The World from PRX

Patrick CoxPC

Patrick Cox

Language EditorThe World in Words
At The World, I switch between editing and reporting, broadcasting and podcasting, in-depth series and tweeting.  Words connect what I do. On a good day they are intelligible.Since 2008, I have been running The World's language desk and hosting a podcast called The World in Words. Before that, I reported on politics and culture, contributing to series on global obesity, the mental scars of Hiroshima and others.London is my home town, Cambridge, MA, my adopted hometown. I have also lived in Alaska, California, Denmark and Moldova. Because of my job, I am sometimes mistakenly taken to be some kind of linguistic expert— by people who have not been exposed to my spelling or grammar. Despite that, I speak reasonable Danish, poor Chinese and atrocious French. I can read menus and follow soccer commentary in a few other languages.Follow Patrick Cox on Twitter. The World in Words podcast is on Facebook and iTunes. 
Why are some words funny?
3:54
A mother tongue, lost, then reclaimed
7:40
Why are some words funny?
4:08
Why are some words funny?
Georgian language holds clues about what is linguistically possible
The linguistic cold war between Russians and Georgians
Will climate change wipe out the French language in southern Louisiana?
A mother tongue, lost and then reclaimed 
Decades of ‘Radio Haiti’ archived in 3 languages
​​Learning a foreign language? Just sing it! 
One Iranian American’s search for the elusive meaning of the hyphen
sign for the University of Alberta on the university's campus
Why are some sounds funny?
Linguist Thomas Wier and Udi activist Alexander Kavtaradze at a memorial to Zinobi Silikashvili, the founder of the village of Zinobiani, Georgia. The inscription includes both Caucasian Albanian (Udi) and Georgian script.
Language
Udi, a dying language with its own alphabet, sees a revival in this small Georgian town
Customers walk into the Dedaena Bar in Tbilisi past a QR code notice
Language
Georgia’s proxy war with Russia has linguistic ripple effects
French-speaking Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, has abandoned dwellings are everywhere due to storms, erosion, and rising sea-levels.
Language
Storms and rising sea levels threaten to wipe out French language in Louisiana’s bayou country
Julie Sedivy and other family members visiting her father’s family gravesite in his village of Moravská Nová Ves.
Language
‘Memory speaks’: How to reclaim your mother tongue without having to relearn it from scratch
A broadcast studio at Radio Haiti
Media
Radio Haiti finds a new home with a trilingual archive at Duke University
Taiwan-born artist Wen-hao Tien (left) started inviting people from around the world to teach her songs from their homelands as part her exhibit on immigration experiences at an art center in Boston, Massachusetts. 
Language
Learning through singing: This artist wants you to teach her a song in your native language
Pardis Mahdavi (center) gathers with other family members based in the US.
Language
The tiny but mighty hyphen: Does it unite or divide?
Venezuelan American Joanna Hausmann is pictured with her mom, Ana Julia Jatar. In quarantine, Hausmann has turned to her family for material.
COVID-19
Two comedians reshape their acts during lockdown
This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (round blue objects), also known as the novel coronavirus, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab which was isolated from a patient in the US. 
COVID-19
Fires, orchestras, parachutes. Some other ways to describe coronavirus — besides war.
A midshot of a woman in front of a bookshelf
Language
The Netherlands to immigrants: Speak Dutch
Polyglot Susanna Zaraysky holds a printout of her brain scan from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology polyglot test. 
Language
Is the polyglot brain different? MIT researchers are trying to find out.
Chinese sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth is coming to Netflix.
The World in Words
The sci-fi of another language
Yes or No
The World in Words
When an American says ‘sure’ to a Brit, does it mean yes or no?
Ira Lightman at a poetry reading in Manchester, UK, at an event organized by Poets and Players. Lightman moonlights as a poetry plagiarism detective. 
Arts, Culture & Media
This poetry detective tracks down word thieves. But are they all plagiarists?
Scientist Joshua Miele demonstrates a virtual wireless Braille keyboard attached as an input device to an Android phone.
The World in Words
Will blind people use Braille in the future?
Fans watching the Germany-Mexico FIFA World Cup game at a fan fest in Saint Petersburg, Russia on June 17, 2018.
The World in Words
How soccer became multilingual
A performance from the Netherlands-based comedy improv group Easy Laughs.
Science and Creativity
This is your brain on improv
a baby sitting on steps and a child on a cobblestone street
The World in Words
The hardest question for a third culture kid: Where is home?
Alina Simone's daughter Zoe teaches her Russian-speaking grandfather some basic Chinese.
The World in Words
Russian-speaking New Yorker would rather her daughter learn Chinese
British band The xx performing at the Pabst Theater, Milwaukee.
Culture
Why we are so drawn to the letter ‘X’
Many silhouetted figures depicting the evolution of man
Science
Where does language come from?
Aino and Jean Sibelius flanking a letter written by Jean to Aino.
Arts
The correspondence of Jean Sibelius and his wife Aino is a bilingual love story
Lenin Lal is a local politician in the Indian state of Kerala.
Global Politics
Why you’ll find people named Lenin, Stalin and Krushchev on the roads of Kerala, India
A flyer in New York City offering accent reduction classes
Culture
Why people are still trying to ‘lose’ their accents
Words
Culture
Words to live by in 2017
Assimilation top image
Culture
Who gets to decide what ‘assimilation’ means?
A 1923 studio portrait of the In zikh ("Introspectivist") poetry group.
Culture
Jennifer Kronovet studied Yiddish so she could communicate with the dead
Nadine Heidenreich, left, and Viktor Neumann are German voice actors who dub the characters Rosita Espinosa and Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead. They're pictured here at EuroSync studios in Berlin.
Culture
Is there an art to dubbing movies and TV? Yes, and Germans have mastered it.
A supporter of the anti-Muslim group PEGIDA in Dresden, Germany.
Global Politics
One simple word defines Germans, but Germans don’t agree on what it means
Bad Doberan, Germany is the home of Zappanale, an annual summer festival inspired by the life and work of Frank Zappa.
Culture
In the former East Germany, Frank Zappa lives on as a beacon of freedom
A protester holds up a sign at an anti-Trump demonstration in Washington DC.
Global Politics
The Putinization of Donald Trump
Linguist Edward Vajda with a Ket woman in her home village in Siberia, Russia.
Science
Is this remote Siberian language an ancestor to Navajo?
A protest in Sacramento, California.
Religion
Which version of Indian history do American school students learn?
Screenshot from a parody video made by Christian singer Micah Tyler.
Religion
‘What a total God shot!’ Understand that? Then you speak Christianese.
Elsie Solomon, Gladys Kattan and Lisette Shashoua at Lisette's home in Montreal.
Culture
Arabic has a Jewish dialect, and these women speak it
Dancer Link Berthomieux says that when French people use the English word ‘black,’ “It’s a trendy way to say ‘noir.’”
Culture
Why the English word ‘black’ became the new ‘noir’ in France
Iraqi fiction writer Anoud recently moved to New York.
Books
2017 feels almost as strange as this writer’s dystopian vision of Iraq in 2103
Kenyan language activist Kennedy Bosire has co-edited an online dictionary of his mother tongue, Ekegusii, also know as Kisii.
Culture
American soft power has helped this Kenyan man’s efforts to ensure a future for his mother tongue
Students Andries Jacobi, Nienke Kooi and Fardau de Vries attend a trilingual (Dutch, Frisian, English) public school in Koudum in the Dutch province of Friesland.
Culture
The first cousin of the English language is alive and well in the Netherlands
Lakota
Justice
The Standing Rock Sioux are also fighting for their language