Why is the English spoken by Maine lobstermen so different from that spoken by cowboys in Texas?
Does Spanish pose a threat to English as the dominant language in America? And what on earth do yins, wickety wack, ayuh, catty whompus, and stomping it clean mean? Robert MacNeil travels cross-country to answer these questions and examine the dynamic state of American English – a language rich with regional variety, strong global impact and cultural controversy.

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By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere: 8 million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.

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Hat tip: Smart Mobs

This year has been a boom one for Spanish-language media in the United States, which has seen the birth of new publications as well as mergers and purchases involving large corporations.

Even as the circulation of English-language newspapers continues to decline slightly, the Spanish print media are thriving, both in number and in dollar figures.

According to the magazine Hispanic Business, between 2000 and 2003, the number of U.S. Hispanic publications grew 14.2 percent, spurred in part by the 2000 census’ revelation that the nation’s 38 million Hispanics now constitute its largest minority.

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A North Texas food distributor that ships grocers imported products from south of the border said it plans to open several club stores in Dallas and Fort Worth.

Dallas-based La Familia Distributors plans to expand its 12-state distribution by opening six stores that will offer products and groceries such as candies, laundry detergents, pastries and drinks from Mexico. The plan will put La Familia into retailing for the first time.

A 2000 Census report by the North Central Texas Council of Governments stated that Hispanics make up 21 percent of the population in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

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The leading 5 DMAs accounted for slightly more than 51 percent of all Hispanic advertising expenditures. The top-five DMAs have shown strong and consistent growth over the past five years. Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Houston, and Chicago have had a combined media revenue growth of 24 percent. The Chicago DMA is expected to lead the way with over the next few years with an anticipated ad spending growth rate of more than 50 percent. Los Angeles and Houston will not be far behind however, with 40-plus percentage increases expected in the coming years.

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The Defense Logistics Information Services recently issued a long anticipated “improved multilingual logistics tool” on compact disc and on the Web.

The NATO Codification System, which is based on the Federal Catalog System, includes standard dictionaries for naming, classification and description of materiel with data exchanged between nations in a predominantly “coded” format. “Decoding” occurs at the receiving nation using national translation tables. Thus the NCS becomes a “common language” for logistics within NATO and the many other nations using this system.

English and French have long served as NATO’s two official languages, but DLIS technicians have worked with the national cataloging centers of 11 other nations to publish the NCS classification and naming standards in 12 languages.
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The NATO Multilingual Supply Classification Handbook and the NATO Multilingual Item Name Directory are published on CD-ROM by DLIS as the “Multilingual Allied Codification Publication 2 and 3 (ACodP-2/3).” The disc offers information in Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Slovakian, Slovenian and Spanish. Users can select the language in which they want to view the data and navigate easily between languages.

Recent software enhancements (using eXtrect software) will allow the display of virtually any characters. Using this software, Korean data will be included on the disc for the first time beginning with the April 2005 edition. Plans are underway to incorporate many other languages into this product in the future. In early 2005, the information on the compact disc will also be made available on a newly established NATO-sponsored Web site, http://www.acodp2-3.com/.

The product is available to military, government and private industry customers around the world and is published semi-annually during April and October. This data can be a useful tool for naming and classifying supply items in accordance with the NCS. The multilingual disc can be ordered through a military publications account, a Foreign Military Sales case or by direct purchase from DLIS.

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Within 10 years, no one on the planet will confuse globalization with Americanization. That’s because several new superpowers are rising across the landscape, offering distinctively different faces to the often-demonized globalization process. Here’s a quick preview.

The European Union will emerge as a financial superpower based on the rising importance of the euro as a global reserve currency that competes with our dollar. China is well on its way to emerging as the manufacturing superpower of the global economy, with design superpower Japan acting as its natural mentor. Then there’s India, the information technology superpower, Brazil, the agricultural superpower, and Russia, the natural gas superpower for the impending hydrogen age.

All of these rising powers will inevitably remake the face of globalization, giving it a host of features not easily recognized as American…

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Blogs, short for Web logs, were the talk of the Net in 2004, so much so tha Merriam-Webster Online named “blog” 2004’s word of the year, based on the number of times it was looked up on the company’s online dictionary.

In Europe and the United States, the market for blogging software is splintered, and no company has a dominant position. But in South Korea, SK Communications’ Cyworld unit has turned a kind of souped-up, community-oriented blogging software into a runaway hit called Cyworld.

Eleven million South Koreans now have a Cyworld “mini-hompy,” or mini home page. This is nearly a quarter of the overall population and a third of the country’s online population. SK Comunications says that about 79 percent of Cyworld users are in their 20s or 30s. In November, the Cyworld Web site attracted 16.8 million unique visits, according to KoreanClick, a research concern, which also estimated that 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s were members of Cyworld.

