· July, 2008

Stories about Language from July, 2008

Azerbaijan: Shop Baku

Visiting Azerbaijan? A new blog, Shop Baku, offers helpful tips for foreigners in the country including a helpful list of food names in Azerbaijani and English as well as a...

30 July 2008

Proposal to close Hausa Wikipedia

The blog Hausa Online reports that a few days ago a proposal had been made in Wikipedia's discussion pages to delete the Wikipedia in Hausa language, an African Chadic language...

28 July 2008

Saudi Arabia: What is the point of MBC Persia?

MBC is a Saudi-run satellite television company, known across the Arab world for its entertainment channels as well as Al Arabiya news channel. It has just launched a new channel called MBC Persia, on which films are subtitled in Farsi. Saudi blogger Mohammed Abdullah Al Shahri wonders whether this initiative is really what is needed.

27 July 2008

China: 10 Political Myths

Ran Yunfei listed out 10 political myths in China, such as talks about savior, people, liberation, election, and etc.

21 July 2008

Japan: Mainichi's “Foreign Staff”

In the latest step in a long and drawn out controversy, Mainichi newspaper has issued a 3-page official apology in response to the harsh backlash concerning its English-language WaiWai column. Blogger polimediauk responds to the news, questioning the tendency to divide foreign and Japanese staff at the English-language Mainichi site and treat them differently.

21 July 2008

Blogger of the week: Elena Ignatova

Today's Blogger of the Week series is taking us to Macedonia, a small country in Europe that some people might not even have heard of but that has a thriving blogosphere. We talked to Elena Ignatova, editor of both Global Voices in Macedonian and in Albanian, about her involvement with Global Voices, the Macedonian blogosphere and her work as an internet activist, among other things.

20 July 2008

Myanmar: Naming System

“I realized that the Burmese custom of naming is fairly unique. It symbolizes the combination of the particular virtue for a person and astrological calculation of the day of the...

20 July 2008

Japan: Is it all over for Mainichi?

Nobuo Ikeda writes in English and in Japanese about the latest step in the drawn-out WaiWai controversy: after a string of earlier statements, Mainichi has issued a 3-page-long official apology,...

20 July 2008

Taiwan: Observations on Yahoo! Taiwan's search filter

We hear about issues on censorship a lot on Global Voices Online and our Advocacy Project, and most of the cases come from Government policies or business self-censorship because of Government policies. However, fierce business competition can sometimes result in censorship...or a kind of.

20 July 2008

China: Looking back at a campus shooting

“...the first few days with the cast were really strange, everyone kept whispering to each other wondering if I was a big kung fu master back in China.” Why does it always have to be so awkward when Chinese and Americans get together?

19 July 2008

Tanzania: On language and unity

Kenyan blogger Jerry Okungo, writing at Siasa Duni, comments on “the realisation that Tanzanians may not be as good masters of Kiswahili as the rest of East Africa may think”...

18 July 2008

Jamaica: Patois Parlance

Transition Sunshine says that “all Jamaicans are multilingual, and while some may not speak patois, they all understand it”. Posted with video to prove her point.

18 July 2008