English Language

Polls show that frustration with Washington has never been higher — and who could argue? Most Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Most lawmakers openly concede that nothing will get done before the November elections. The leaders of both parties are already trading threats over the possibility of a national debt default next year. Barack Obama got elected by promising to change the tone in Washington, but clearly he's failed, as George W. Bush did before him. That should be a clue that the partisan animosity consuming the political system doesn't originate in the White House.

The governor of Puerto Rico is trying to do what more than a century of American citizenship has failed to accomplish: make Puerto Ricans fluent in English. Gov. Luis Fortuno, who has been mentioned as a possible Republican vice-presidential candidate, has proposed an ambitious, and what critics call far-fetched, plan to require all public schools to teach all courses in English instead of Spanish. The U.S. territory has had a long and contentious relationship with the English language, and many Puerto Ricans are skeptical about embracing it, fearing they will lose a key part of...

The governor of Puerto Rico is trying to do what more than a century of American citizenship has failed to accomplish: make Puerto Ricans fluent in English. Gov. Luis Fortuno, who has been mentioned as a possible Republican vice-presidential candidate, has proposed an ambitious, and what critics call far-fetched, plan to require all public schools to teach all courses in English instead of Spanish. The U.S. territory has had a long and contentious relationship with the English language, and many Puerto Ricans are skeptical about embracing it, fearing they will lose a key part of...

AFTERWARDS By Rosamund Lupton Crown, 386 pp., $25 "Motherhood isn't soft and cozy and sweet," muses the heroine in this juicy English thriller; "it's selfish ferocity, red in tooth and claw. " Rosamund Lupton, whose first novel, "Sister," set a ticking-clock mystery amid the messy landscape of family dynamics, here concocts a tale of arson, near-death experiences, and enduring maternal love. Grace Covey, a part-time arts writer whose real career has been raising her teenage daughter Jenny and decade-younger son Adam, rushes into Adam's burning school...

Salve Regina University has reached an agreement with Middlebury College in Vermont to host a summer English language immersion program on its campus. The university says the deal means international students enrolled in the program will study in Newport through 2014. The program is offered by the California-based Monterey Institute of International Studies, which is a graduate school of Middlebury College. The program is designed for international students who are undergraduates in the United States or are interested in studying on the undergraduate level.

Get ready for the 40th anniversary Watergate retrospectives — the flood of memoirs, histories, maybe some new revelations, almost certainly some revisionist views. And though it's only the second month of the anniversary year, it already can be said with some certainty that no Watergate retread will be as imaginative or as entertaining as ‘‘Watergate: A Novel," Thomas Mallon's contribution to the commemorative, and perhaps to the canon. In a grave national political crisis that was all about justice, there is a certain justice to the notion that the most memorable evocation of this...

LONDON -- Robert Burchfield, a daring and innovative lexicographer who was chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionaries from 1971 to 1984, died Monday in Oxfordshire, central England, a spokeswoman said. He was 81. Mr. Burchfield was born in New Zealand. From a young age, he loved the English language, which he once described as "a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib. " His interest in all brands of English went into the Oxford English Dictionaries, which he broadened to include words from North America, Australia, South Africa,...

STRATFORD, Ontario -- William Hutt, widely regarded as one of Canada's finest classical actors and a company member at the Stratford Festival for almost four decades, died Wednesday of leukemia at Stratford General Hospital, the Festival announced. He was 87. At the Stratford Festival, where he was a founding member, Mr. Hutt was involved in 130 productions as either an actor or director. Among his more memorable performances were the title characters in "King Lear," "Volpone," "Tartuffe," "Richard II," and "Titus Andronicus," as well as such diverse roles as James Tyrone...

WORDS TO EAT BY: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language By Ina Lipkowitz St. Martin’s, 204 pp., $25.99 C HILDREN OF THE STREET By Kwei Quartey Random House, 352 pp., paperback, $15 WHO WE ARE: And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? By Gary Younge Nation, 256 pp., $26.99 WORDS TO EAT BY: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language By Ina Lipkowitz St. Martin’s, 204 pp., $25.99 “When it comes to culinary matters,’’ Ina Lipkowitz writes, “we English speakers...

LONDON — Love may have its own language, but that’s not good enough for the British government. It wants English, too. Starting this fall, the spouse of a citizen who is coming from outside the European Union and wants to live in Britain will have to prove that he she has a basic command of English. The requirement, announced yesterday by the new Conservative government of Prime Minister David Cameron, was adopted as countries across Europe tighten their rules on immigration amid rising unemployment and concern about the ability of newcomers to...

