8 April 2011 Last updated at 09:25 GMT. By James Morgan, BBC News

The internet slang term “LOL” (laughing out loud) has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, to the mild dismay of language purists. But where did the term originate? And is it really a threat to our lexicon?

“OMG! LOL’s in the OED. LMAO!”

If you find the above string of letters utterly unintelligible, you are clearly an internet “noob”. Let me start again.

Golly gosh! The popular initialism LOL (laughing out loud) has been inducted into the canon of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary. Blimey! What is going on?

The OED defines LOL as an interjection “used chiefly in electronic communications… to draw attention to a joke or humorous statement, or to express amusement”.

It is both “LOL” where all the letters are pronounced separately, but also commonly “lol” where it is pronounced as a word.

The phrase was ushered in alongside OMG (Oh My God), with dictionary guardians pointing to their growing occurrence “in e-mails, texts, social networking… and even in spoken use”.

As well as school playgrounds, words like “lolz” and “lolling” can be heard in pubs and offices – though often sarcastically, or in parody.
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February 11, 2011 10:03 AM

WINDHOEK, Namibia, Feb 11 (Bernama) — Education Minister Dr Abraham Iyambo on Thursday expressed great concern that the low proficiency in English of teachers, especially in the northern regions, is widely regarded a considerable impediment to educational progress in the country, Namibian news agency, NAMPA, reported.

Iyambo, who was speaking when he launched an English book for teachers titled “Policy and Practice in English Language” here said many practicing teachers have poor reading skills, grammar skills and too limited a vocabulary to adequately explain concepts in English.

Thus, teachers’ poor English proficiency affects the teaching and learning process negatively in the content subjects that are taught in English.

According to the Education Minister, statistics show that from 2006 to 2010, an average of 50 per cent of the learners who enrolled for grade 10 qualified to proceed to grade 11, and one contributor of this is the lack of English proficiency.

“The situation regarding grade 12 is even worse. Of the learners who enrolled for English as a Second Language from 2006 to 2010, on average less, than 33 per cent got a D grade or better,” Iyambo charged.

He further stated that the statistics on qualified teachers show that 68 out of 107 English teachers are qualified to teach English as first language at primary level, while 40 out of 59 English teachers are qualified to teach English as a first language at secondary level.
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by John McWhorter. January 17, 2011

Why learn Mandarin? China won’t make you speak it.

The data would seem to be in: China is poised to become the world’s economic leader within the next few decades. But there are those under the impression that this will mean a sea change in the world’s linguistic terrain as well. Certainly, any human being who seeks education, influence, or power should be learning Mandarin, right?

Wrong. The world’s de facto international language will continue to be English. The language spoken by the whole world will not be the one spoken in the country that runs it—a new and hybrid linguistic world order.

Or not. The world has long known empires running things in the language of the conquered. The Persian Empire stretched from Egypt to India, but conducted business in Aramaic, a desert tongue of the Fertile Crescent. Genghis Khan and his Mongols ruled China with no interest in spreading their language, happily leaving Chinese in place.
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6 August 2010 Last updated at 12:11 GMT

The new dentistry regulations came into force last month

NHS Dumfries and Galloway confirmed it had taken action under the rules which came into force last month.

A statement said it had decided this week to suspend a general dental practitioner at the DADDS practice on Queensberry Street in Dumfries.

The suspension will remain in force pending the outcome of a final hearing.

A spokesman said the National Health Service (General Dental Services) (Scotland) Regulations 2010 had been introduced on 2 July.

He confirmed a dentist had been suspended after being unable to “provide evidence of his attainment of the required standard of English language skills”.

“In the meantime the DADDS practice at 124 Queensberry Street is making arrangements for the continuing care and treatment of patients,” he added.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-10895052

Wednesday, June 9, 2010
You might not realize it, but English is one of the most difficult languages on Earth. Its rules have lots of exceptions, and its words are hard to spell. Here’s a typical example of how confusing English can be: Say the words “mate,” “eight” and “strait” out loud. They all make the same sound when you say them, but they are spelled totally differently!

Pronouncing and spelling most English words probably is easy for you, but for people learning English for the first time, these kinds of quirks in our language make it extremely challenging.

As you get ready to leave school for summer break, we thought it was a good time to learn some cool things about the English language. These fun facts are from the Web site of the Oxford English Dictionary, a highly respected authority on the language. To see lots of other interesting facts, go to http://www.askoxford.com and click on “Ask the Experts.”

What other words besides “hungry” and “angry” end in “-gry?”

There aren’t any!

Are there any words in which the same letter appears three times in a row?

Typically, English requires a hyphen to prevent that from happening, as in bee-eater or cross-section. But the Oxford English Dictionary does contain a few examples without hyphens, including frillless (without frills) and duchessship (the office of being a duchess). And, no, “brrr” is not a real word.
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By Lauren Sausser, Associated Press Writer / June 4, 2010

Washington
The nation’s capital always draws its share of protesters, picketing for causes ranging from health care reform to immigration policy.

But spelling bee protesters? They’re out here, too.

Four peaceful protesters, some dressed in full-length black and yellow bee costumes, represented the American Literacy Council and the London-based Spelling Society and stood outside the Grand Hyatt on Thursday, where the Scripps National Spelling Bee is being held. Their message was short: Simplify the way we spell words.

Roberta Mahoney, 81, a former Fairfax County, Va. elementary school principal, said the current language obstructs 40 percent of the population from learning how to read, write and spell.

“Our alphabet has 425-plus ways of putting words together in illogical ways,” Mahoney said.

The protesting cohort distributed pins to willing passers-by with their logo, “Enuf is enuf. Enough is too much.”

According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for “fruit” to be spelled as “froot,” ”slow” should be “slo,” and “heifer” — a word spelled correctly during the first oral round of the bee Thursday by Texas competitor Ramesh Ghanta — should be “hefer.”
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