PRI's The World: The World in Words
Summary: The World in Words with Patrick Cox focuses on language. We decode diplospeak and lay bare nationalist rants. And as English extends its global reach, we track the blowback from the world's 6,000+ other languages, in the form of hybrids like Chinglish, Hinglish, Singlish and Binglish. Binglish? Visit the full archive at pri.org!
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- Artist: Public Radio International
- Copyright: Copyright 2013 Public Radio International. All rights reserved.
Podcasts:
It's hard to be an entrepreneur in France these days, what with government regulation and a French attitude that failure is just bad form. So some French entrepreneurs are settling in Silicon Valley and bringing their French style with them.
'Selfie' is topping some word of the year lists. Its rise to fame has been so rapid that it doesn't exist in most other languages. Speakers of those languages just use the English word, and they don't have much choice about it if they want to be part of the conversation on social media.
Marco Antonio Tabin Garcia has never left Guatemala. When he was younger, he considered moving to the United States. But he decided against it and instead taught Spanish at a local school in Antigua for over 20 years. But in the past few years, he's found a way to make a better living, by teaching Spanish lessons over Skype.
Linguist Alison Wray talks about how different cultural attitudes around the world about dementia may be key to helping us cope better with the disease at home.
Two decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa's eleven official languages don't always sit well together. And their relationships are changing.
Why is saying something like "The Sheik's Sixth Sheep's Sick" so darn hard to say? A psycho-linguist wants to know, so she can help people with speaking disorders.
The last emperors of China, the Qing Dynasty, were Manchus. Their language is close to dying out in modern China, so now there's a last-ditch effort to save it, and the link it provides to China's history and traditional medicine.
Beijing wants all Chinese citizens to speak Mandarin, but that's easier said than done.
Beijing has long wanted the world’s most populous country to be unified under a single language. Now, it may actually happen, thanks to increased mobility and migration.
If you want to learn English as it's spoken, you have to practice phrases like "the guy's a total flake." That's how students learn at UCLA Extension's American Language Center, where the slang is snappy and up-to-date.
Writer and musician Alina Simone loved the comforting anonymity of her adopted name — until she met another woman with the same name.
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What's So Funny in China?
Easter Island's Rapa Nui Language Attempts a Comeback
How Seamus Heaney Dug into Language
