Did Barack Obama learn a word or two from his grandmother? Well, maybe not — he didn’t grow up with the gran pictured here (it’s his Kenyan stepmother). But many people did learn their very first foreign words from their grandmothers. The Big Show’s Marco Werman learned a Dutch curse. Nina Porzucki learned a Yiddish [...]
Entries from November 2009
November 20, 2009
Spelling Obama in Chinese, oratory, and chop suey love
How do you spell Obama in Chinese? Depends who you are. The Chinese news media spell it 奥巴马 (àobāmǎ). But the US Embassy in Beijing recently launched a campaign to change it to 欧巴马 (ōubāmǎ). Why no agreement? The embassy says its spelling is closer to the American pronunciation of Obama. But the Chinese don’t [...]
November 12, 2009
Baby talk, Ukrainian talk, and translated punk talk
Is this baby crying in German or French? A new study says we may be able to tell. The study was originally discussed on my sister pod, The World’s science podcast. It concludes that we begin language acquisition in the womb. At that stage, we are, well, a captive audience to mama’s words; researchers [...]
November 5, 2009
Birds, urls and Glaswegians
For the latest newsy pod, Carol Hills and Clark Boyd from the Big Show help me pick our top five language-related stories from the past month:
5. Some birds develop distinct dialects based on the decibel levels of their habitats. Dialect here is a term of art. It does not mean that birds living in say, [...]
