Sat, Mar 19, 2011
In its quest for linguistic unity in China, the Chinese state is becoming increasingly uncompromising. With an active language policy, they try to get everyone to communicate in national Chinese and write in simplified characters. At the East Asian Museum, we meet the curator Si Han, who tells us why it is so important that all Chinese speak the same language. But a monolingual China is not everyone's dream. Above all in Tibet people protest against politics. Tensin Tsundue tells how people in Tibet are forced to introduce national Chinese as the school language and the only official language. In New York's Chinatown, the Cantonese dialect is still the most viable. Can the Chinese language policy reach this far? We meet Kim who is fighting for the Cantonese to survive.
Sat, Mar 26, 2011
We meet Leonore Grenoble, who researches Arctic languages, and the musician Hayati Kafé, who is fluent in the Ladino language. What is his view on Ladino and does he think that the language that has lived for thousands of years will survive? In New York there is an organization that documents endangered languages. It has been shown that unexpectedly many languages survive in the metropolitan jungle.
Sat, Apr 9, 2011
If the anti-Swedish Sannfinländarna (The Finns Party) win the election, they threaten to remove Swedish as an official language in Finland. Markus Lyra, until recently ambassador to Sweden, believes that the Swedish language is part of the Finnish culture and the people's soul. Others believe that Swedish only costs unnecessary money.
Sat, Apr 30, 2011
With the war in the Balkans in the 1990s, language differences began to be cultivated to show the differences between the area's ethnic groups. Already in early antiquity, language was connected with a collective sense of identity. But must multilingualism and language differences lead to conflicts?
Sat, May 7, 2011
According to the Bible, God created the confusion of languages as a punishment for man's arrogance. Today, with the help of technology, we are getting better at bridging the world's language barriers. But do tools like Google Translate make us understand each other better or worse? We meet linguistics professor Philip Resnik in a conversation about language and new technology. Translators Monica Silverstrand and Brian Hobbs talk about how the art of translation is affected by the new technology. We also visit the Colombia University Language Center in New York.
Sat, Oct 15, 2011
"Hope" and "change" were the words that helped Barack Obama become president. Who can he use to get re-elected? We talk to Steven Holst, who worked with Obama's campaign in 2008. We also meet Anneli Toresson, political speechwriter for both Göran Persson and Mona Sahlin. For her, words are the most important tool of politics. The spring of 2011 became what came to be known as the Arab Spring. In several countries in the Arab world, the people revolted against authoritarian regimes. As the most important information spreader between the countries was the Arab television channel Al-Jazeera. There, slogans from the various revolutions were picked up and spread to other countries.
Sat, Oct 22, 2011
Spanish vs English. Today, five languages compete for the title of the world's largest language: English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Hindi. Why has Brazil decided to introduce Spanish as a second language and which language is most useful for a globetrotter? We also examine whether Spanish will become the largest language in the United States.
Sat, Oct 29, 2011
Could Belgium be about to split in two? We travel there to hear the arguments for dividing the country along language lines. Often the language is perceived as the soul of the nation and carrier of the culture. Fatima chats with Paul Bilbao about Basque, a language that has no homeland and that has been chosen to defend with violence against the Spanish government. We also meet Dilsa Demirbag Sten and talk about the future of Kurdish as a language without a country.