Broadway icon Lea Salonga is now officially the first Filipina to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Lea received the landmark’s 2,855th star.
The ceremony was held on Sept. 4 at 11:30 a.m. (2:30 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 5, in Manila) in front of the historic Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
Fellow Disney icons Ming-Na Wen and Brandy, along with Filipino American Broadway star Darren Criss, were present at Friday’s ceremony, which was hosted by Sibley Scoles.
In her speech, Lea described the event "a full-circle moment."
"I have walked down these streets many times; I've stepped on a lot of famous people, and now people get to step on me. Which feels strangely appropriate for show business. I love a full-circle moment," Lea said.
She continued by looking back on her career, recalling herself as the seven-year-old Lea who loved to sing and dance but never really knew if she had a future in the world of theater.
"I was a little girl in the Philippines who loved to sing and perform. I started working when I was very young, and I certainly did not have a grand plan for how any of this was supposed to unfold; I just love doing it," she said.
Lea admitted that it was a bumpy road from the start, but with the help of the right people who took a chance on her, she was fortunate enough to pursue the thing she loves most.
There are significant differences between the methods favoured by the most well-known internet polyglots. For example they cannot agree on:
The only thing they have in common is that they all spend a LOT of time on languages, which is why I said that time spent is the most important factor of all; more important than method.
That being said, you are right to observe that polyglots tend to dislike Pimsleur. Pimsleur is inefficient time-wise, because it only teaches 5-6 words per 30 minute lesson. For comparison: Pod101 generally teaches 10-12 words per 15 minute lesson. Michel Thomas also uses a faster pace, though harder to compare because Michel Thomas focuses almost entirely on grammar / neat expressions that you can plug words into. The only polyglots I heard recommend Pimsleur said that they like to use a few lessons of it in the beginning in order to develop their accent and comfort level in a new language. Michel Thomas has more fans among polyglots, but not as many as Assimil. I definitely wouldn't put him in the same category as Pimsleur.
Assimil is popular because there's a lot of meat to eat: almost every one of their books contains 100 lessons and claims to lead you up to B2 (upper intermediate) level. Whether it's really B2 is debated on polyglot forums, but there's no doubt that Assimil courses cover a whole lot more words and grammar and idioms than most other courses which leave you well within beginner territory (or tourist territory). Also, Assimil neatly straddles the divide between older-is-better and newer-is-better polyglots: many of the older-is-better crowd like Assimil's "without toil" courses dating back to the 50s and 60s, while a good share of the modernists like the new Assimil courses. The courses have adapted a bit over time.
Apart from Assimil, polyglots also tend to use Teach Yourself or Colloquial or Langenscheidt or any courses of the same structure, though you'll find less fanatics for these. The exact choice often depends not just on the brand but also the language you want to learn, because all the good publishers give their writers significant freedom in designing the courses, resulting in some that are much better than others. Even Assimil has a few fluke courses that even Assimil fans won't touch.
Then of course there are all the indie courses that only exist for one language - in my experience, these are usually very good, because there is no company trying to fit a one-size-fits-all approach on them. The internet in particular has many free non-branded language courses that are of exceptional quality (esp. if you're a modernist), usually created by universities or national radio stations. I wrote entire books about the abundance of high-quality free online language courses/materials.
Then there are people who don't use anything like a textbook. For example, they might start by studying a phrasebook and then learn anything else in conversation with a teacher. Or they use the Listening-Reading Method of reading literature in parallel texts with audio, right from the start. Steve Kaufman, the LingQ guy, also starts out by reading.
So one can't say that someone is a newbie just based on his favourite courses. Except if they're LiveMocha or Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone spends almost its entire budget on marketing, leaving little money to develop good courses, while also succeeding in convincing all non-learners that their courses are amazing. I can't count the number of times someone who hasn't learned any language in the past decade(s) has told me "Oh, you love learning languages? You should check out Rosetta Stone, they're really good!". LiveMocha was an attempt to create a free open-source clone of Rosetta Stone, using crowdsourcing, which unsurprisingly resulted in an even worse product than the original (too many cooks).
So there's really no one answer to this. If you have a particular polyglot in mind, google him and you should be able to find what his preferred method is.
For quite a long time I thought that there should be some super fruit that will be superior to others. And when a nutritionist advised me something that really changed my views on fruits. Namely, don't look for some miracle fruit, just make an easy habit that you will keep following.
If I would have to name one fruit for my everyday diet, it would be berries, particularly, blueberries. These fruits give you fiber and some plant compounds. Plus, they are naturally sweet and very easy to include in breakfasts, yogurt or some snack.
What really surprised me is that you can get even more benefit from variety than from looking for some perfect fruit. Different types of fruits, like apples, oranges, kiwis, bananas, grapes and so on, have different nutritional values and eating variety of them during a week will provide you with broad spectrum of benefits.
Besides, nutritionist recommended to eat fruit together with something that will fill you up, like yoghurt, nuts or some proteins. The idea looks really easy but this advice has changed my perception of meals.
But there’s one very basic combo that I picked up from the tips above and which I have been quietly sticking to since. I have told a few people about it, and they have said that it totally transformed their approach to food. Not necessarily magic, but just one of those things that seems too simple for something so effective.
The take-home point here is easy: don’t waste your time looking for the “perfect” fruit. Eat real fruit often, make sure it’s varied, and enjoy it as part of a balanced meal.
Which fruit do you eat almost every day? Why did you choose it?
