Jones, who first toured the Middle East and North Africa in 1953 with the jazz musician Lionel Hampton, said: "I have long been a vocal proponent of music and the arts being a great asset in building bridges between people and cultures."

The Israel Foreign Ministry is speaking Arabic, on Facebook. The Facebook page which was launched in early January, entitled "Israel speaks Arabic" in Arabic, was opened by the Foreign Ministry's Media and Public Affairs Department and is devoted exclusively to Arabic-speaking audiences.

The State Department -- already pretty good at the social media thing -- is now using Twitter to transmit its thoughts to the Arab world in ... Arabic. Foggy Bottom is using @USAbilAraby, which in English means "USA in Arabic."

Meedan, a leading Arabic-English translation technology company announced today it is providing free Arabic translation for microloans on Kiva.org. The move will help expand the reach of Kiva and its lenders directly into the heart of the Arabic-speaking world, extending a global community of micro-lenders to include thousands of Arabic-speaking aspiring entrepreneurs.

Move over Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Lay witness to yet another Arabic 24/7 television news channel to enter the high-stakes game of international broadcasting in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena).

With predictions that more than half of the world’s language will disappear by the end of the decade, and the seemingly ubiquitous takeover by English showing no signs of stopping, many in the Middle East are starting to worry about the future of Arabic.

In Beirut, Lebanon, mock 'murder scenes' raise awareness that Arabic is ceasing to be a working language here. An Arabic-language festival wants to help change that.

Three graduate students at UCSB will be traveling to Africa this summer as a part of the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship program (CLS)...All three will be studying Arabic, the primary language of both countries, at intensive language institutions