Archive for the ‘Africa’ Category

Linguistic diversity; good thing… or the cause of African poverty!!

Heh silly/hyperbolic blog titles aside, this is the rough question that was posed then brutally slapped away by Greg Downey of Neuroanthropology. Check it out. It’s a good, solid and thorough post on the subject of linguistic diversity; one which I don’t think I could paraphrase without missing a couple of huge chunks. However here are a [...]

July 26, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Africa, Eritrea, Linguistics, language  One Comment

Hans Rosling on global population growth

Here is a TED talk by Hans Rosling on the character of population growth in today’s world. I suggest that you check out his other TED videos (“Asia’s rise,” “insights on poverty” and “developing world stats“); he is a very informative and interesting speaker. // Share|

July 9, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Africa  No Comments

Human Development Index

The Human Development Report 2009 came out today, it’s sort of like a ranking of the general standards of living in the world. Wikipedia has their index updated already. Here are a few selected countries and their score… 001 Norway 0.971 ▲ +0.001 004 Canada 0.966 ▲ +0.001 013 United States 0.956 ▲ +0.001 081 [...]

October 5, 2009  Tags:   Posted in: Africa, Eritrea  No Comments

Dictionary search box for your own website or blog.

So, I’ve added a new page to the dictionary section. It explains that anyone can now add a Memhr.org dictionary search box to their website or blog. The search box looks like this: Memhr.org Dictionaries Those who want the search box will need to copy and paste this code into the HTML of their site. [...]

April 18, 2009  Tags:   Posted in: Africa, Tigrigna, language, website update  No Comments

Missing UN Diplomat

At sometime in December, I’m not too sure about the date, a Canadian diplomat and his aide went missing in Niger. When it broke this was a big story in Canada, but it has since cooled. This is commonly done in the Canadian press to lower tensions and ease rescue/release in kidnapping cases. However, I [...]

December 28, 2008  Tags: ,   Posted in: Africa, world events  No Comments

One Year!

Hey, I almost forgot… This December marks the one year anniversary of this website/blog. It was one year ago that I uploaded my first Tigrigna/English dictionary and published my first Tigrigna lesson. I always believed that what I’m doing is nothing special. I am only doing what anyone with a ‘passing familiarity’ and some incomplete [...]

December 12, 2008  Tags:   Posted in: Africa, Eritrea, Tigrigna, language, website update  4 Comments

Foreign Service Institute (FSI)

What is the FSI? (It) is the Federal Government’s primary training institution for officers and support personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs community, preparing American diplomats and other professionals to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests overseas and in Washington. Now one of the jobs of this department is to develop complete and comprehensive language courses [...]

July 31, 2008  Tags: ,   Posted in: Africa, language  One Comment

Is Swahili a Pidgin?

A blog that I read recently had a post that described the east-African language of Swahili, as a pidgin. Here is a quote: …my mother was born in East Africa (Uganda) and I wanted to feel a trace of what she once knew. Being under this sky, on this land, the pidgin that is Swahili [...]

July 21, 2008  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Africa, Linguistics, language  6 Comments

This seems to be bigger then I thought…

Hijab Hillary: Mrs. Clinton Wears Muslim Thing! Will the shameful photographs of Democrats wearing “race clothing” ever end? Probably not! Here’s a picture of Hillary wearing the traditional Muslim wife’s “hijab,” which is just one letter away from “jihad.” What terrible opponent is leaking this smear photo on the Internets? The William Jefferson Clinton Presidential [...]

February 26, 2008  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Africa, Eritrea, Tigrigna, world events  No Comments

A small note for the record…

It seems that there a quite a few bloggers who have been calling this (the article that Hillary Clinton is wearing) a Hijab. It’s not a Hijab; it is a traditional dress worn by Christian Eritrean and Ethiopian women. // Share|

February 25, 2008  Tags: ,   Posted in: Africa, Eritrea, world events  One Comment

Hillary lives in a glass house…

This is a language website and I hate people who blog about politics, but I just saw this on the BBC… Robed Obama picture ignites row The photo of Barack Obama was taken during a 2006 trip US Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have traded accusations over a photo of Mr Obama circulating [...]

February 25, 2008  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: Africa, Eritrea, world events  4 Comments