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Hat tips: Smart Mobs

Chinese companies have revealed their international ambitions as they have merged and bought out foreign partners last year, a trend that peaked with the merger between Lenovo Group and IBM.

Chinese companies have made 326 deals with a total value of 18 billion dollars in the first 11 months of 2004, up from six billion dollars in 2003, a survey by audit firm KPMG showed.

“Such strong growth can be attributed to China’s economic reforms, WTO entry, opening up of the domestic market to foreign investors and strong growth of China’s economy,” KPMG said in a statement.

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Miami-based Bela Broadcasting, a Spanish language television programmer and independent station operator, purchased former NBC affiliate KMOH-TV last month from Gannett Communications for $5.25 million to tap the growing Hispanic market in Las Vegas as well as Phoenix.

With Hispanics comprising 26 percent of the valley’s 1.7 million people and spending about $33 million weekly on goods and services, the latest entrant to local Hispanic media further demonstrates the demographic shift in the local market. It’s a shift that has forced advertisers and their agencies to accommodate the swelling niche by servicing it.

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Marketers and advertisers will gather in sunny Miami during April 2005 (6th and 7th) to examine successful strategies being used to reach Hispanic consumers in the USA, at the third annual Innovations in Hispanic Marketing conference. The conference organiser, MFM Trade Meetings, promises addresses from experts in acculturation and market segmentation, brand management and strategic partnerships, as well as entertainment and new media. In case studies and panel presentations, conference speakers will show how many companies are currently increasing market share and deepening brand loyalty among Hispanic audiences. Speakers will come from a range of industries including food & beverage, healthcare, telecom, automotive, consumer goods, retail, cosmetics, consumer electronics, home products, financial services, media and entertainment, internet, transportation, and pharmaceuticals.

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1. Decide you want to be time conscience and organized and commit to it.

2. Remember: Time management means taking care of yourself first. Otherwise, you will be of little value to others.

3. Organize by the week first, then by day. This allows for unexpected items.

4. Develop an action list (calls, e-mails, tasks, actions, errands).

5. Prioritize each category and decide how much time each will receive.

6. Schedule time on a calendar.

7. Track progress by checking off completed tasks.

8. Revise the weekly action list daily.

9. Avoid letting others and extraneous events impose on your plan, unless you believe they are important.

10. Read Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”

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Hat tip: Kimberly D. Wells

UFJ Bank customers can now gain access to multilingual automated teller machines and remit money to Brazil with the assistance of a Portuguese-speaking operator via an in-house video phone.

The money remittance service, the first of its kind, was launched at 10 UFJ branches in Shizuoka, Aichi, Gifu and Mie prefectures on Dec. 20 in partnership with Brazil’s largest commercial bank, Banco Bradesco SA.

The new service enables direct transfers between UFJ and Bradesco accounts.

About 200,000 Brazilians of Japanese decent live in the four prefectures.

In a related move, UFJ modified about 4,500 of its ATMs Wednesday to improve access for non-Japanese customers.

Customers can now access ATMs in English, Chinese, Korean or Portuguese.

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South Korea was ranked 19th in 2004 for potential national competitiveness among 50 major countries, up four notches from 23rd in 2000, a Japanese economic institute reported Monday.

The Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER), an independent nonprofit research institute in Tokyo, yesterday elevated South Korea to 19th place after its information technology (IT) industry became the fourth most competitive in the world after the United States, Sweden and Denmark.

The United States was forecast to remain the most competitive nation for the next 10 years… while Singapore came in second, up one notch from the third place in 2000.

Hong Kong dropped to third from its second place four years ago, while Switzerland took fourth place and Norway fifth.

Japan remained unchanged at 15th from 2000, while China’s ranking rose one notch to 36th from 37th…

Taiwan was ranked 21st, up from 22nd four years ago

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In a land of magic and mystics, beyond the waves of the Arabian Sea, lives a hero whose soul will forever remain American. But in body and form he now belongs to India, where his story unravels in the tale of a wall-crawling do-gooder.

Spider-Man, they call him. But the next time he unmasks, an Indian boy named Pavitr Prabhakar will be revealed.

Peter Parker may be America’s Spider-Man, swinging among the skyscrapers and contemplating his urban angst. But in India, he’s Pavitr, with his own comic book for young Indians eager to embrace their own superhero.

Readers will find Spider-Man living in Bombay, a seaside city flush with gangsters, movie stars and some of the world’s largest slums. It’s a city with a generous supply of good and evil, fragrant with riches and smelling of poverty, where small-town Indians go to make it big and ill-meaning men lurk in every corner.

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