Less Commonly Taught Languages (or LCTLs) is a designation used in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

for languages ''other than'' the most commonly taught foreign languages in US public schools. The term covers a wide array of world languages (other than English), ranging from some of the world's largest and most influential, and holds international recognization such as Chinese, Russian,

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

, Portuguese, Japanese, Persian,

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Turkish, Swahili, Italian, and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

to smaller regional languages studied in the US mainly by area experts, such as Twi, spoken in West Africa, and Finnish. The term arose out of a need to contrast the more commonly taught languages in US

K-12 K-1 is a professional kickboxing promotion established in 1993, well known worldwide mainly for its heavyweight division fights and Grand Prix tournaments. In January 2012, K-1 Global Holdings Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong, acqui ...

public education with those normally encountered only at university level, a great divide reflected both in the US textbook industry, which caters to the existing K-12 market by necessarily focusing on the "Big Three," ( Spanish,

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

and

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

) and in historical US government funding for foreign language education. (In fact, one

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

language educator has referred to LCTLs as the "Less Commonly ''Funded'' Languages".) To facilitate the development of instructional formats specifically for the low-enrollment languages at U.S. colleges/universities, the National Association of Self-Instructional Language Programs (NASILP) was established in the 1970s. After

9/11 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerci ...

, US federal departments and agencies recognized the strategic importance of LCTLs such as Arabic and, as a result, have begun funding programs for LCTLs such as the National Flagship Language Initiative (NFLI) under the auspices of the National Security Education Program (NSEP). These programs have been developed to encourage growth in the teaching of less commonly taught languages critical to national security such as

, Persian,

, Korean,

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...

, and Russian. Within the US academic/educational community, previously informal links among LCTL educators crystallized into the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (or NCOLCTL), "an umbrella organization for national associations and individuals interested in less commonly taught languages" founded in 1990 and based at the

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship campus of Indiana University and, with over 40,000 students, its largest c ...

The Council's mission is to increase the number of Americans who choose to learn one or more of the less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) as a means of enhancing cross-cultural communication among citizens of the United States . ... The Council seeks to improve the teaching and learning of these languages and to make them more generally available. The Council is the national voice for organizations and individuals who represent the teaching of these less commonly taught languages at both the collegiate and precollegiate level . ... The Council constitutes a national mechanism devoted to strengthening the less commonly taught language professions through enabling Council members to work toward "shared solutions to common problems." The Council principally directs its efforts toward building a national architecture for the LCTL field and in making the field's resources easily accessible to language programs and individual learners around the United States.

Other places that provide support for LCTLs are the National Language Resource Centers (United States), all of which focus on LCTLs in at least some capacity. One of these centers, The National Less Commonly Taught Languages Resource Center at

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. It ...

is working on projects to support LCTLs, including professional development opportunities for instructors and open resources that can be used in classrooms. Another Language Resource Center, the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

has had many projects over the years that focus on LCTLs The LCTL project (no longer updated) created a large database of where LCTLs are taught in North American colleges/universities, k-12 schools,

distance education Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Traditionally, this usually in ...

study abroad International students, or foreign students, are students who undertake all or part of their tertiary education in a country other than their own and move to that country for the purpose of studying. In 2019, there were over 6 million internati ...

, and summer courses. Over 350 languages and thousands of schools were listed on the database. In addition to the database, the LCTL project sponsored mailing lists for teachers of various LCTLs, royalty free graphics and sounds for language teachers, and a summer institute on developing material for LCTL teachers. LCTL project mailing lists]. In

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, the term Lesser-Used Languages (LULs) is used by the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

(EU) bureaucracy for languages ''other than'' the 24 "official" languages of the European Union: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch,

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also * ...

, Finnish,

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese,

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania ** Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...

, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish.

References

{{Reflist

External links

National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages
- NCOLCTL, an academic consortium of university teachers and departments of LCTLs to encourage the exchange of ideas and promotion of LCTL's in American education at all levels.
Less Commonly Taught Languages Project
at the University of Minnesota's National Language Resource Center, CARLA. The aims of the project are to encourage good teaching of LCTLs, and to help teachers communicate among themselves.
National Foreign Language Resource Centers website
Many of the 16 national Language Resource Centers (LRCs) provide resources for learning and teaching LCTLs.
National Association of Self-Instructional Language Programs
- NASILP Language education in the United States Lists of languages