Less Commonly Taught Languages

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Less Commonly Taught Languages (or LCTLs) is a designation used in the United States for languages other than the three most commonly taught foreign/world languages in US public schools, i.e. Spanish, French, and German. The term covers a wide array of world languages (other than English), ranging from some of the world's largest and most influential languages, such as Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and Japanese, 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 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," and in historical US government funding for foreign language education. (In fact, one Stanford University language educator has referred to LCTLs as the "Less Commonly Funded Languages".)

Due to 9/11, US federal departments and agencies have 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 Arabic, Persian, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian.

Within the US academic/educational community, previously informal links among LCTL educators crystalized 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 University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"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 individuals learners around the United States."

In Europe, the term Lesser-Used Languages (LUL's) is used by the European Union (EU) bureaucracy, but in a different context, namely, for languages other than the 20 that have "official" EU status, such as English, French and German. (See Wikipedia article on "Official Language".)

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