Language

Long condemned as sleazy, Bhojpuri music comes into its own with Caribbean success

Migration, lifestyle changes, and the incapability of Bhojpuri folk music to enter the urban lifestyle are some of the primary reasons why this genre is limited to a selected few people

Hindi should be accepted as alternative to English, not to local languages, says Amit Shah

The home minister said when citizens of states, who speak different languages, communicate with each other, it should be in "the language of India", according to a statement by the Union home ministry

Explained: As Duolingo files to go public in the US, a look at the company’s trajectory over the years

Duolingo is the most downloaded education app in the history of the App Store and in 2019 became the top-grossing education app worldwide.

Kwéyòl, a dying Creole variant, gets a shot in the arm as Dominica introduces dictionaries, language classes in schools

A push to save and promote Creole languages was born in the 1960s when the Caribbean experienced its own Black power movement.

A new book examines migration in South Asia, its influence on Indian languages over the years

The book, titled Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through its Languages, through an incisive study of languages, such as the story of early Sanskrit, the rise of Urdu, language formation in the North-east, presents the argument that "all Indians are of mixed origins".

One film’s ongoing legacy to reach African audiences in their mother tongue

Over 2,000 languages are spoken in Africa, with multilingualism a common feature of everyday life. Across the continent, though, millions of school pupils aren’t taught in their mother tongue.

In decoding the language of cricket, a look into the game's culture, gendered outlook and current lingual challenges

Cricket's greatest linguistic hurdle has come to the fore: the terms ‘batsman’ and ‘man of the match/series’ are now of a piece with terms like chairman, businessman and so on – gendered oddities that need a quick fix.

Languages could change once interstellar flights, arks become a reality, study proposes

Researchers cite examples of Polynesian sailors, who populated the South Pacific islands and founded entirely new cultures after 3,000 BC.

Once a Mysorean military base, Sultan Bathery's Jain temple bears witness to the tribulations of Wayanad and its people

Sultan Bathery's Jain temple has seen the changing fortunes of Wayanad, from its position on Jain cultural networks, to the region's invasion by Tipu Sultan, to the large scale settlement of Malayalis in the modern era.

With Mother Tongue Twisters, an online poetry initiative, Mohini Gupta hopes to inspire and delight young readers

Among the submissions already on writer and translator Mohini Gupta’s online initiative Mother Tongue Twisters (MTT) are Kashmiri lullabies, Vinda Karandikar Marathi poems, a Bhojpuri folk lullaby, Sampurna Chattarji’s set of original onomatopoeic poems titled Aw-Nuh-Mat-Tuh-Pee-Ah!, Allama Iqbal’s Urdu translation of The Spider and the Fly, Gutpa’s Hindi translation of Vikram Seth’s The Frog and the Nightingale, and some delightful English poetry.