Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (English: National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations),[1] abbreviated as INALCO, is a French Grand Etablissement with a specializing in the teaching of languages and cultures from the world. Its coverage spans languages of Central Europe, Africa, Asia, America, and Oceania. With 104 languages taught as of 2024, this institution is currently the world's largest provider of language training courses.[2][3][4][5]
It is also informally called Langues’O (IPA:[lɑ̃ɡz‿o]) in French, an abbreviation for Langues orientales.
The INALCO logo is made up of the school's acronym, each part of which is translated into languages written in non-Latin characters, corresponding to Inalco's fields of teaching and research.[1]
1795 The École spéciale des langues orientales (Special School for Oriental Languages) is established
1873 The two schools merge
1914 The school is renamed the École nationale des langues orientales vivantes (ENLOV)
1971 The school is renamed the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales or Inalco (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations)
2011 Inalco centralizes all of its taught courses under one roof at 65 rue des Grands Moulins in Paris[6]
Teaching
Organization
Inalco is structured partly into departments, whose perimeter corresponds to a region of the world, and partly into professionally-oriented courses or sectors.[7] Departments may be monolingual or group together several language sections. Inalco's courses prepare students for careers in intercultural communication and training, international trade, teaching French as a foreign language, advanced international studies, and Natural Language Processing.
List of departments and sections (and their languages)
The Institute offers initial training at Bachelor's, Master's and PhD levels, as well as continuing education open to external students and professionals. Foreign students can take French as a foreign language courses. Short, à la carte courses, evening classes and “practical certificates” are also popular.
Compared to other French universities, many Bachelor programs at INALCO show high failure rates, i.e. high proportions of students failing the course in their end-of-year exam (65% of success in the 3rd year, compared to 74% nation-wide).[25][26] This is particularly true among students specializing in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Russian and Arabic historically the largest departments of INALCO.
As an example, here is a table[citation needed] with approximate student numbers, indicating rates of success and failure in the first, second, and third year of the Department of Japanese Studies.
Level
Total students
Successful students
Success rate
First year
500
250
50%
Second year
300
150
50%
Third year
150
110
73%
An explanation sometimes given[by whom?] is the difficulty of these courses, or the high level required by INALCO. A more likely cause is the absence of any entrance examination: any student can register in any course, regardless of their true motivation or academic level. But this is not the case of the Japanese Studies Department anymore for more than ten years 2015 (only around 300 of the 1200 to 1300 applicants are accepted to enter the cursus each year).
Many students select a language out of a superficial interest in a country or culture, or due to individual connections, yet without the commitment to thoroughly learning those difficult languages. This issue is particularly acute for first and second-year students; those who reach the third year are much more motivated, and thus show much higher rates of success.
Research at Inalco combines area studies and academic fields. Researchers study languages and civilizations that are increasingly in the spotlight – Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and as far as the Arctic – and are central to the major issues of the 21st century. Fourteen research teams, often partnered with other research organizations, PhD programs, and a publishing service form the backbone of research at Inalco. Inalco also has a project management and knowledge transfer service.
The research teams, administration offices, and doctoral school are housed in a building dedicated entirely to research, with access to a full range of support functions: assistance in preparing research proposals and grant applications, organizing scientific events, looking for partnerships and funding, publication support, internal funding, and communication.
Inalco conducts research projects in more than one hundred countries and offers joint programs with foreign universities. This enables Inalco students and their international counterparts to enhance their studies through immersive experiences. Inalco also provides distance learning courses through videoconferencing and online resources, offering instruction in Arabic, Armenian, Burmese, Estonian, Modern Hebrew, Inuktitut, Lithuanian, Malagasy, Quechua, Sinhalese, Slovak, and Swahili.[29][30]
Inalco is an active member of Sorbonne Paris Cité, with 120,000 students, 8,500 faculty members, and 6,000 technical and administrative staff. Branches have been opened in Singapore, Buenos Aires and São Paulo.
The foundation strives to develop the preservation, study, transmission, development and interaction of languages and cultures in France and around the world with projects involving the institute's expertise: education, research, advancing knowledge and skills in a globalized world.
More than 120 nationalities are represented by Inalco faculty and students. The institute, along with its teachers, students and partners, organizes over a hundred cultural events a year.[35] Inalco also participates in several international film festivals (such as the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema) and makes every effort to share its knowledge and expertise with society.[36]
