Stories about Language from January, 2010
Ukraine: UK Ambassador's Ukrainian Vocabulary
Leigh Turner, UK Ambassador to Ukraine, writes on how the Ukrainian phrases he is learning reflect the political, economic and social situation in the country.
Tunisia: Language Choices
In this post entitled Arabic, French or English: for “whom” the bell tolls? the Third Ijtihad talks about the use of languages in speaking with others.
Poland: Anglophone Blogs
Polandian reviews Poland's Anglophone blogosphere.
Hungary, Slovakia: Open Borders, Assimilation, Nationalism
Hungarian Spectrum writes about nationalism, assimilation, open borders, Hungary's minorities and the Hungarian diaspora in the neighboring countries.
Korea: Translating The Tweets Of Novelist Lee Oisoo
Lee Oisoo is a Korean novelist and artist who has been described as "an eccentric, a genius and a lunatic". When he set up a Twitter account last year he quickly amassed thousands of followers. Now his tweets are being translated into English in order to reach a wider audience. But how did a Bahraini blogger get involved?
Jamaica, Haiti: Making sense of it all
Jamaican litblogger Geoffrey Philp posts a poem for Haiti.
Japan: Website Localization
Motoko discusses the need for foreign websites to be localized into Japanese: If your website is not in Japanese, it would have little to no chances of being found in the search results in Japan.
Jamaica, Haiti: Using the Language
Jamaica's Active Voice says: “Trust the Brits to do the right thing. While our newswomen and men are contorting their mouths reproducing peculiar versions of the Queen's English, British broadcasters are broadcasting to Haitians in their mother tongue–Kreyol.”
Russia: Project Aims To Translate Popular Blogs Into Russian
The World Wide Web now hosts a new project that aims to make English-speaking blogosphere more accessible to Russians. Inoblogger [RUS] is a Web site that will be translating the most popular IT-related blog posts from all over the Web into Russian.
Kenya: Kiswahili an optional subject
Bumni writes about the decision to make Kiswahili an optional subject in Kenya: “The subject will no longer be a compulsory paper in the Standard Eight national examinations…”
Japan: QT is a Variation of ReTweet
Satomi Uchimura explores the meaning of QT (Quoted Tweets), which is used in some parts of the Japanese twittersphere.
Africa: Free Kiswahili synthetic voice for Freedom Fone
Brenda writes about free Kiswahili synthetic voice for Freedom Fone, a project of Kubatana in Zimbabwe: “In recognition of the competitive mobile phone tariffs prevailing in east Africa and the willingness of organisations there to experiment with information on demand voice services, we will create our first localisation of the...
Trinidad & Tobago, Haiti: Aid
Trinidad and Tobago's Pleasure blog posts a poem in honour of the Haitian earthquake victims.
Russia: Largest Political Community Online Removed And Restored
The recent case of the most popular political online community demonstrated how easy it is to limit free expression on RuNet and revealed the willingness of online audience to defend free speech.
Egypt: English Loan Words
"Egyptian" Arabised English is taking the Twittersphere by storm. Tarek Amr collects reactions from #EgyEnglish in this post which explains how bilingual Egyptians have included English words in their dialect.
Taiwan: Teaching anthropology in Hualien
Kerim Friedman writes about his experience teaching anthropology at Dong Hwa University in Hualien.
China: Welcome back, Yeeyan
Ethan Zuckerman wrote on the significance of Yeeyan, a collaborative translation website, in bridging the English and Chinese world. Yeeyan was temporary offline in December and now back to normal.
Morocco: First Indigenous TV Channel Launched
The View from Fez reports on the launch of a long-awaited Amazigh language TV channel by the Moroccan government on Wednesday. It is the first government-funded TV channel in the region broadcasting exclusively in languages spoken by indigenous Berber populations.
Slovakia, Hungary: Happy New Year!
The relations between the two neighboring countries, Slovakia and Hungary, went bad last year - but some Slovak and Hungarian citizens are trying to improve the situation by launching an online campaign called "Štastný nový rok, Slovensko! / Boldog Új Évet Magyarország!" ("Happy New Year, Slovakia!/Happy New Year, Hungary!).
Top 10 Internet phrases in China In 2009
ESWN translated a local forum CNNB's review of the top 10 Internet phrases in China in 2009.
