Latest news with #language
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Luca Guadagnino Savors Crossed Lines and Devours Comfort Zones in ‘After the Hunt' Trailer
The characters in Luca Guadagnino's forthcoming dramatic thriller, Into the Hunt, are obsessed with language —the words that are said, and even more so, the ones left unspoken. Early in the first trailer for the film, Andrew Garfield's overzealous academic Hank pokes at Ayo Edebiri's Maggie, an overachieving student enrolled in a course taught by Julia Roberts' Professor Alma Olsson. 'All your generation, you're scared of saying the wrong thing,' he says. 'When did offending someone become the preeminent cardinal sin?' Maggie readies her rebuttal, suggesting with an edge of snark, 'Maybe it's around the same time your generation started making sweeping generalizations about ours?' Throughout the trailer, the film blurs the lines between what should be completely black and white situations. When Hank's playful academic debates escalate to the point of sexual assault, Maggie confides in Alma, believing she'll take the facts for what they are. But Alma and Hank have a history, and always will, as she tells her husband. More from Rolling Stone How Lionel Boyce and Ayo Edebiri Wrote 'The Bear' Season 4's Standout Episode 'The Bear' Season 4 Finale Leaves Us With Plenty to Chew On 'The Bear' Season 4 Goes Big and Goes Small in Two Very Special Episodes. Both Work When Maggie tells her that Hank 'crossed the line' after a nightcap, Alma responds, 'But what actually happened?' And when Alma confronts Hank, he attempts to spin the narrative as an academic violation. He insists that he caught Maggie cheating. The plagiarism accusation doesn't align with the portrait the professor painted earlier in the trailer of one of her star students, one of brilliance, but not obsession, as her husband would have suggested. 'You tend to choose people because they worship you,' he told her. The turmoil spreads across campus, with looks of pity exchanged alongside expressions of distrust and uncertain suspicion. 'I worked too hard, done too much to get here to let it all be just taken away,' Hank declares through fury. Another figure, Chloë Sevigny's Kim, questions why Maggie spoke up at all, asking, 'I believe her, but whatever happened to stuffing everything down like the rest of us?' All the while, Maggie is perplexed as to how 'a young Black woman can get assaulted and all these white people find a way to make it about themselves.' In theaters Oct. 17, After the Hunt marks Guadagnino's latest film since last year's Challengers and Queer. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time Denzel Washington's Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century Solve the daily Crossword
Arab News
2 days ago
- General
- Arab News
Between Yalla! and Let's go!
RIYADH: In Saudi Arabia's increasingly globalized society, especially among young people in major cities, there is an easy blending of languages, often switching between Arabic and English in the same conversation. This phenomenon, known as code-switching, has become a linguistic norm that reflects shifting social dynamics, culture and identity. A 2024 study conducted by Kais Sultan Mousa Alowidha at Jouf University found that bilingual Saudis often switch between Arabic and English depending on the context, particularly in casual or professional settings. Saudi students who have studied or grown up abroad find themselves flipping between languages almost unconsciously. Abdullah Almuayyad, a Saudi senior at the University of Washington, Seattle, who has spent more than half his life in the US, spoke to Arab News about his experiences with both languages. 'Comfort really depends on context,' he said. 'Day-to-day I'm equally at ease in either language, but the setting matters.' • The King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language in Riyadh has launched several initiatives to strengthen Arabic fluency, both for native speakers and non-native learners. • A 2024 study from Jouf University found that bilingual Saudis often switch between Arabic and English depending on the context, particularly in casual or professional settings. In business settings, he defaults to English because of his education and professional exposure, but casual or family settings feel more natural in Arabic. 