"Mike Wallace is here to see you. " The "60 Minutes" journalist's reputation as a pitiless inquisitor was so fearsome that it was often said that those were the most dreaded words in the English language, capable of reducing an interview subject to a shaking, sweating mess. Wallace, who won his 21st and final Emmy Award at 89, died Saturday in the New Canaan, Conn., care facility where he had lived the last few years of his life. He was 93. Wallace didn't just interview people.

Get ready for the 40th anniversary Watergate retrospectives — the flood of memoirs, histories, maybe some new revelations, almost certainly some revisionist views. And though it's only the second month of the anniversary year, it already can be said with some certainty that no Watergate retread will be as imaginative or as entertaining as ‘‘Watergate: A Novel," Thomas Mallon's contribution to the commemorative, and perhaps to the canon. In a grave national political crisis that was all about justice, there is a certain justice to the notion that...

Salve Regina University has reached an agreement with Middlebury College in Vermont to host a summer English language immersion program on its campus. The university says the deal means international students enrolled in the program will study in Newport through 2014. The program is offered by the California-based Monterey Institute of International Studies, which is a graduate school of Middlebury College. The program is designed for international students who are undergraduates in the United States or are interested in studying on the undergraduate level.

WORDS TO EAT BY: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language By Ina Lipkowitz St. Martin’s, 204 pp., $25.99 C HILDREN OF THE STREET By Kwei Quartey Random House, 352 pp., paperback, $15 WHO WE ARE: And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? By Gary Younge Nation, 256 pp., $26.99 WORDS TO EAT BY: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language By Ina Lipkowitz St. Martin’s, 204 pp., $25.99 “When it comes to culinary matters,’’ Ina Lipkowitz writes, “we English speakers suffer from a...

Sina Corp., a popular Chinese Web portal, said Thursday it will launch an English-language microblog aimed at users abroad, entering a market dominated by U.S.-based Twitter. The service will be a version of Sina’s Chinese-language Weibo microblog, said a company spokesman, Mao Taotao. “We’re now developing an English-language microblog service, but there is no timetable to launch it,’’ Mao said. “The service is aimed at overseas users, but we don’t target users from a particular country.’’ Reports last week that Sina was...

Mayor Thomas M. Menino and a coalition of advocates are set to mark the 10th anniversary of an English language program that has helped thousands of the city’s immigrants. The mayor is scheduled to honor the English for New Bostonians program at Northeastern University tomorrow. More than 10,000 immigrants in Boston have taken classes under the program, which started in 2001. Officials say they hope to expand the program, which has recently received new grants from the Smith Family and Barr foundations.

Tired of lying on the beach with nothing to do but get the sand out of your shorts? Sick of traipsing around a new city with a tattered map and waiting in line at museums full of other sweaty tourists? Now more than ever travelers are looking for a new kind of vacation. A journey with a purpose and volunteering during time off are becoming increasingly popular. With "voluntourism," you can travel to beautiful regions of the world, meet and work with locals, and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow volunteers.

If you can read this sentence, you are either a native English speaker or one of the billion people — and this second group is three times the size of the first — who learned the language later in life. Though English lags behind Mandarin and Spanish in numbers of native speakers, it increasingly serves as lingua franca in business, diplomacy, science, and technology. Given the reach of the Internet and American cultural exports, its influence seems all but unstoppable. In “Globish,’’ British author and editor Robert McCrum sets out, first, to summarize the history of (as...

Rap’s indelible impact on music culture is no secret, but what of its literary merits? “The Anthology of Rap’’ sets out to “tell the story of rap as lyric poetry.’’ In doing so, the authors have built a poignant collection of rhythm and rhyme, a sociological study of the complex yearnings of a marginalized, criminalized North America. At nearly 900 pages, this tome contains more couplets than your average Norton Anthology. Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois transpose iconic raps from the nation’s finest lyricists into a sweeping, browsable index, equipping progressive...

BEIJING — The news agency run by China’s ruling Communist Party launched a global English-language television channel yesterday as part of its efforts to expand its influence abroad. Specialists say China’s media expansion also results from unhappiness with the international coverage of sensitive events in China such as Tibet and human rights. The government has accused international media organizations of being biased and focused on negative news. China Xinhua News Network Corp.