PRI's The World: The World in Words

Language news with Cartoon Queen Carol and Patrick: 1. Describing wine flavors in Chinese. 2. Bible translators avoid the words "Father" and "Son" in some cultures. 3. Fears for the future of Yoruba, one of Nigeria's most beloved languages. 4. Americans are missing out on some great subtitled TV dramas. 5. New Zealand issues a list of names you can't call your child.

For two decades at her Brooklyn dining room table, Alice Kober worked into the night to decipher a mysterious script. The script 'Linear B' had been discovered on clay tablets in Crete. It was finally deciphered-- but two years after Kober died.

Chinese hackers are fast catching up with their global counterparts in producing linguistically localized phishing scams. Also, why does Glasgow produce so many successful soccer coaches? Is it to do with the city's impenetrable accent and slang?

A conversation with writer Julie Barlow. Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau are co-authors of "The Story of Spanish," their follow-up to "The Story of French." Though linguistically similar to French, Spanish has evolved with more freedom and variation, and is now far more widely spoken than French.

From a loved one's hasty scrawl to Jack Lew's "manufactured" signature, how much do people reveal about themselves in their handwriting? Author Philip Hensher says quite a bit, though not as much as handwriting experts sometimes claim. Hensher argues that digital communications deprive us of the intimacy of handwriting.

"Matilda," now a Broadway hit, has a cast full of Americans doing British accents. We usually think of actors as carrying off the best fake accents. But others do it, sometimes with great success. What's the secret?

A conversation with musician Steafan Hanvey about the history and memory that Irish place names conjure up. Hanvey's father was a photojournalist who has recorded moments in these places in recent decades. Now, Hanvey has written a song cycle inspired by his father's photography.

The Irish language used to be a symbol of Catholic nationalism. But it's gradually becoming de-politicized, morphing into just another minority language in need of saving. You can see evidence of that change in community halls in Belfast, where a few Protestants are learning Irish.

The Associated Press is dropping the term, 'illegal immigrant.' Why? And what term to use in its place? We offer some suggestions from some non-English language media.

Incrementally, the Kurdish language appears to be making a comeback in Turkey. Official restrictions on the public use of Kurdish are easing, making it easier for schools to teach it. But some Kurds aren't used to speaking their own mother tongue.