By Sarah-Claire Jordan With the advent of such things as massive globalization, more and more government policies favoring one central language or dialect over many, and the Internet in general, it has been harder and harder for some languages and dialects to survive. These tend to be regional dialects or languages, limited to only one […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan Hong Kong has long had a culture distinct from that of mainland China, but something has happened recently that has made something come bubbling up to the surface. On a Hong Kong news channel, TVB, subtitles for a news show in Mandarin Chinese were not in the usual traditional Chinese and were instead […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan Even before the French language committee had announced that there will be spelling changes implemented for around 2,400 French words, Portugal led the way in 1990 with a proposal to make Portuguese spelling more uniform across the different countries that speak it. This meant essentially favoring the Brazilian pronunciation and spelling of […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan Recently, the French language council announced that spelling changes to the language will be put into effect in time for the upcoming school year. The council, Académie Française, proposed changes to about 2,400 words, which range from removing accents and hyphens to taking out vowels in certain words. Some examples of changes […]
