BBC World Service announces historic expansion

(Source: BBC News)

BBC World Service announces biggest expansion 'since the 1940s'

The BBC World Service will launch 11 new language services as part of its biggest expansion "since the 1940s", the corporation has announced.

The expansion is a result of the funding boost announced by the UK government last year.

The new languages will be Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Gujarati, Igbo, Korean, Marathi, Pidgin, Punjabi, Telugu, Tigrinya, and Yoruba.

The first new services are expected to launch in 2017.

African languages:

• Afaan Oromo: Language of Ethiopia's biggest ethnic group
• Amharic: Ethiopia's official language
• Tigrinya: The main working language of Eritrea, along with Arabic. Also spoken in Ethiopia
• Igbo: An official Nigerian language. Also spoken in Equatorial Guinea
• Yoruba: Spoken in south-western Nigeria and some other parts of West Africa, especially Benin and Togo
• Pidgin: A creole version of English widely spoken in southern Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea

Pidgin - West African lingua franca

Asian languages:

• Gujarati: Native to the Indian state of Gujarat but found around the Indian subcontinent and the world
• Marathi: From the Indian state of Maharashtra, including India's commercial capital Mumbai
• Telugu: Huge numbers of speakers, like many Indian languages, primarily in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
• Punjabi: One of the world's most populous languages, it is widely-spoken in Pakistan and parts of India
• Korean: Spoken in North and South though the dialects have diverged. Pop culture slang and foreign loan words are notably more common in the South

["]Other expansion plans include:

• extended news bulletins in Russian, with regionalised versions for surrounding countries
• enhanced television services across Africa, including more then 30 new TV programmes for partner broadcasters across sub-Saharan Africa
• new regional programming from BBC Arabic
• short-wave and medium-wave radio programmes aimed at audiences in the Korean peninsula, plus online and social media content
• investment in World Service English, with new programmes, more original journalism, and a broader agenda["]

Click here to read the fullannouncementat BBC News.