How Denmark Enlightened Turkic Nations
Outstanding Danish scholar Vilhelm Thomsen (1842-1927) deciphered old Turkic Orkhon inscriptions on December 15, 1893. Nowadays, thanks to his intellectual …
Linguistics
How to Retard a Language
In this article, The Guardian argues that the switch to the Latin script “partly aims to distance country from Russia”. The Economist echoes the opinion …
A Chinese Approach to Language Question
Any respectable IT company seeks to embrace as many languages as possible. When you localize, say, your software product, new …
Fuzzy Names
There are many organizations throughout the world,
which have been improperly named. When dealing with such titles, one cannot describe the nature of the organizations for sure. Let’s examine briefly telltale examples from Germany, Kazakhstan, and
USA.
An amazing collection, dedicated to the science and technology, is located in Munich, Germany. It bears
an irrelevantly patriotic name – Deutsches …
No Budget for Spelling and Style
Windows Vista Home Premium in Kazakh is notorious for its spelling mistakes and loose style. Although it was created
under the aegis of a multi-billion corporation, they apparently practiced too much frugality on basic spellcheck and competent editors. Native Kazakh speakers would raise their
eyebrows, learning how their mother tongue is strangely distorted by software nerds. «Control Panel» is especially ill-fated in the Kazakh version. True, it was translated correctly as
«Басқару тақтасы» (Basqaru taqtasy). But, in the toolbar of «My Computer» it
…
Suum Cuique
Today, English is the leading international language. Well, it is not as musically sweet as Italian. It also doesn’t possess the exotic richness of Chinese. English-speaking thinkers haven’t composed treaties, comparable to the ones by German-speaking philosophers. However, its undisputable status of the worldwide lingua franca definitely has certain deep-rooted causes. You might win a lottery, but the global dominance can’t be achieved by chance.
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