Patrick Cox
The Legacy of the Bible in Translation
How the translated Bible has profoundly affected the English spoken by Jamaicans and how it may affect Jamaican Creole and Kalenjin.
What’s Assyrian for Canuck?
One of the world’s first written languages gets a new 21-volume dictionary.
Podcast: The US Government’s Metaphor Program
In this week’s World in Words podcast, new Scrabble words and spying on foreign metaphors.
Re-learning Spanish, and Super-Injunctions
In this week’s World in Words podcast, kids raised in the US are enrolling in Mexican schools, often after their parents have been deported– and they’re struggling to re-learn Spanish. Also, the politics behind the language of terms like illegal alien and undocumented worker. Plus, British gag orders aren’t working, thanks to Twitter. And, does Obama heart Britain as much as Brits heart Obama? Is the relationship still special?
Special Relationship? Behind the Doors of Buckingham Palace
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With President Obama staying at Buckingham Palace, Britain’s so-called special relationship with the US is appears as strong as ever. But The World’s Patrick Cox reports that many Britons aren’t so sure that President Obama likes them all that much. Download MP3Linguistic surrealism from China to Belgium
On the World in Words podcast, the trials, tribulations and silliness of living in Belgium, where most people define themselves not by nationality but by mother tongue. Also, arrested Chinese artist Ai Weiwei wrote a blog that was, if anything, even more provocative than his art. We hear from his English translator. And the latest children’s TV hit in the UK features Jamaican-British musical mice, with dialects that offend English purists.
The battle to own Bin Laden’s story
Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, a new battle has begun: the rhetorical fight to frame his legacy. The White House got off to a bad start, with its initial claims about the circumstances of the killing. We offer two stabs at this story, one from the perspective of the US government, the other from a cultural point of view. There have been many other such stabs: I especially like [...]
The butcher, the baker, and the cabbage gelder
As far as tedium goes, nothing competes with filling out a government form. How best to relieve the tedium? Invent stuff. Not out-and-out lie, just get a bit creative (OK, sometimes out-an-out lie: if I were to identify myself as a 90-year-old Azerbaijani woman or a Jedi knight, I would not be telling the truth) [...]
English-only in the US, translating tweets in Japan and satire in Egypt
The English Only movement in the United States is always active during times of high immigration. Now, the movement has got a shot in the arm from the Tea Party. It may help convince lawmakers and voters in the 19 remaining states that don’t yet have a law on their books declaring English to be the official language [...]
From Cicero to Lynne Truss with Robert Lane Greene
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Robert Lane Greene’s new book “You Are What You Speak” examines how language we speak is bound up in our identity. How much does our native language define us? How much does it set our ways of thinking? Can we think a different way in a different language? Why do people get so persnickety about punctuation? Why do grammar sticklers yearn for a golden age of usage that usually coincides with their school days? Download MP3
Dictators with dialects, finger spelling and universal Inuit
Napoleon, Hitler and Gaddafi all grew up speaking a distinct dialect of their native tongue. Coincidence? Dialects are the languages of outsiders, at least until they are co-opted by people, or governments, trying to standardize the language. That’s what’s happening right now in northern Canada, where with the dialects of the Inuit. The hope is that language will unite this widely scattered people[...]
At the BBC, fewer languages and less influence?
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In this week’s World in Words podcast: after the BBC World Service announces huge cuts, what’s next for global broadcasting? Five language services are to close, and seven more will become internet only, resulting in 30 million fewer BBC listeners worldwide. Will people migrate to the web, or will the BBC – and its news values – become less influential?Download MP3
Explaining Japan’s disaster to kids and Russian beer to Americans
Japan has a whole lexicon of earthquake-related phrases. But the severity of this quake is expanding that lexicon. Also, a video explains the nuclear emergency to children with an analogy that kids understand all too well. In France, meanwhile, the government is battling news outlets over probes into the practices of some politicians. And American brewers are giving reviving a centuries-old type of beer, Russian Imperial Stout, and plundering Russian history to name the brews [...]
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and self-censorship
As Japan faces its biggest crisis since World War Two, here are two takes on self-censorship from those war years. A child survivor of Hiroshima explains why she kept quiet about her experiences for so long, through the pain and guilt of survival. And a Japanese examination of the self-censorship of American newspaper reporters and editors in the weeks after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[...]
The vocoder, the linguistic robot and the Dead Rabbit
In this week’s World in Words, writer Dave Tompkins on how the sound-distorting vocoder morphed from a wartime security device into one of Hip Hop’s favorite toys. Also, English teachers in South Korea don’t come cheap. One Korean school is trying an alternative: a robot. Plus, new limits for foreign reporters in China, and the man who brought Jägermeister out of the forests of Saxony onto campus parties everywhere [...]
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