Stories about Language from March, 2007
Turkey is Typing….the Weekly Favorites
So rather than stay with one particular topic or theme in this weekly, I thought that I would just give you the insights into my top Turkish blog posts of this week. Let's begin with my favorite short post of the week from Ignore Me if You Can: I’m going...
Tajikistan: Implications of -ov
Bonnie Boyd says that the Tajik president's decisions to drop Russian endings from surnames potentially has foreign policy implications for Tajikistan. She says that the decision does nothing for Tajikistan but satisfy a presidential whim.
Colombia: Garcia Marquez Honoured
Author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his “extraordinary literary career” were the toast of the fourth Congress of the Spanish Language held in Colombia. The Latin Americanist gives details.
Malaysia: Saving Native Languages
Jewelle is happy that her native language is being made an examination subject. The blogger feels that this would help save the language from extinction. “So I totally laud this new policy as I think this language is fast disappearing as more and more Sabahan parents do tend to speak...
Eastern & Central Europe: Slovio
Megan Case writes about Slovio, “the artificial simplified pan-Slavic language.”
Bahrain: Storms and D-cups
Bahrain was enveloped in a heavy dust storm on Thursday night, the beginning of the weekend, and TechZ wrote about getting caught in it: I couldn’t see anything ahead, other than for the windshield and my wipers. Headlights were useless in this much sand and rain drops. I had to...
Algeria: Lingustics Talk
Algerian blogger Lameen Souag is just back from attending a linguistics conference in Cambridge, CamLing 2007, where he presented a talk on number borrowing in Berber. For those interested, the talk is available here. Souag is also distressed to learn that Yucatec Maya, one of the largest Maya languages, is...
China: you are too CCTV!
Zhaihua picked up the recent catch phrase “you are too CCTV!” and explained that apart from China Central Television, it stands for closed-circuit television(zh).
Tajikistan: Chopping -ov
Vadim reports that Tajikistan's president wants to remove the Russian -ov from his last name, changing it to Rakhmon. Further, he wants a general return in Tajikistan to traditional national toponymy.
India, Pakistan: Google and Local
I, Me, Myself on how even as organisations cater to an international audience, they don't always get the local preferences right. “The text on the Google Pakistan page in Punjabi has been written in the Gurmukhi script, which most Punjabis in the Pakistani part of Punjab can not read (except,...
Latvia: Ukrainian and Russian Folk Music
Dykun posts a video and writes on a Ukrainian and Russian folk music performance in Riga, Latvia: “they performed together a show of russian and ukrainian wedding songs and rituals, with the structure of a ukrainian cossack marrying a russian bride. […] presented are typical wedding songs and a re-enactment...
China: translation tool
Eric Hu has a review on the google translation in Shanghaiist.
Slovakia: Language and Linguists
Deleted by Tomorrow reacts to the post about the Slovak language and Slovak linguists over at bulbulovo.
Global Voices en Français Celebrates Journée Mondiale de la Francophonie
Today is Francophonia Day. About 50 French-speaking countries and territories, some belonging to the Organisation Mondiale de la Francophonie and others not, will reflect on what it means to have French as a language –often alongside others. (Not to worry we will tell you what the bloggers said as soon...
Somalia: the Land of the Gods
A brief study of the Land of the Gods by Abubakar Ali: Unlike ancient Egypt where scholars were able to uncover and translate numerous writings and records, our knowledge of Sumaria remained relatively scant and inadequate. The author, however, thought it of interest that Sumarian huts which were made of...
Kyrgyzstan: Latin Kyrgyz
The Azamat Report argues that Kyrgyzstan should reintroduce a Latin alphabet for the Kyrgyz language. It briefly used a Latin script while part of the Soviet Union.
Iraq: Lost in Translation
Issandr El Amrani, writing in The Arabist, links to a story about the recruitment of someone who barely spoke Arabic to work as a translator in Iraq. “Yet another story of greed, corruption and incompetence in the privatization of the US occupation of Iraq,” he exclaims.
Algeria: Special Focus on Mauritania
Algerian blogger Lameen Souag has kind words for Mauritania. “On the rare occasions when it makes Western headlines, it's generally for slavery or famine, but this week it's distinguishing itself in a rather nobler fashion: holding its first free presidential elections,” he writes, while giving special attention to languages there.
Bahrain: Bahraini Rants Last Coded Message
“Gadzooks!! What method of skullduggery is this? Bahraini rants flapdoodling about and disappearing on me again? I don’t trust him or his vocabularizing filler posts..” is Bahraini Rants last coded message before he takes a break to sort out his real life.
Romania: Autonomy
Csikszereda Musings writes about the region he lives in and his vision of “a more federal Romania.”
Algeria: More Info on Saudi Dialect
Algerian blogger and linguist Lameen Souag is looking for more information on Arab dialects from Saudi Arabia here.