'Sometimes my friends tease me because I'll begin a sentence in Arabic, hit a complex business concept, and flip to English mid-stream.' This mental switching, he explained, is often tied to topic-specific language associations. Some topics are assigned to a specific language in his brain. 'Once the topic surfaces, the corresponding language follows automatically.' At an institutional level, efforts to preserve and promote Arabic are gaining traction in Saudi Arabia. The King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language in Riyadh has launched several initiatives to strengthen Arabic fluency, both for native speakers and non-native learners. Through academic partnerships, digital tools, and training programs, the academy is playing a key role in ensuring Arabic remains a vibrant and accessible language. The institute reflects a broader national push to reinforce cultural identity amid the linguistic shifts brought on by globalization. Majd Tohme, senior linguist at SURV Linguistics in Riyadh, told Arab News that code-switching is 'a very multi-dimensional issue.' He emphasized that the debate should not hinge on whether code-switching is good or bad. 'What we need to ask ourselves is, does code-switching work in the everyday context? And if it works, isn't that the purpose of any linguistic pattern?' He added that language purism might miss the point entirely. 'You don't have to get involved in that language puritanism … and code-switching is not really something new. Languages are living organisms that evolve,' he explained. Many words we consider native today, he noted, have foreign origins, such as from Persian or European languages, particularly in science and technology. Still, there are concerns about the erosion of Arabic. Tohme acknowledged the threat but said it is not exclusive to Arabic. 'It is a threat to all languages,' he said, especially in the era of globalized communication where the internet has become a shared space dominated by English. 'You now have one internet that the world is sharing,' he explained. 'It's like one huge playground where you have 8 billion people trying to communicate with each other.' And yet, there are signs of balance. Almuayyad, for instance, actively challenges himself and his peers to preserve Arabic fluency. 'In eighth grade, even though my friends and I preferred English, we agreed to speak only Arabic until it felt natural,' he said. 'Later, when my Arabic caught up, I switched and spoke only English with friends who wanted practice.' For many, especially in Saudi Arabia's larger cities, bilingualism no longer means choosing between one language over the other. The constant nudge to challenge each other keeps both languages active and growing. The Jouf University study found that bilingual Saudis strongly identify with both languages and do not believe that speaking English negates their cultural identity. It also concluded that code-switching is often required in larger cities due to the abundance of non-Arabic speakers in public and professional environments. Therefore, code-switching, especially in the Kingdom, appears to be less about identity loss and more about functionality. As Saudi Arabia opens up globally and embraces multiculturalism under Vision 2030, this blending of languages could be seen not as a dilution of heritage, but a reflection of its outward-looking generation. According to Tohme, the psychological impact of going abroad for a few years then returning to your home country also cannot be understated. Students develop a certain nostalgia for home while spending so many years abroad speaking extensively in a foreign language. They may develop the determination to make a conscious effort to strengthen their Arabic-language skills again. Almuayyad is someone who can relate to that and says if he had spent his whole life in the Kingdom, his language development might not have been that different. 'I see a lot of people in Saudi who use English freely because global media and online content are so dominant,' he explained. Yet, he admits that growing up in one place can limit the push to step outside of your linguistic comfort zone. 'My exposure to two cultures forced me to practice that stretch constantly.'
