This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change. Please contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include.
Global English
Chinese language ‘damaged by invasion of English words’.
Borrowing words from other languages is a global phenomenon. It is a positive sign of cultural exchange and assimilation. There is no way that China can close the door on this.
Remaking foreign-language films in English.
American studios, producers and filmmakers are pursuing remakes of several prominent foreign titles, even as most domestic distributors steer clear of everything with subtitles.
Why Arab students find English tricky.
Dr Mick Randall collected Arab learners’ tests from the Common Educational Proficiency Assessment (CEPA) given at the UAE higher education institutions.
The battle over the exit sign.
The United States is starting to overcome the linguistic insularity responsible for its text signs.
Language change and slang
Watch what you’re saying!: Linguist David Crystal on Twitter, texting and our native tongue. English does not require a guardian; it is vibrant and evolving and can fend for itself.
Star Trek provides one of the ‘HollyWords’ of 2009.
Each year the Glo Global Language Monitor releases their list of the most influencial “HollyWords”, or words from Hollywood that most influenced the English Language in the past year.
Re: Grammar.
Another reader disagrees with the Masked Grammarian.
Your silliest job titles.
Job titles have become a minefield of euphemism and circumlocution in the modern workplace.
Things people say that I hate
Why I disprefer The Dictionary of Disagreeable English to pretty near anything.
This post is about to turn into another of those Language Log rants about some prescriptivist’s blunders.
Books, words, science and the history of language
Edith Grossman, translator of Garcia Marquez, defends her art.
An ancient and invaluable profession, the passport for a given culture’s journey abroad, translation has been practiced by literary greats such as Alexander Pope, Ezra Pound and Saul Bellow.
Twitter plans Chinese-language version.
Most confusing high tech buzzwords of the decade 2000-2009.
Humour
Just jesting.
Now and then, when the lucubrations of linguists grow tedious and the cackles of language mavens turn painfully shrill, we slip across to the lighter side of language.
Webster’s reluctantly adds ‘melty’ to English lexicon.
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