Worldcrunch
The author’s mother shares a name with the Democratic nominee for U.S. president. How our names are spoken in different countries and cultures has some surprising twists, even if Donald Trump’s weaponizing Kamala Harris’ name is pure bigotry and bullying.
An interview with Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone, whose movie Me Captain is nominated for an Oscar, after he won the Silver Lion for directing at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. The tale centers around the life-and-death quest of migration, a topic that remains at the center of debate in Italy — and beyond.
A spurious happy ending and a focus on the marvels of the exotic East characterize our understanding of The Travels of Marco Polo, the book about the 13th-century Italian explorer. But the Italian writer who worked on the book’s latest translation reveals how focused on war, profit and money the explorer was — and how translators sugarcoated the work through the centuries.
In Nepal, local schools are encouraged to offer instruction in the first languages of their students. But even in linguistically diverse regions, the only words they still hear and read are in Nepali.
Putin’s brutal attack on Ukraine has turned the world on its head. As shocking as it is, those closer to Russia sense something familiar in the past three months. This personal dispatch is about the Russians and the Slavs (I am the latter).
Language is an ultra sensitive subject in Spain , especially in Catalonia, where a schoolboy and his family found themselves at the center of online hate campaign and a constitutional storm.
The process machinery to master vowel-heavy Danish explains that way adults tend to interact.
Yonder’s Slovenian-born Andrej Mrevlje is also a part-time Uber driver in Washington. Oh, the people he meets.
More than just a vehicle to communicate, language expresses and helps construct identity. As such, it has the power to inspire and unite people — but language can also be a source of division, or an impediment to peace between groups already in conflict. From squabbles over things like spelling and pronunciation, to minority groups […]
VILLA UKIKA — Just outside of Puerto Williams, the world’s southernmost city, lives an extraordinary woman. This far-flung outpost on Chile’s Tierra del Fuego, across the Straight of Magellan, is quiet literally at the end of the earth. And at 89, Cristina Calderón is nearing the end of her life — when she will take […]
MEXICO CITY — Mexico is one of the world’s most linguistically diverse countries, but many of its indigenous tongues are in serious danger of extinction. And unless efforts are undertaken to preserve them, about 50 of those languages could disappear within the next 20 years, the Mexico City-based daily El Universal reports. There are a […]
It took a dozen years for Juan Camilo Niño Vargas to document and create a glossary for a little-known, and unwritten, tongue being threatened with extinction. Now it has a chance to live on.
Watch Darth Vader’s heavy breathing in German, Yoda in Russian riffin’, and Princess Leia declare her love in French … in our 90-second video, to celebrate the release of the Star Wars franchise’s 7th installment.
The American MC KRS-One gathered 14 rappers from 14 different countries (South Korea, Italy, Bosnia, Singapore, India, Portugal, Wales, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Japan, Egypt, Taiwan, Finland and the U.S.) to record this amazing track. The goal is to unite the world under the love for hip hop, as “We are the World” aimed to 30 years […]
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Funny how a picture without any people in it can still illustrate a city’s dual heritage, both linguistically (French/English) and demographically (Acadian/Creole).
MYITKYINA — For the first time in 40 years, ethnic languages are going to be taught in schools in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Starting next June, students from different ethnic communities will be able learn their mother tongue not only at home, but also in the classroom. When the military junta led by General Ne Win came to power in 1962, Burmese became the official national language, and teaching ethnic languages in schools was banned under the “national language policy.” In the outskirts of Myitkyina, in the northern state of Kachin, there is a summer school where children are […]
European universities are a bastion of original thinking, but as more and more gets taught and learned in the English-language, conformism is bound to spread.
Greece native Ioannis Ikonomou learned English at age five, German at seven and Italian at barely 10. He hasn’t stopped since, and is currently mastering Albanian.
SAO PAULO — Asking “How are you?” in English was the way Igor Mendes, a 26-year-old car dealer, approached Marcela Paes one night in Vila Madalena, the “in” district for Brazilians and foreigners enjoying La Copa in Sao Paulo. Unaware that Marcela is a reporter and fluent in English, he presented himself as a Scot. […]
The competing sides, both globally and regionally, will never see Ukraine’s reality the same way, so deep are the historical and cultural divides. Analysis from Kiev.
TURIN – It’s a little like Babel. In Italy, words can have one meaning on one side of the street and something entirely different on the other. From the mountains to the sea, from the north to the south, this is the land of endless dialects. But because families are using these local languages less […]
A proposed bill that would allow the use of English in universities has set off an uproar among intellectual champions of the French language.
LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch VENICE– You no speeka the English? Well then, signori, you will not be welcome at Italy’s prestigious Ca’ Foscari and Bocconi universities. La Stampa reports that Ca” Foscari, a 145-year-old public university in Venice, and Bocconi, the private Milan business and economics university, are requiring that all students enrolling for the […]