The podcast I watched was on three different topics. It was about the Iran’s leader insulting America and an anthropologist from Cambridge about to attempt to research the Inuktun. Also, we hear about foreign language movies in the US and about a unique, but confusing language.
The first part of the podcast told us about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s current leader, insulting America by saying in an English translation, “the boogie man snatched the boob.” This old, Persian saying for a mother when she is breast feeding was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supposed attempt to seem more in touch with the people. Although, this may not have worked that well considering that some people do not believe their president should speak this way especially in public.
The second part is about a man named Stephen Leonard who is a lingual anthropologist at Cambridge. He is going to go spend a year in Northwest Greenland to research the Inuktun dialect. The Inuktun’s life style has been greatly endangered by global warming. They hunt animals with spears and continue the old fashioned way of life. They even ride on dog sleds, but Stephen biggest challenge will probably be communicating. At this point, all he has for this language is a list of words.
The third part discusses foreign language movies. These movies used to be quite popular. A Chinese movie made over 100 million, and movies from Italy and France made millions and millions of dollars in box offices. Now ten year later it seems, they are making less and less, because the people watching must be very compelled to watch a foreign movie. Otherwise, most people stick to American because we find ourselves feeling, we are the center of movie culture. Also, it talks about how a movie opened in New York may get more attention, so it may spread and become more successful. In addition to this, they discuss other ways to increase attention and sales.
The fourth and final part Sofia Javed talks about an interesting thing in language. One language has the same word for “go straight” and “turn right.” In the language of Hindi, the word for yesterday and tomorrow is the same. They say it is not confusing though as long as you look at in the context of a sentence. The verbs, whether they are past or future tense, can give it away, but with directions this is not the case. Since they have the same words for “go straight” and “go right,” it can get very confusing. You could use verbs, but in their mind they don’t consider it a turn as much as a merge, so that wouldn’t work either. As you can see, this can get to be a big problem.
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