Free Republic

In a society of victims, knowledge and facts and reason no longer apply. When the prescient George Orwell observed that “There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language” he may not have been anticipating what is taking place with educators who have allowed their obsession with racial justice to influence how they maintain standards in their teaching methods and pedagogy. Last July, for example, as the country was embroiled in race-motivated riots and social unrest over the death of George Floyd and others, The Conference on College Composition and Communication (an affiliate...

Some 13.5 percent of the U.S. population -- 44 million -- is foreign born, the highest level ever, and many are not proficient in English, choosing to speak Spanish at home instead. A report from the Migration Policy Institute found that 22 percent of the U.S. population does not speak English at home. The share was highest in Nevada at 31 percent and Florida at 29 percent. The report revealed a new trend in migration to the U.S where immigrants are dispersed throughout the nation instead of clustering in a few states and cities. For example, while the number of...

English is weird, hard to learn, and often hard to translate. An article on this showed UP in my email inbox this week, and I thought I’d share it with you. While I didn't dream it UP, I found out, after looking it UP on the web, that the article's content might originally come from here. I enjoyed reading UP on it, and I made UP the parallel between the uses of the word and localization. (It gets worse from here). UP can be a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition. This two-letter word in English has more meanings than...

Debate has recently flared in Germany as to whether the prevalence of English in urban areas is a nuisance. We spoke to expats who told us why they have not learned the local language. When Jens Spahn, a politician from the Christian Democrats (CDU), recently condemned people who live in Berlin but speak English as “provincial, elitist hipsters,” he stirred up a national debate on the importance of learning the local lingo. Spahn argued that the use of English leaves out locals who can’t speak the global language and is detrimental to other newcomers who dedicate their time to learning...

Hail a yellow taxi in New York City, and there is a good chance the driver is from another country. Passengers are regularly exposed to a range of languages that span the globe, from Spanish to Bengali to Urdu. It can be charming, but also maddening for riders who feel that drivers do not understand where they want to go. Don’t you have to speak English, some wonder, to drive a taxi here? As of Friday, the answer is no. That is when new rules went into effect eliminating the requirement that taxi drivers take an English proficiency exam. Now,...

<p>Here is a list of a few trendy words, overused, politicized, and empty of meaning, that now plague popular communications.</p> <p>"Intersection" How many times have we read a writer, columnist, pundit, or job applicant self-describe himself with this strange word? Here's an example: "Joe Blow is a social theorist working at the intersection of class oppression, racial stereotyping, and transgendered emergence."? Or: "Amanda Lopez writes at the intersection of Latina identity, Foucauldian otherness, and social media." Most of the time "intersection" exists only in the grandiose mind of the writer. It is a patent though feeble attempt to become a threefer or fourfer on the race/gender/generic victim/revolutionary activist scale. The intersected topics are individually irrelevant -- and all the more so when cobbled together. The use of "intersection" is a postmodern way of plastering bumper-sticker narcissisms without writing, "I am an identity-studies person without much knowledge of literature, history, or languages, but am desperately trying to convey expertise of some sort by piling up a bunch of pseudo-disciplines that credential my victimhood activism."</p>

"Al-Qaeda unveils new magazine aimed at Western jihadis Advert for 'Resurgence' magazine uses words of Malcolm X in appeal to disaffected Muslims in US and Europe, as it turns focus away from Middle East" SNIPPET: "Al-Qaeda is starting an English language magazine as part of a fresh effort to recruit and inspire Western jihadis to launch attacks in their own countries, according to security analysts. A video posted on YouTube uses the words of Malcolm X to justify violent struggle, before announcing the name of the magazine, Resurgence." SNIPPET: "However, the new magazine appears to be the first English language...

