· March, 2010

Stories about Language from March, 2010

China: Characters in leaders’ names made sensitive search terms on Google

  25 March 2010

Beginning Wednesday and continuing today, Chinese Internet users have discovered that Google searches containing the Chinese characters for the surnames of China's top leaders (ie. the ‘hu’ [jintao] in carrot, ‘huluobo’) are resulting in a reset connection to the website. Isaac Mao has made a screencast showing how this works.

Guyana: I & I

  19 March 2010

Guyana-Gyal has a theory about “how tongues all over the world latch on to the I-Talk.”

China and U.S: Rhetorics on Google's Exit

  19 March 2010

Kai Pan from china / divide criticizes western rhetorics in discussing Google's exit from China. The blogger in particular comments on Nicole Kempton piece on the Huffington Post that neglects democratic countries’ role in advocating Internet censorship.

St. Lucia: Literary Festival

  18 March 2010

Caribbean Book Blog is excited about St. Lucia's upcoming WORD ALIVE International Literary Festival, “the first full-scale international literary event of magnitude to be held in the island.”

East Timor: Portuguese Language Under Attack

  15 March 2010

In what is a dramatic reversal of official position Timor Hau Nia Doben reports that the President of the National Parliament agrees with recent statements by General Taur Matan Ruak that Portuguese language should be removed from Timor-Leste. [Addendum 16 March: a reader very correctly point out an error, Ruak...

Qatar: Paper Apology

‘The local paper, The Peninsula, has just had to issue an apology for a news headline last week which referred to people with Down Syndrome and other genetic disorders as “the ‘lesser people'”‘ writes Marjorie in Qatar.

China: Zola's English blog

  10 March 2010

Well known citizen reporter Zhou Shuguang starts to blog in English as he wants to be more international. Here is his first post.

What is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test?

  7 March 2010

The NihongoUp Blog gives an in-depth explanation of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) – “It is a Japanese language test for non-native speakers, held twice a year in East Asia and once a year in the rest of the world.”

China: Petty bourgeoisie

  4 March 2010

Elliot Ng from CN Review looks into the Chinese modern usage of the popular term “xiao-zi”, which originated from Karl Marx's “Petty bourgeoisie”.

Japan: Manga Newspaper

  4 March 2010

According to Anime News Network [en], Manga No Shimbun [ja] (漫画の新聞), the first web newspaper that reports daily news in a manga format, will be soon available also in English, French and Korean.

Dominica: Pick Up A Book

  3 March 2010

“The book is not only the door to other wonderful world[s], but it is the best teacher, university and source of wisdom”: Dominica Weekly extolls the benefits of reading.