· March, 2007

Stories about Language from March, 2007

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...

28 March 2007

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.

27 March 2007

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...

26 March 2007

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...

23 March 2007

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...

23 March 2007

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).

23 March 2007

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...

23 March 2007

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...

22 March 2007

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...

19 March 2007

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.

17 March 2007

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...

15 March 2007

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...

13 March 2007