arabic

Al Jazeera has trouble covering John McCain:

The network, said Abderrahim Foukara, the station’s Washington bureau chief, had to find a way to describe McCain’s reputation “without giving people the impression that he is a breakaway wing of the Republican Party.”

The Tennessean reports here that the multilingual Homework Hotline will resume today. The service, which received 32,407 total calls in 2007-2008, is available not only in English but also in Kurdish, Somalian, Arabic, and Spanish.

Homework Hotline, a free homework help service for students, will resume operation Monday, the first day of school in Metro and other school districts.
It is open from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. In addition to English, tutors will assist students with homework questions in Spanish, Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen and Somali.

Rob Shearer thinks that New York City may be opening up themselves to lawsuits by rejecting the “English First” model:

The Mayor of New York City has just “ordered the city’s more than 100 agencies to provide language assistance in six foreign languages.”

While there may be some logic to this for New York City, no one can deny that it will increase costs significantly at each of those 100 agencies. And who will pay those costs?

While the City Paper is busy being Eric Crafton's tool on the issue of starting a petition to put an English Only referendum on the ballot (and the Tennessean coverage is just weak), the Nashville Scene's P.J. Tobia is actually blogging the controversy with a critical eye and actually keeping tabs on the opposition.

Southern Beale reports someone supportive of Eric Crafton’s English First charter amendment petition drive has commissioned robocalls to ramp up support for the project. The script: