The English-only movement in America

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In this week’s World in Words podcast, a conversation about making English the only official language in the United States. Tim Schultz, lobbyist of US English makes the case for this, ahead of an English-only vote in Oklahoma. Also, an election ad in Chinese, aimed at Americans who don’t speak Chinese.
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Speaking in Tongues and Dreaming in Chinese

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In this week’s World in Words podcast, a PBS documentary follows four students and their families at dual immersion schools in San Francisco. Also, a conversation with Deborah Fallows on living in China and learning Chinese. In Chinese, she says, rude is polite, brusque is intimate. And then there’s the lousy Chinese name she was given. Download MP3

Spanish, pure and otherwise

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In this week’s World in Words podcast: you can hear Latin America’s clearest, crispest Spanish in Colombia. So, Bogota is now home to everything from call centers to telenovela production houses. Also, what the spread of Spanish in the United States is doing to both the language and the country. Finally, Dora the Explorer and Kai-Lan: two fictional TV characters who introduce American kids to their first words of Spanish and Chinese.
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Translating disaster and disastrous translations

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In the latest World in Words podcast, our top five language stories of the past month: translating Iceland’s economic collapse, document by document; magnificently bad translations in Shanghai and at the Eurovision Song Contest; a language for communication with extraterrestrials; Arizona moves against accented schoolteachers; and Costa Rica’s new president Laura Chinchilla is one of millions of people who are named after animals.
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A Chinese Valentine’s pod

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Hundreds of language programs at public schools have become victims of shrinking budgets. Not Chinese. We visit an inner city high school where 400 students are learning Chinese. Also, don’t be fooled: the language of love is not universal, not unless you keep you mouth shut. That’s the view of an American woman who endlessly misunderstands the amorous words of her German-speaking lover. Plus, bodice-ripping our way out of the recession: romance novels are more popular than ever.Download MP3

Words your grandmother taught you in Chinese, Dutch and Yiddish

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Many people learned their first foreign words from their grandmothers. Marco Werman learned a Dutch curse. Nina Porzucki learned a Yiddish word that speaks to a certain Jewish mindset. Marilyn Chin learned insults, puns and tongue twisters, many of which later found their way into Chin’s poetry and fiction.
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Spelling Obama in Chinese, oratory, and chop suey love

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In this all-Chinese pod, how to spell Obama in Chinese. Then, the contrasting oratorical styles of presidents Hu and Obama. That’s followed by something on a type of Chinese idiom known as chengyu. Then to the UK, where Confucian philosophy infuses Chinese language classes in five public schools. Finally, poet Marilyn Chin on why she loves the expression chop suey.

Rosetta Stone: the method behind the hype, a spelling bee with a twist, and Hillary’s Congo adventure

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In this week’s World in Words podcast, the rise and rise of Rosetta Stone. With big government contracts and a huge advertising campaign, Rosetta Stone is now American’s #1 language teacher. If you learn the Rosetta Stone way, you’ll absorb a language an infant does. Well, that’s the theory. Also, non-native English speakers from around the world take part in an English Spelling Bee in New York. And, Hillary Clinton’s not-so-lost-in-translation moment in Kinshasa, Congo. Download MP3

Iran and translation, a search engine is sick in Chinese, and a drug ring’s Arabic dialects

Patrick Cox and Carol Hills select the top five language-related
stories from June. Among them: Google translation gets to work on the streets of Teheran; Microsoft’s choice of Bing as the name for its search engine to rival Google may not go down well in China; a music festival in Quebec runs afoul of language sensitivies; and a drug ring in Pennsylvannia uses Iraqi Arabic dialects in its communications.Listen

Linguists trash English word count, speaking Uighur in Bermuda, and steady lah! The delights of Singlish

The delights of Singlish, Singapore’s popular unofficial language. Also, linguists trash a claim that English has gained its millionth word. And does anyone in Bermuda speak Uighur? Listen

Remembering Tiananmen

The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports from Beijing on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Many Chinese remember the event vividly, but it’s a day the Chinese government would rather forget. Listen