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Languages of Asia

The cast of the Sanskrit play, "The Cleverness of the Thief." Patricia Sauthoff is in the center, wearing white.

Sanskrit is alive and well, but I prefer treating it as dead

Culture

There are plenty of people learning Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language, and those numbers are growing. But those students typically learn the language to read old books, and it turns out trying to use it as a spoken language is a challenge.

A job seeker looks at recruitment advertisements at a labor market in Guangdong province, where most people speak Cantonese.

Beijing has a message for China’s Cantonese speakers — stick to Mandarin!

Culture
Gu Hangyu, sits with his grandmother Wang Yufang, at her home on Chongming Island near Shanghai. She speaks the Chongming dialect, but not standard Chinese.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese stubbornly resist speaking the ‘common tongue’

Development & Education

Some Turks reconsidering Arabic connection to Turkish language

Global Politics

Turkish TV show Behzat C draws ire of censors, adoration of public

Arts, Culture & Media

New York’s Bengali voters don’t get as much language support as they should

Global Politics

In Tuesday’s elections, in New York City, Bengali voters were supposed to get ballots in their old language. That didn’t happen, and advocates for immigrants say that’s not fair.

Linguists hope to save endangered languages in India

UNESCO lists nearly 200 of India’s 900 languages as endangered. Others are dying fast as the county continues its rapid development. A team of researchers are working to catalog what’s left of them before they disappear completely.

Pakistani scholars concerned that Urdu script being lost to technology

In SMS-happy Pakistani, many young people are writing their text messages in using the Latin alphabet, rather than the traditional Urdu script. That has some concerned that the classical script will disappear.

Pakistan set to require telecom companies to block messages from a bizarre word list

In Pakistan, supposedly in an effort to combat the sending of spam text messages, the country has introduced a list of 1,500 words that will trigger a text message to be blocked.

My Failed Calls to Send Ramadan Greetings from Lucknow to Lahore

Global Politics

Islam’s holy month of Ramadan has begun this week. It is a time to strengthen the bonds in the community and throughout the world. But reporter Deepak Singh is finding it difficult to call his friend in Pakistan to send him greetings from India.