Los Angeles, Time Warner Cable Inc. now wants to become the dominant sports programmer in the region. On Oct. 1, the New York company will launch two regional sports networks: Time Warner Cable SportsNet and Spanish-language network Time Warner Cable Deportes. The cable operator has shelled out billions of dollars to snag the Los Angeles Lakers away from Fox Sports West and now has its eye on the Dodgers too. The company is tired of being held hostage by high-priced sports channels and has decided to stop fighting the competition and begin imitating it. The cable operator, which has about 2 million subscribers in Southern California, is taking steps to cut out the middle man. That middleman is News Corp., parent of local cable channels Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket and a formidable opponent.

Speaking the language of the fast growing and increasingly desirable Latino audience, Walt Disney Co.'s ABC News and Univision Communications are teaming up to launch a 24-hour English-language news network. The yet-unnamed cable channel, announced Monday, is expected to launch during the first half of next year. The two companies plan to get a head start this summer with a website and content for social networks and mobile devices devoted to covering the U.S. presidential election — which some analysts say could be decided by Latino voters in battleground states.

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal jury handed Oracle Corp. a major setback in its high-stakes copyright infringement case against Google Inc. by failing to agree on a key issue in the case. The 12-member panel concluded that Google lifted technology from Oracle's Java programming language to build its popular Android mobile software that powers more than 300 million devices, but could not reach a unanimous decision on whether Google had the legal right to do so under "fair use. " The impasse after five days of deliberation means that Oracle is unlikely to wring hundreds of millions of dollars from the search giant on copyright infringement claims.

Two Sacramento judges Friday ordered changes in the wording of ballot measures that would move California to an open primary system, change car insurance rate structures and charge lobbyists to fund campaigns for secretary of state candidates. The changes resolved disputes over what is supposed to be neutral wording of the titles and summaries of the measures as well as the text of arguments to be published in the voter's manual for the June 8 election. Monday is the deadline for getting the final versions to the printer.

Things would be easier if Academia Semillas del Pueblo didn't have such low test scores. Then, the focus could be on the El Sereno charter school's International Baccalaureate program. Or on its trilingual curriculum: English, Spanish and Nahuatl, an indigenous language of Mexico. Or on the two co-founders dedicated to teaching culture that stretches back to before colonial Mexico. Instead, the focus shifted in recent weeks to the campus' test results. Compared to schools statewide that serve similar students and when matched against campuses in the neighborhood, results are low. Last year, the school's score on the state's Academic Performance Index dropped 92 points to 624; the state target is 800. Just 22% of students tested at grade level in math, 30% in English.

Jurors deciding whetherGoogle Inc.stole Oracle Inc.'s technology are deadlocked on one of three questions about whether the search engine provider infringed copyrights to build Android software. U.S. Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, presiding over an intellectual property trial in its third week, sent the jurors home Friday and ordered them to return Monday for more deliberations. Alsup had said he would accept a partial verdict Friday and changed his plan after talking privately with Oracle's and Google's lawyers.