Word: english
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Many programs also had to cut back on expenditures. For instance, the Boston Refugee Youth Enrichment Program, which teaches English to Cambodian and Vietnamese children, last year substituted a picnic for its annual visit to an amusement park, Truong said...
Russians suffering discrimination in the Soviet Union? It sounds about as likely as the English becoming second-class citizens in parts of Great Britain. But that is how many of the 30 million Russians feel who live in the U.S.S.R.'s restive "ethnic republics" like Moldavia, the Ukraine and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In the throes of a quest for their own independence, nationalists in those areas are denouncing the Russians living among them as "occupiers" and "migrants." They are enacting voting laws that disenfranchise many Russians and are forcing them to learn the local languages...
...electoral law, Russians protest, will exclude 80,000 to 100,000 of them from voting in Estonia's first competitive elections in December. Another law makes it necessary for all people to speak Estonian (as different from Russian as Hungarian is from English) to get a job. Though Russians have four years to comply, they protest angrily that there are not enough teachers or textbooks available for all of them to learn...
Although reading dust-jacket review clips is a filthy habit which I wouldn't encourage in anyone, it was the back of this book which drew me in. (The front cover is incredibly ugly; don't let it deter you.) One of the best of English travel writers (who has also done some exploring of our America, in Old Glory, a fabulous journey down the Mississippi), Jonathan Raban, describes her earlier work as a "romance with America itself, its infinitely possible geography, its license, sexiness, and violence." The description clearly fits this new novel, and romance is a well-chosen...
...turns out, there are plenty of Japanese who speak "fucking English," which is lucky because Douglas himself is no linguistics major...