The World in Words

The language of tech start-ups, innovation and business deals are deeply influenced by the many Indians who live and work in Silicon Valley.

Japanese baseball player Koji Uehara is pitching for the Red Sox this World Series. And while Uehara may not be fluent in English, he has no problem communicating on the field without an interpreter by his side. So how does he speak with his teammates?

Anonymous street artists are putting accent marks on a New York City subway line to draw attention to the growing number of Spanish speakers in the city.

Many athletes crave noisy crowds. So do sports TV viewers. Some people go to great, sometimes even artificial, lengths to connect crowds with athletes and viewers.

We visit language services company Cetra, whose contract to provide interpreters at an international defense chiefs conference has been canceled.

If you want to revive vanishing languages, don't just document them. Get people to speak them on stage-- and then videotape it.

Governments go to extremes to keep minorities in their place. In Turkey, leaders banned several letters of the alphabet. Now that is set to change.

You might think world leaders care a lot about the words they choose and how powerfully they deliver them. Guess again. Sometimes all that matters much less than deciding whether to speak English or not.

Relations between the US and Iran have been so bad for so long that there may be an understandable urge to make up for lost time, and get right down to business. But that may not be best in the long run

When Spanish-speaking actresses come to this country, they often spend a bundle on trying to lose their accents. But these days,a Latino accent can be an asset. Sara Loscos of Feet in Two Worlds has the story.

Belgium's favorite comic book son, Tintin, gets to speak Scots in a new translation by Susan Rennie. Listen as she speaks some of the dialogue, and explains why this particular Tintin adventure got the Scots treatment.

After a multi-lingual Google Translate test of a Winston Churchill speech, we visit Google headquarters to hear about improvements to instant web translation. Then we hear of the contrasting approach of SRI International, which developed Apple's Siri translator. Their goal: "Do no harm."

Nothing translates as badly as humor and the more different the foreign language the less funny the joke it seems. So how can we in the US understand Chinese humor? The World's Nina Porzucki recently went to China to figure it out.

Chile claimed Easter Island over a century ago. Since then, Spanish has chipped away at its Polynesian-based language called Rapa Nui. Now its fate rests in the playground as the island tries to raise a new generation of speakers.

Irish poet Seamus Heaney passed away today. He was 74-years-old. The poet won numerous writing awards including the Nobel Prize. But another Irish poet, Paul Muldoon, says few in US understand what an extraordinary role the poet had in Irish life.

Scholars and the OED have cited Shakespeare as the originator of more than 1600 words. While he was the first to write down many words, new research fueled by computer analysis indicates he didn't invent as many words as once thought.

The capitals of Hungary and Romania are confused so often one Romanian candy company has taken it upon itself to educate the world about the difference. It has Romania's capital stamped into each bar.

From a distance, in Los Angeles, Mexicans with indigenous roots are keeping their traditions and languages alive.

After winning Major League Baseball's home run contest this week, Cuban-born Yoenis Cespedes was interviewed by ESPN's Pedro Gomez. Gomez was blasted by many on Twitter for speaking Spanish. Host Marco Werman speaks with Gomez about the angry reaction.