· February, 2008

Stories about Language from February, 2008

Burkina Faso: teachable moments, missing bathrooms and road rage

Pity the school teachers of the Peace Corps. While their compatriots toiling in health clinics or with micro-credit programs pretty much work loose hours and come and go from social events in the capital city at their leisure, teachers are stuck at home with a inflexible schedule, classrooms full of hundreds of students and loads and loads of homework to correct each night.

25 February 2008

Japan: Charisma Man

James from Japan Probe traces the origin of the term “Charisma Man” which is used for describing foreign man with many girlfriends.

25 February 2008

Jamaica, Haiti: Haitian Creole

“I learned many things from Felix Morisseau-Leroy and one of the most important was his commitment to the Haitian Creole language”: Geoffrey Philp posts one of the writer's poems.

22 February 2008

Africa: Interrogating the blogosphere

Koluki interrogates the blogosphere by looking at the Globl Voices Online coverage of “Portuguese-speaking African countries”: “The most striking observation from this graph is that OC appears not only, as...

21 February 2008

Jamaica, USA: Obama the Orator

“No, this isn’t an endorsement for Barack Obama—this is a literary blog after all,” writes Jamaican Geoffrey Phlip, as he examines the text of a speech that the Democratic presidential...

21 February 2008

Hong Kong: Suspected to Resemble Gillian Chung

Duimanpark discusss about the funny language in the recent sex photo scandal and wonders if English speakers would understand the commonly used phrase in local mainstream media: “nude photographs of...

18 February 2008

Sudanese Blogosphere Reaches New Milestone

The Sudanese blogosphere is starting to build momentum. Blogs written in English are quite active now, showing the genuine, diverse and raw face of Sudan to the world. On the other hand, blogs written in Arabic have mushroomed at another corner of this vast online space.

17 February 2008

Amit Gupta: A self confessed geek

Amit Gupta is a software engineer who works as a web applications architect in India and is a self confessed geek, in other words, someone who literally lives, breathes, sleeps...

17 February 2008

Kyrgyzstan: Debates over Alphabet

Asel says that following the similar debates in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz politicians also raise the issue of possible switching the Kyrgyz alphabet from Cyrillic to Roman.

15 February 2008

Latvia, Russia: Ambassador Veshnyakov

Latvian Abroad is pleasantly surprised with Russia's new ambassador to Latvia – Aleksandr Veshnyakov, former head of the Central Election Committee: “He was interviewed by Echo of Moscow radio station...

14 February 2008

Mozambique: People out of the bottle

Carlos Serra [pt] has discovered a new popular expression circulating among Mozambicans: ‘people are out of the bottle’. He provides interpretations in the face of protests against the cost of...

14 February 2008