Nigel Farage yesterday said he felt “awkward” when he could hear no English being spoken while on a train from London to Kent. The UKIP leader described how he was on his way home when he went several stops without hearing his native tongue. His comments followed a provocative speech in which he claimed some areas of Britain are being “taken over” by migrants, while others have become “frankly unrecognizable”. They came a day after figures showed a significant rise in net migration. …

The whole world knows that English spelling is a sick joke. If English is to be the international language of business and commerce, then a rational alphabet and a rational system of spelling need to be devised for it, and the present hodgepodge system needs to be jettissoned altogether. The inordinate amount of time spent by foreigners and English speaking children alike learning our present system of spelling would be better of spent on more reasonable goals. A reasonable system of spelling for English would be based on the following ideas: It should to the extent possible use letters which...

"Nigerian Terror Suspect Flown to New York for Trial, Accused of Recruiting, Training for Al-Qaida Federal authorities say Lawal Babafemi received al-Qaida money to recruit English-speaking people to engage in acts of terror against America" SNIPPET: "A Nigerian terror suspect accused of trying to help al-Qaida in Yemen was flown to New York to appear Friday in a federal courtroom. Lawal Babafemi is accused of training with members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and using his English skills to help publish the terrorist magazine "Inspire." Judge John Gleason ordered Babafemi, also known as "Ayatollah Mustafa," held without bail." SNIPPET:...

The Muslim terrorist group Qa’adat el-Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for a terrorist bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria. The bombing in Bulgaria last week killed five Israelis, one a pregnant woman. The Lebanese paper El-Nashra reported that the group, which has ties to Al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility in an email to the Arab press.

AFP - Al-Qaeda's military chief in Yemen warned Americans in an audio message posted online Sunday that the Boston bombings revealed a fragile security as he urged Muslims to defend their religion.

Just like facts and flies, English words have life-spans. Some are thousands of years old, from before English officially existed, others change, or are replaced or get ditched entirely. Here are 18 uncommon or obsolete words that we think may have died early. We found them in two places: a book called "The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten" by Jeffrey Kacirk, and on a blog called Obsolete Word of The Day that's been out of service since 2010. Both are fantastic- you should check them out.

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.

How a U.S. Citizen Came to Be in America’s Cross Hairs By MARK MAZZETTI, CHARLIE SAVAGE and SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON — One morning in late September 2011, a group of American drones took off from an airstrip the C.I.A. had built in the remote southern expanse of Saudi Arabia. The drones crossed the border into Yemen, and were soon hovering over a group of trucks clustered in a desert patch of Jawf Province, a region of the impoverished country once renowned for breeding Arabian horses. A group of men who had just finished breakfast scrambled to get to their trucks....

SNIPPET: "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has released the 10th edition of Inspire, its English language propaganda magazine that is marketed to Westerners. The magazine features an article by Adam Gadahn, the American traitor who works with al Qaeda's core leadership cadre in Pakistan." SNIPPET: "Gadahn also advises jihadists in the West to continue "direct engagement [attacks] at home and abroad with America and its NATO parents, particularly France and Britain."" SNIPPET: "Gadahn is believed to be based in Pakistan and is known to work with As Sahab, al Qaeda's primary propaganda production outfit. He also releases propaganda via...

SNIPPET: "Indonesian anti-terror police, Densus 88 secure a terror suspect's house during a raid in Mojosongo, Solo in Central Java. Indonesian police have arrested 11 members of an Islamic group allegedly planning attacks on American diplomatic missions, a spokesman says." SNIPPET: "The group had planned to hit the US embassy and a US consulate, as well as a building near the Australian embassy in the capital Jakarta that houses the office of American mining giant Freeport-McMoran, police said. Police said they were from a new outfit called HASMI, the Sunni Movement for Indonesian Society, and explosives and a bomb-making manual...

On July 4, 1960, the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard rang in Independence Day with a dire Associated Press report by one Norma Gauhn headlined “American Dialects Disappearing.” The problem, according to “speech experts,” was the homogenizing effect of “mass communications, compulsory education, [and] the mobility of restless Americans.” These conformist pressures have only intensified in the half-century since the AP warned “that within four generations virtually all regional U.S. speech differences will be gone.” And so as we enter the predicted twilight of regional American English, it’s no surprise that publications as venerable as the Economist now confirm what our collective...