Ahmadinejad again

Whether you support him or not, few world leaders can kick start a global debate like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He’s called Israel a ‘racist government’ at an anti-racism conference, some of the audience walked out and France has called it ‘hate speech’. I’ll let you take it from here.

On air: Does the language you speak affect the power you have?

Does the language you speak give you more power? Today WHYS comes from Belgium where they speak Dutch (Flemish), French and German. But the rivalry between the languages has almost torn the country apart.

It’s not just there, where your language is important. Humberto Lopez predicts the USA will have over 110 million Spanish speakers by 2050 and says Spanish should become an official language, maybe even replacing English as the first language. But this blogger thinks it’s vital to keep the US as an English speaking country and this group say they need it to forge one nation out of millions of immigrants.

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan even though only about 7% of people speak it. Whereas 44% of Pakistanis speak Punjabi, which has no official status.

This article argues that imposing Urdu on Pakistan has been disastrous and having English as the official language creates ‘a state of mental slavery’.