The Independent
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
The Indian state where people are being beaten up for speaking the wrong language
Maharashtra, long regarded as one of India's most cosmopolitan states, has found itself reliving an old tension: a renewed battle over language. In the last few months, a state government order mandating Hindi as the third language in primary schools has sparked not just political protests but also public violence. A rickshaw driver was assaulted after refusing to speak in the state language Marathi, a shopkeeper was slapped by political activists for using Hindi, and a bank employee was threatened for defending his use of Hindi and English. At the heart of the unrest lies a 16 April education department resolution making Hindi compulsory as the third language from classes I to V in schools giving instruction in English and Marathi languages. While state officials framed the policy as a routine implementation of the federal government's National Education Policy 2020, which encourages education in the regional language, Hindi, and English under the 'three-language formula', critics saw it as part of a broader push by prime minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to elevate Hindi at the expense of regional languages. Although the federal push to promote Hindi beyond the 'Hindi belt' has faced opposition in many states, the backlash has been especially charged in Maharashtra. The western state was born out of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement of the 1950s, a mass mobilisation demanding a separate province for Marathi speakers with Mumbai as its capital. The agitation, marked by mass street protests, hunger strikes and violent police crackdowns, led to the deaths of over 100 demonstrators before Maharashtra was finally carved out of the bilingual Bombay State in 1960. Not surprisingly then, the new policy has struck a discordant note in a state where linguistic identity has long been deeply embedded in the social fabric. Many people view the introduction of compulsory Hindi not as a benign educational reform but as a renewed threat to that hard-won identity. While the state's BJP-led government initially downplayed the controversy, the backlash quickly escalated. Opposition parties, including the Shiv Sena UBT, the Congress, and Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party, accused the BJP of pushing a 'Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan' agenda: shorthand for the Modi government's concerted bid to promote Hindi and Hindu nationalism at the expense of India's pluralistic character. Varsha Gaikwad of the Congress party, a former state education minister, accused the BJP of 'working systematically to weaken the Marathi language in its own homeland,' The New Indian Express reported. Shiv Sena UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray, longstanding political rivals, also voiced strong opposition to the Hindi mandate. The former referred to the new policy as a 'language emergency' and said he 'will not allow imposition of any language'. The latter, known for his party's past campaigns against Hindi-speaking migrants, reiterated his stance that while Maharashtrians were Hindus, they did not accept Hindi imposition. Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar initially defended the policy. Its critics had 'nothing else to do', he said while arguing that Hindi and English were useful across India. But Marathi, he emphasised, would remain Maharashtra's primary language. Federal home minister Amit Shah said last month that Indians should eventually 'feel ashamed' to speak English, promoting native tongues instead. The central government under Narendra Modi has consistently promoted Hindi as the national lingua franca, not only through educational reforms like the three-language policy but also symbolic changes. Public schemes, for example, now bear Hindi titles like Mera Yuva Bharat, Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. The colonial-era Indian Penal Code has been replaced with Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. But as the Maharashtra protests grew louder and violence more visible, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis reversed the mandate and announced it would be optional. He also formed a committee to review the policy's implementation. The resistance to 'Hindi imposition' has echoed beyond Maharashtra. In Tamil Nadu, chief minister MK Stalin rejected the National Education Policy's three-language formula and declared that the southern state was 'ready for another language war' over what he called the central government's attempt to impose Hindi. Deputy chief minister Udhayanidhi Stalin warned the state would 'never accept the New Education Policy or the imposition of Hindi in any form' and cast the opposition to it as an 'ethnic struggle' to protect Tamil culture. Fellow southern states Karnataka and Kerala have seen similar opposition. In Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka, activists vandalised departure boards at the main airport over the omission of Kannada, the state language, while local governments mandated Kannada-first signage in public spaces. India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. According to the 2011 census, there are 121 languages in active use and over 1,300 distinct mother tongues, although only 22 enjoy official status under the constitution. Hindi is the most widely spoken language, used by roughly 43.6 per cent of the population, or 528 million people. Marathi is third with about 83 million speakers and Tamil ranks fifth with about 69 million speakers. As Maharashtra braces for municipal elections, the language row underscores how swiftly cultural identity can become a political fault line. What began as an administrative directive on school curriculum has grown into a broader referendum on who defines the cultural contours of a diverse and multilingual India.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Book Review: ‘Algospeak' shows just how much social media is changing us
