Stories about Language from September, 2013
Chinese City Invites Web Users to Correct Its ‘Chinglish’
To attract more foreigners to work in Shenzhen, the city has launched a campaign to wipe out poorly translated public signs.
“You Can Kick Female Flight Attendants” in Kazakhstan
A former government official in Kazakhstan recently kicked a female flight attendant, reportedly because she did not speak Kazakh. The story has caused a stir on social media. Blogger Pivovar offers [ru] the most interesting and most widely shared Twitter posts on this incident, such as the one below: Казахстан-2013: бить...
“An e-Book is a Book” – Nigerian Poet and Linguist
"An e-Book is a Book" - Sticklers for traditional modes of publishing will lament this as retrogression, but they will be wrong, says Nigerian writer Kola Tubosun.
Croats in Vukovar Protest Use of Serbian Cyrillic on Government Buildings
A part of the ethnically Croat population of Vukovar has staged violent protests this week in Vukovar due to the posting of signs in Serbian Cyrillic on state buildings.
China: Show Swords in Ideology Battle
The Chinese President Xi Jinping recently launched the party's ideology battle to take over opinion leadership in a meeting of propaganda officials. In the past few days, state-controlled media outlets echoed with Xi's call by using the phrase “showing one’s sword” in their editorials. David Bandurski from China Media project...
Crowdsourcing Jamaican Patois
Global Voices talks with Varun Baker, the creator of the website Patwa.org, the first online audio dictionary for Jamaican's national language.
The Influence of Francophone Africa on the French Language
The news site Afrik.com features an article on the way in which African slang has influenced the French language [fr], and informs us that Verlan is no longer a preferred language of rappers : For a long time, there have been certain words, such as [Arabic greetings] “Salam alaykum” or “hamdu’llah”,...
