Al Jazeera’s impact on Libya

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The World’s Alex Gallafent reports on Al Jazeera’s impact on events in Libya. The TV network’s Arabic language news coverage is watched via satellite by many Libyans hungry for something other than the official coverage on Libya’s state-run broadcasters.
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Supermarket French, Chanson French, and Lyrical Arabic

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In this week’s World in Words podcast, the French of Anna Sam and that of Juliette Greco could hardly be more different. Sam records the mendacious and the mundane that she overhears at the supermarket checkout. The French of Greco is moody and melodramatic, as befits this veteran chanteuse. Also, what got lost in translation in one of the UN Security Council’s most famous resolutions. And we hear from the founders of Meena, an Arabic-English bilingual poetry journal.
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Liberian proverbs, Ajami, and courteous interruptions

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In this week’s World in Words podcast, reporter Jason Margolis judges a competition to determine Liberia’s most inventive proverb. Also, is it a language? No! Is it a dialect? No! It’s Ajami: Arabic script used as a writing system for many African languages. And, language lessons at the United Nations. Download MP3

Bilingual tots and the language of smell

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We hear from a Jerusalem-based journalist who is sending his kid to Arabic/Hebrew bilingual preschool. Also, a Seattle rabbi visits the Cairo Genizah, and explains why so many sacred Jewish texts were written in Arabic. And we hear from experts at the New York Public Library on the secrets that a book’s smell will reveal to an educated nose. Download MP3

Your brain on language

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In this week’s World in Words podcast, a mom-and-pop effort to restore Arabic script to street signs in Israel. Also, author Katherine Russell Rich on learning Hindi at a language school in Rajasthan. Her book “Dreaming in Hindi” is also an investigation into what happens to our brains when we learn a learn a language. Plus, a somewhat shameful expression in Spanish.Download MP3

Show Ender: De-coding the Alhambra

Investigators are trying to catalog the thousands of Arabic inscriptions that cover the walls and columns of the Alhambra in Granada. The Alhambra was the last Moorish fort to fall to the Christians during the Spanish conquest. Its inscriptions shed light on its history. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Granada. And we end our [...]

The language of Guadeloupe and Martinique, Spanish unity and disunity, and teaching English in France part 2

This week, the language of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Also, more from an American in Paris and her attempts to teach English there. And Spaniards are divided over which song captures the nation’s spirit. Listen