12/30/2005 - 12/31/2005

accents important for career success

Regional accents are deemed bad for business by British bosses, a new survey has found. Four in five - 79 per cent - business chiefs said they believed a strong regional accent to be a disadvantage at work. Elocution lessons may indeed be in high demand in the near future.

There is apparently most prejudice against Liverpudlians with 64 per cent of bosses saying they associated the Merseysiders' tones with a lack of business acumen.Brummies were also singled out by 63 per cent, Cockneys by 52 per cent and Geordies by 48 per cent. By contrast 77 per cent of bosses said they liked staff to have a Home Counties accent and 73 per cent were in favour of an American accent.

iran - land of the blog

The music of Eric Clapton was banned in Iran last week. Broadcasters were ordered to cease playing decadent Western songs and stick to "fine Iranian music". Not content with denying the Holocaust, Israel's right to exist and hoardings featuring David Beckham, Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now denied his people the chance to listen to Layla. Cruel and unusual punishment indeed.

But if Iran, under the repressive rule of the ultraconservatives, is silencing the sound of Western pop, in another area of its culture a wild cacophony of voices has erupted. The blogosphere is exploding. In Iran there are more than 100,000 active blogs, individual online diaries covering every conceivable subject, from pets to politics. Farsi is the 28th most spoken language in the world, but it now ties with French as the second most used language in the blogosphere. This is the place Iranians call Weblogistan, a land of noisy and irreverent free speech.

languages should be priority for USA

There's an old joke that says: "Someone who speaks three languages is trilingual; someone who speaks two languages is bilingual; and someone who speaks one language is American." That punch line might have been funny a few years ago, but in a post-9/11 world, Americans' lack of language skills is no laughing matter. It's cause for great concern.

2006 - Year of African Languages

As the continent marks the Year of African Languages in 2006 to help promote the use of the mother-tongue, does it matter if Africa's indigenous languages are dying out?

translation bill in limbo

A bill that would require report cards and other school papers to be translated into up to eight different languages for parents who don't understand English is in limbo despite passing easily last week in the City Council.

The bill, the Education Equity Act, is expected to cost the city $20 million. Immigration advocates and council members who voted to approve the measure say parents are being shut out of their children's education, and have called the issue a matter of civil rights.

hsbc and bbc launch expat site

HSBC Bank and the BBC have joined forces to offer expatriates a new source of advice on living and working overseas. Becoming an expat can be a frightening process -they often have to deal with completely different customs, languages and systems than those they are used to.

The new online 'microsite' is filled with information that people working away from their countries of origin are likely to find useful, such as how to purchase property overseas or how to go about retiring to a home in the sun.

New Multilingual Yellow Pages and Local Search Engine launched

With its unprecedented growth over the past few years, the Internet has finally made us a real global village -- but language remains an important issue. Language barriers prevent people from understanding all of the online information they seek.

Consider This: Both the Chinese and American markets are more interested in each other right now than at any other time in their histories. But how many Americans or Canadians understand Chinese (much less its many versions)? And how many Chinese cannot use major yellow pages and local search engines to search local businesses in the United States, again because of language?

learning a new language a popular new year's resolution

It is that time of the year again - New Year's resolutions! Will you be quitting smoking, going on a diet or becoming a nicer person? Well according to CareerBuilder.com learning a new language now ranks fourth in the top ten list of most prevalent resolutions.

"Language learning is a popular New Year's resolution because it opens the door to meeting so many other goals in your life," says Dr. Caroline Clauss- Ehlers, a bilingual counseling psychologist and assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

internet use in poland

New statistics show that the percentage of Polish households owning a computer grew to 40 percent this year, with internet access following close behind to 30 percent. However, only 30 percent of rural households owned a computer and a mere 19 percent had internet access.

word of the day: perquisite

perquisite \PUR-kwuh-zit\, noun:
1. A profit or benefit in addition to a salary or wages.
2. Broadly: The benefits of a position or office.
3. A gratuity or tip for services performed.
4. Anything to which someone has or claims the sole right.

In a tight market for skilled labor . . . corporations are increasingly buying homes for hot new hires -- a perquisite once reserved for top executives. --Jennie James, "For Many Europeans, There's No Place Like Home," Time, May 8, 2000

It is a shock to find the master, whom we cannot help thinking of as the greatest gentleman in the history of art, regarding petty larceny as a perquisite of office and diverting the wages of sweepers and cleaners. --Sir Lawrence Gowing, "Obsessed by Ambition, Saved by Art," New York Times, August 10, 1986