· August, 2008

Stories about Language from August, 2008

Blogger of the Week: Siniša Boljanović

  31 August 2008

Siniša Boljanović had never blogged when he volunteered to report on Serbian blogs for Global Voices in 2007. He read an article about Global Voices in a Serbian online magazine and was so hooked on the idea of contributing, he taught himself to write in English and use Wordpress for the first time in spite of one additional obstacle: Siniša is blind.

Russia: How to Spell ‘Blogger’ in Russian

  30 August 2008

There are two ways to spell the word ‘blogger’ in Russian – with two g's or with just one. The former seems to prevail among Russian bloggers, according to LJ user oleg_kozyrev (RUS), who has posted a screenshot of the Yandex Blogosphere Pulse search and also examined spelling preferences of...

China: Chinese Lies

  29 August 2008

C. W. Hayford from Chinese History group blog goes into various literature sources for discussing the “Chinese character” in relation to “face” and “lie”. It gives some background about the various Olympic “lies” happened.

Georgia: Russian-Georgian News Item Translations

  27 August 2008

Exercises in Translation has started translating news items in Russian and Georgian on the conflict between Moscow and Tbilisi over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In the two most recent posts, for example, the blog translates a news item on Russian president Dmitri Medvedev's interview to French TF-1 and a Georgian...

Laos in the Olympics

  24 August 2008

The 2008 Beijing Olympics informed many people around the world that Laos is pronounced as Lao (silent ‘s’), as noted by I Eat Padek.

China: Cheering for the race traitors

  20 August 2008

Those thin-skinned cyber-mobsters must have heatstroke; Chinese coach leads US women's volleyball team to victory against China and gets dissed by a chess grandmaster, then: The majority of the netizens disagreed with his view. The American team led by Lang Ping was received with warm cheers of “Coach Lang, we...

Saudi Arabia: It's all in the name

It is common practice for converts to Islam to adopt Muslim names. But is it necessary - and what kind of name is appropriate? One Saudi blogger ponders the question, while some others are thinking about the use of aliases in the blogosphere - and yet another encourages the government to 'name names'.

Guyana: Poems of a Fat Black Woman

  18 August 2008

Signifyin’ Guyana posts excerpts from Guyanese poet Grace Nichols’ “sexy little collection”, which “tell of a fat black woman's trials and tribulations, as well as her moments of triumph in a foreign land.”

Jordan: Arabic Harry Potter Banned in Israel

The Arabic version of the Harry Potter series is banned in Israel, reports The Black Iris, from Jordan. According to news sources, the ban is based on a decree from 1939 – when the area was under British mandate – prohibiting the importation of books from countries that are at...

Kuwait: Release Hussein Al Fudalah Now

On July 7, Kuwaiti Hussein Al Fudalah left his home to go fishing and was never seen again. A few days later his family got the news that he was detained in neighbouring Iran. And while Kuwait's newspapers are turning a blind eye to Hussein's plight, one Kuwaiti blogger thinks that enough is enough and is running an online campaign to draw more attention to the captured fisherman.

iSummit2008: The Japanese-English divide

  6 August 2008

The 2008 iSummit in Sapporo, Japan ended last week after three days of keynotes and lab sessions on open content and open culture. Blogger Shinya Ichinohe (shinyai), who attended the event, reflected on his experiences, noting that while grateful for all that he learned, he also regrets the division which emerged between Japanese-language and English-language tracks.

Belarus: Lukashenka and God

  6 August 2008

Malishevsky analyses (RUS) Belarussian President's Alyaksandr Lukashenka, relationship to God from his frequent invocations of higher powers in speeches and public appearances, especially when it comes to foreign relations.