The sight of youngsters speaking Chinese in the Mexican heartland is unusual, to say the least. Parents told that pupils as young as 9 would be taught Mandarin had been skeptical. Wouldn't French or Italian (Romance languages closer to Spanish) make more sense? some wondered. Savvy Mexican politicians have other ideas.

Compulsory teaching of foreign languages was always unnecessary because we're blessed to have English as the national tongue - the language of business, diplomacy and tourism in almost every corner of the world. Worse, we've taught these languages with too few trained teachers, and in a ludicrously unco-ordinated way.

These days Afrikaans is one of the country’s 11 official languages, but some Afrikaners say it is being increasingly marginalized to the point where they fear for the survival of their language and culture. The one thing it hasn’t been, until recently, is cool.

APDS Blogger: Erin Kamler

Barack Obama may be the best exponent of American public diplomacy since Benjamin Franklin, inspiring a newly hopeful attitude about the United States in many parts of the world. But beyond the president himself U.S. public diplomacy lacks coherence and impact.

U.S. government international communicators shifted into max overdrive from both sides of that protective "firewall," to report on what may become known as one of the great White House public diplomacy efforts ever: President Obama's June 4 address from Cairo, Egypt to the Middle East and beyond. The speech was unquestionably both a news event and a public diplomacy activity, so there are times when the mythical "firewall," to protect the independence of government international journalistic endeavors, may be ethically breached. This was one of them.

Maybe public diplomacy journalism is only dying, or maybe it has just become boring to write about the subject these days. This seems to be so on both sides of the pond.