This week, the nuanced — and sometimes not so nuanced — world of diplomatic insults: we hurl a few your way, coutesy of Hugo Chavez, Hillary Clinton and Winston Churchill. There’s also an overheated exhange in the British parliament between then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and leader of the opposition Neil Kinnock, which goes something like [...]
Entries from July 2009
July 23, 2009
David Crystal’s life in language, Moominmania and Nowheristan
In this week’s podcast, the granddaddy of British linguists David Crystal reflects on a life in language. Crystal is an inclusionist: he welcomes slang and textspeak, for example, into the English language. He believes that as it expands geographically, its vocabulary will also expand to include more expressions from outlying areas. Maybe I should do [...]
July 9, 2009
More linguist soldiers, selling beer in North Korea, and a beach in Ghana
In this week’s podcast, we begin with an update on Dan Choi, the Arabic-speaking lieutenant who faced a military discharge because he spoke out about this sexual orientation. Choi also explains why learning a language within the military (in his case at West Point) is so different from going to a language school on civvy [...]
July 2, 2009
Pentagon still kicking out linguists, Ukraine’s Soviet names, and a banquet of foreign idioms
The Obama Administration is moving to boost foreign language speakers at several agencies, notably the State Department and the CIA. But at the Pentagon there’s a problem: the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. Yes, this policy is about gays in the military, but it has unintended consequences. One of the most embarrassing to the Defense [...]
