While I am generally averse to reading articles that begin by telling us about how we are all living in “an increasingly globalized world,” I thought this article I caught in the Sunday New York Times might be of interest to members of the FIT community:
…there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain […]
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Mr. Manu Joseph pens another Letter from India for the New York Times, this time on the “Uncompromising Practicality [that] Could Be India’s Downfall.” I covered his previous letter here, noting the gaping flaws in his argument about the spread of English in India. This time, he serves up […]
more→This New York Times article by Anand Giriharadas, “Language as a Blunt Tool of the Digital Age“, makes some interesting associations between the use of digital communication tools like text messaging, Twitter, and blogs, on one hand, and a global business environment in which a ‘simplified’ version of English is in ascendance, on […]
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President Obama made some surprising comments today about the blogosphere during an interview with the editors of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade:
“I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up […]
more→An interesting article from Zachary M. Seward at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard U., pointing out how the New York Times has been sifting through its data generated when readers highlight words to look up their definitions. Not only does the Times’ tracking its own data like this show us what […]
more→Today’s Op-Ed column in the New York Times by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Maureen Dowd, entitled “Cheney, Master of Pain,” is the talk of the blogosphere. The big story is that Dowd plagiarized the following section which appears in today’s column:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, […]
more→So a couple of news stories caught my attention today. The first piece appeared in the New York Times, entitled Public Provides Giggles; Bloggers Get the Book Deal. This piece begins by discussing blogs that have gone on to be published in traditional book format, like Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves, […]
more→The New York Times is taking essay/photo submissions for “How Has College Changed You?”
College is a series of transformative experiences – moments that change the way you view the world. And yourself. Current students are invited to submit an essay or photographs that illustrate their metamorphosis, for a chance to be published in […]
more→caught this language blog on the New York Times:
Schott’s Vocab is a repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles — some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly newsworthy. Each day, Schott’s Vocab explores news sites around the world to find words and phrases that encapsulate the times in which we live or shed light on […]
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In-depth New York Times article on English language instruction for foreign-born students. A few excerpts:
WOODBRIDGE, Va. — Walking the halls of Cecil D. Hylton High School outside Washington, it is hard to detect any trace of the divisions that once seemed fixtures in American society.
Two girls, a Muslim in a headscarf and a strawberry […]
more→In the quest for learning more about, ahem, language and learning, here’s a New York Times article on intelligence. The article was written by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, two neuroscientists famous for their award-winning book, “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys But Never Forget How to Drive […]
more→New York Times article on metaphor problems and suggestions on fixing them (examples taken from actual published NYT articles):
Nip That Metaphor in Its Tracks
My colleague Adam Bryant, an editor in Business, notes that business writers tend to reach for metaphors to try to make complicated aspects of finance and economic policy more accessible. It’s […]
more→“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 […]
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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 […]
more→The New York Times‘ book blog, the aptly titled “Paper Cuts,” carries a post about a recent UC Press book entitled “One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost,” edited by Peter K. Austin. The description includes this alarming line: “There are more than six thousand languages used around the world today, although […]
more→Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an opinion piece that calls out “many [in the] prominent Western media [for being] reluctant to call the [Mumbai] perpetrators terrorists.” He accuses the BBC of being “anti-Semitic” and the New York Times “disgraceful,” in their coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. He further criticizes journalists for attempting to […]
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