Monthly Archives: July 2009
Diplomatic insults, click languages, Harry Potter in France, and cucumber season
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 … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Banning Hungarian, swearing for pain relief, and dog barks translated
For this month’s language news podcast, I roped in The World’s Online Editor Clark Boyd. In a former life, Clark taught English in Hungary — yes that’s a barely younger version of him posing beneath the signpost. He, of course, … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
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 … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Esperanto, Klingon, Blissymbolics and 900 others: why we invent languages
This week, a converation with Arika Okrent, author of In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language. Okrent has a linguistics background: she has … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
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 … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
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 … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
