On this week’s podcast, we begin with President Obama’s improving Spanish on display on Univision. Then we take a trip to a language school in Mexico to hear about changes in Spanish-language learning. Then it’s to France, where traditionalists are horrified at President Sarkozy’s gutter talk. Finally a conversation with author and wikipedian Andrew Lih [...]
Entries from March 2009
March 23, 2009
Yiyun’s Li’s original Chinese title for her English novel
You’ll hear in the latest podcast (#46) about Yiyun Li’s original idea for a title for her first novel, The Vagrants. In Chinese it is
贪生怕死 or, in pinyin, tān shēng pà sĭ. It means, literally: greedy for life, afraid of death. It suggests a craven, cowardly clinging to life. That’s a powerful thought but [...]
March 20, 2009
Words of comfort in discomforting times, a ban on jargon, and Yiyun Li’s exquisite English
In Britain, the economic crisis may be worse than in the United States. Brits, though, are just about keeping their upper lip stiff with the help of a revived World War Two slogan. Also in the UK, an association of local officials wants to ban government jargon; under threat, some of these phrases seem [...]
March 12, 2009
podcast #45: Hillary’s Russian lesson, and don’t mess with Canadian spelling!
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been circling the globe, hitting the reset button on America’s foreign relations. But then someone at the State Department tried – and failed – to translate “reset” into Russian. Russians know all a synonym of reset, thanks to the Matrix franchise. Now the Kremlin is urging more Americans [...]
