· July, 2009

Stories about Language from July, 2009

Turkey: The Turkish of Dr. Oz

Talk Turkey commends Dr. Oz (of Oprah fame) for his ability to speak perfect Turkish while lecturing to Turkish medical students. “Sure he has an accent. Sure he sounds like a ‘foreigner’ when he speaks Turkish. But the reality is; for a man born and raised in the U.S., he...

Morocco: Learning Arabic

Ahmed, at Moroccan group blog Blafrancia [ar], links to a news article which says that more foreigners interested in learning Arabic as a foreign language have started intensive summer classes in Morocco than in previous years.

Japan: Eight endangered languages in the Japanese archipelago

  5 July 2009

In February UNESCO presented the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, giving an accurate and worrying description of the languages considered endangered (about 2,500). Among these eight belong to the Japanese archipelago. Not a big surprise if we think about the severe policies of linguistic and cultural assimilation carried...