“Western technology companies have misunderstood the linguistic landscape of India, where English is spoken proficiently by only about a tenth of the population and even many college-educated Indians prefer the contours of their native tongues for everyday speech,” according to Quillpad creator Ram Prakash, the New York Times reports today. In the last [...]

Lerner Publishing, publishers of Angel Girl, based on Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat‘s “love story,” announced that they have “canceled pending reprints of the book and will refund the price of any returned books.” The story, based on Rosenblat’s Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love that Survived, inspired many, including [...]

Lake Superior State University just released its annual list of Banished Words. Vote for the word(s) you would banish in our first ever FIT poll (updated with official list-the previous one turned out to be a…hoax!)!

Free Blog Poll

5:10 pm. Ma and I find ourselves at the NOIDA Trade Fair at the old circus grounds. There are stalls selling some Limca Book “record-breaking” variety of honey; “stomach flattening” abdominal belts; South Indian gold-plated jewelery; pleather accessories; miraculous “Ayurvedic” herbal supplements promising to cure every ailment known to man; tamarind, mango, and pomegranate flavored [...]

While I was wading through the myriad book exhibits at the carnivalesque MLA conference in San Francisco (7000+ people here, they say), I happened across the very cool-looking Multilingual Anthology of American Literature: A Reader of Original Texts with English Translations published in 2000 by the New York University Press, edited by Marc [...]

So I began writing this as a comment on daveski’s “Good morning” but it grew into this post instead. I’ve actually wanted to write on it for a while, so thanks for the inspiration daveski!

One of my favorite things in France was walking into a shop and immediately having to say “Bonjour Monsieur/Madame”. I was [...]

I’m on the way to the Modern Language Association’s annual conference in San Francisco. Decided late this morning to go to a session on the 2007 MLA report on for Foreign Languages, where I know I’ll be able to meet a few fellow Berkeleyans. But I’m not ready to think about [...]

What do the following words have in common: abbey, aisle, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, sin, devil, vicar, acorn, almond, ash, beech, blackberry, blacksmith, chestnut, crocus, heather, ivy, lavender, primrose, sycamore, willow, porridge, raven, starling, stork, pelican, coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire and monarch?

The Oxford University [...]