Speaking in Tongues

is the currently most popular foreign language to learn in schools/at university in France?

Why France is Pushing Its Students to Master English

I'm looking to learn some PNG pidgin (tok pisin) before heading there. Outside of the LP phrasebook, are there any fairly accessible resources (aside from dictionaries and the like) which are useful for learning pidgin? Audio on the internet would be especially useful.

Thanks.

I have a half Chinese student in my class that told us her father was standing in a line at McDonald's trying to make up his mind about what to order. He kept saying aloud: "I want, I want, I want", but in Chinese. She told us that this is pronounced identically or closely enough to the "N" word that it was irritating a Black woman standing behind her.

Was she just making up a joke, or is this the truth?

Kendrick

Yes, this is English, and appeared in a Jamaican newspaper:

"Some yute deh bout di place whe wi hear seh gone di nex way. Wi neva actually ketch dem, but wi hear from good source who si dem out a road a par wid man weh known as 'fish'. Dem nuh nuff still eno, but dem affi lef to, wi nuh want none a dem in ya," another female resident added.

(Some youths around here go there. We never actually catch them, but we hear from a good source that they're down the road with a man we know as "Fish."…

I was writing today that "we should arrange+ a meeting" and I changed it to +convene.

I suppose one throws+ an informal party but +hosts a dinner party.

Is there a book which will help me out?

hi folks,

Last time i was in india i purchased a lovely framed urdu calligraphy (poem??)

My arabic proficiency only helped me recognize a couple of dates and names, but the main subject of the calligraphy remained mystery.

Here are picture links of the calligraphy if you can help me find out

First pic
Second pic
Third pic
Fourth pic

Thank you in advance
chukriyya!

My great grandparents emigrated from Ireland to the US around 1880. (They died long before I was born) They spoke Gaelic, but did not really pass it on to their children. They taught my grandfather some songs in Gaelic. He taught my mother and she taught me. You can imagine how garbled the Gaelic was by the time I learned it, and I probably added some corruption of my own.

I eventually discovered out that

Grammaree ma crewskeen
slanty gal mavorneen,
Grammaree ma crewskeen ,lawn lawn lawn
Oh, tis…

I've always associated the expression "No worries" exclusively with Australian speakers of English. In other words, I always thought of it as an Australianism. But I see it more and more in non-Australian sources, like, to name just one recent example, today's (Oct 30th) Doonesbury cartoon strip.

Does this mean it's an Australianism that's been picked up in recent years by Americans? Or has it existed all this time in the United States (and Canada?) independently, but I just failed to notice it…

Here is a recent article about the shift of the dominant language/dialect from Cantonese to Mandarin:

From NYT: In Chinatown, Sound of the Future Is Mandarin

Hardly surprining but the story was nevertheless interesting.

I wonder how many Taishanese speakers are there now in the US or China?

please, could someone translate for me the last part of the following sentence, after the colon?

"Montaigne alalim, humanistlerin en namuslusu sayarim onu, cünkü Montaigne söyle düsünmüs gibime gelir: insana dönmek istiyoruz, bunun icin Ortacagin din üstüne kurulu kati inanclarini yikip attik, insana yalniz insan olarak deger veren Ilkcag kisilerini örnek aldik, onlar gibi yasamaya özeniyoruz."