Top five language stories this month including: The first Punjabi public school in the US, a and a British journalist rails against the invasion of what he calls Americanisms into British English.
In the latest World in Words podcast, a science fiction writer conceives of a language in which is impossible to lie.
In this week’s World in Words podcast, researchers test the supposed link between reading fiction and empathy.
How the translated Bible has profoundly affected the English spoken by Jamaicans and how it may affect Jamaican Creole and Kalenjin.
One of the world’s first written languages gets a new 21-volume dictionary.
In this week’s World in Words podcast, new Scrabble words and spying on foreign metaphors.
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?
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 [...]
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) [...]
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 [...]
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In the last week alone we’ve had at least three big anniversaries: 150th anniversary of the start of the (American) Civil War; 50th anniversary of the first human being into space; 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs. So we’ll look back at each of those moments. Plus Lisa Mullins interviews an archivist at National Geographic about an American writer and photographer, Eliza Scidmore, who documented the aftermath of a tsunami in northeast Japan more than a century ago. And we have two segments on the history behind the trial unfolding in London right now over alleged British atrocities in Kenya during the counterinsurgency campaign against Mau Mau rebels in the 1950′s. Download MP3
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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
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The World’s Alex Gallafent profiles South Carolina guitarist Clay Ross who fuses Brazilian rhythms with American Jazz beats. Download MP3
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[...]
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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?