2026 online Bar Exams start Sept. 6 in 15 testing centers; security, road rerouting, liquor ban enforced | |
| |
A total of 13,441 law graduates who had been registered and qualified will take the three-day online Bar examinations starting Sunday, Sept. 6, in 15 testing centers nationwide. The two other days of the examinations are set by the Supreme Court (SC) on Sept. 9 and 13. Read more |
In German, you use the intimate du for family, pets, and God. But to politely say "you" to a stranger (Sie), you must address them as an esteemed group of people not even in the room.
This division, known to linguists as the T-V distinction, acts as a built-in social radar. It forces speakers to constantly measure the relationship between intimacy and distance. While du signals closeness, Sie creates a professional or respectful boundary when speaking to clients and authority figures. Getting it wrong risks insulting a boss or sounding comically stuffy to a child.
The existence of these two pronouns is the result of centuries of linguistic inflation. In Old High German, things were simple: du was singular and ihr was plural. During the Middle Ages, influenced by the "royal we" of Latin-speaking emperors, Germans began addressing nobility with the plural ihr to multiply their status.
By the 17th century, European society had grown so rigidly stratified that ihr no longer felt respectful enough for the true elite. Speakers shifted to the third-person singular, addressing superiors as Er (he) or Sie (she)—essentially speaking to them as if they were being discussed rather than addressed directly ("Would the gentleman care to sit?").
Peak deference eventually required the third-person plural. To show absolute respect, you addressed the person as an absent collective. Literally translated, the formal greeting became: "How are they doing?" This third-person plural pronoun, capitalized as Sie, cemented itself as the permanent standard for polite address in the 18th century.
Moving from Sie to du remains a significant social milestone today. The transition is governed by strict etiquette: the older or higher-status person must be the one to offer the du, sometimes finalized with a ritual toast known as "Bruderschaft trinken" (drinking brotherhood). While modern startup culture and international companies are increasingly adopting a universal "coworker-du," traditional German boardrooms and government offices still enforce the formal Sie, keeping a linguistic arm's length between colleagues for their entire careers.
Sofia Nicole P. Artienda
|September 5, 2026
Every high school graduation season, I witness social media—and this year, my email inbox—become a brutal battlefield for the future, split down the middle. Scrolling on one screen, bright, bold banners read, “Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you …”
On the other, a continuous scroll of eerie text boxes state, “Thank you! We regret to inform you …”
For hundreds of thousands of young dreamers, those words carry the weight of an entire Filipino fate. As most youth from the masses reach the threshold of adulthood, they face a harsh reality colder than what college life ought to be: entrance exam rejections won’t define you. The system will.
Coming from the provinces, far from the polished prep culture of the capital, college isn’t just a next step but an unimaginable expense. If you talked to some of my peers in my hometown and asked, “What are your plans for college?” the answer would be a shrug, “Probably work, Tesda [Technical Education and Skills Development Authority];” or a defeated, “I don’t even think I’m qualified for that.”
Success is subjective and isn’t defined by just completing a bachelor’s degree; still, I am a firm believer that education is one of the best chain breakers of generational poverty.
After taking entrance exams, checking up on each other’s status was the first thing that my friends and I did. Long before we chose our strands, we were explicitly warned that competitive entrance exams and most scholarships favor STEM. As busy students juggling classes, organization work, and side hustles, we often found ourselves gambling on pure luck with unfamiliar topics.
English, science, and mathematics are ultimately taken as general knowledge. But to those from non-STEM strands and underfunded public high schools, that “general knowledge” becomes a threat. Well-funded institutions’ students naturally hold the advantage through advanced facilities, specialized curricula, and review programs. The rest of us must either be exceptionally gifted or exert ten times the effort just to stand on the same starting line.
I can still vividly picture our old, beloved classroom, with our science teacher running out of time each class and even allotting extra minutes to accommodate missed junior high lessons for us to grasp them better and catch up without any judgment. Right then, maybe you’d start to understand the terrifying depth of our gap. For students with a stronger academic foundation, those complex lessons would be a simple recap.
This is the actual, daily lens through which students from underserved sectors have looked for years. It is vividly evident that, up until now, there has been no concrete solution made by higher-ups to address the college-ready life of high school students. Sadly, most students are still not prepared for the supposed baseline and standards universities expect.
It is absurd to expect universities to lower their academic standards or ask privileged students to adjust to what the marginalized lack. Universities are meant to pursue academic excellence, but a deep sense of inferiority naturally develops alongside more privileged students.
Thousands of applicants end up internalizing a sense of disparity, mistaking a lack of quality education for a lack of personal potential—which, I firmly believe, should be examined with holistic evaluations that account for socioeconomic and regional starting lines.
And when it comes to the tertiary level, the higher education sector suffers chronic budget changes, making allotted slots shrink each year. Look no further than the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, the most populated state university in our country, where over 125,000 applicants for AY 2026–2027 fought for barely 20,000 slots system-wide.
Even amid the wave of congratulatory posts online from incoming scholars, a profound weight of devastation from rejections rests just beneath the digital noise. Relief for a few cannot disguise the harsh truth for the majority: as budget cuts choke the educational sector, entrance exams are no longer meant to measure potential—they contribute to aggressively eliminating applicants.
If education is truly the pillar of a “Bagong Pilipinas,” where does that leave the thousands forced to watch their dreams slip away from behind closed doors?
Here are the actual results we have to face, my dearest “Iskolar ng bayan”: Congratulations! We regret to inform you that you have successfully passed into another level of an education system designed to fail you.
It is time to hear not just the grief of disappointments, but the systemic neglect behind every rejection letter. What will happen to the youth, the hope of the nation, when the system has turned its back on them?
The Filipino youth must never be waitlisted from their own dreams.