How much has social media changed the way we talk and behave? That's the question linguist and content creator Adam Aleksic sets out to answer in his debut book 'Algospeak.' If you already know what words like 'yeet,' 'rizz,' 'brainrot' or 'blackpilled' mean, some of this information might not come as a surprise to you. Still, Aleksic's analysis reaffirms how this language came about and why it continues to proliferate. For those unfamiliar, it acts as an accessible entry point into social media slang and its evolution. 'Algospeak' touches on a wide array of topics, including in-groups and out-groups, censorship, language appropriation, extremism online, microtrends, clickbait and generational divides. The chapters build on each other with a textbook-level attention to vocabulary. This book serves as a sobering reality check on how social media is affecting not just our speech, but our entire identities. 'Social media creates new identities in order to commodify them,' Aleksic writes in a chapter about microtrends and micro-labels. 'Your decisions are now curated for you under the guise of personalization, while in reality they're engineered to make platforms as much money as possible.' As a self-proclaimed 'etymology nerd,' Aleksic leans heavily into his experience as a content creator, providing a crash course into social media history and how to game the ever-changing and opaque 'algorithm.' His tone is academic, yet approachable, and he's bold but pragmatic in his assertions, exploring counterarguments sufficiently. He identifies the transient nature of language and the algorithm immediately, since the cultural references in 'Algospeak' risk expiring quickly as trends change and social media platforms shift — but that's the point. ''The algorithm' is here to stay. This is why I think it's absolutely worth talking about even the most fleeting words,' Aleksic writes. Aleksic's writing feels personable and knowledgeable as he translates his online presence offline, and in doing so, demonstrates his own claims about parasocial relationships and owning one's audience. Keeping up with the algorithmic cycle is portrayed as exhausting, but as a necessary evil for influencers supporting their livelihoods through social media. "Algospeak" is a fascinating blend of etymology, psychology, cultural analysis and first-person perspective. The book acts as both a snapshot of our current, social media-imbued society and as an intellectual foundation for language developments to come. Aleksic leaves his reader with questions about the threats and opportunities that stem from social media developments, but undeniably one principle is true: social media has breached containment and is influencing not only the way we talk, but the way we live. 'Algorithms are the culprits, influencers are the accomplices, language is the weapon, and you, dear reader, are the victim,' he writes. ___ AP book reviews: Rachel S. Hunt, The Associated Press
Associated Press
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Book Review: ‘Algospeak' shows just how much social media is changing us
How much has social media changed the way we talk and behave? That's the question linguist and content creator Adam Aleksic sets out to answer in his debut book 'Algospeak.' If you already know what words like 'yeet,' 'rizz,' 'brainrot' or 'blackpilled' mean, some of this information might not come as a surprise to you. Still, Aleksic's analysis reaffirms how this language came about and why it continues to proliferate. For those unfamiliar, it acts as an accessible entry point into social media slang and its evolution. 'Algospeak' touches on a wide array of topics, including in-groups and out-groups, censorship, language appropriation, extremism online, microtrends, clickbait and generational divides. The chapters build on each other with a textbook-level attention to vocabulary. This book serves as a sobering reality check on how social media is affecting not just our speech, but our entire identities. 'Social media creates new identities in order to commodify them,' Aleksic writes in a chapter about microtrends and micro-labels. 'Your decisions are now curated for you under the guise of personalization, while in reality they're engineered to make platforms as much money as possible.' As a self-proclaimed 'etymology nerd,' Aleksic leans heavily into his experience as a content creator, providing a crash course into social media history and how to game the ever-changing and opaque 'algorithm.' His tone is academic, yet approachable, and he's bold but pragmatic in his assertions, exploring counterarguments sufficiently. He identifies the transient nature of language and the algorithm immediately, since the cultural references in 'Algospeak' risk expiring quickly as trends change and social media platforms shift — but that's the point. ''The algorithm' is here to stay. This is why I think it's absolutely worth talking about even the most fleeting words,' Aleksic writes. Aleksic's writing feels personable and knowledgeable as he translates his online presence offline, and in doing so, demonstrates his own claims about parasocial relationships and owning one's audience. Keeping up with the algorithmic cycle is portrayed as exhausting, but as a necessary evil for influencers supporting their livelihoods through social media. 'Algospeak' is a fascinating blend of etymology, psychology, cultural analysis and first-person perspective. The book acts as both a snapshot of our current, social media-imbued society and as an intellectual foundation for language developments to come. Aleksic leaves his reader with questions about the threats and opportunities that stem from social media developments, but undeniably one principle is true: social media has breached containment and is influencing not only the way we talk, but the way we live. 'Algorithms are the culprits, influencers are the accomplices, language is the weapon, and you, dear reader, are the victim,' he writes. ___ AP book reviews:
