WorldView Good Reads: Off the Press for June 2018
Published: June 12, 2018
Here are good reads from around the globe that have caught our attention for the month of June.
The FIFA World Cup starts this week. Held every 4 years, it is the world’s most popular sporting event with viewership numbers that exceed those of the Olympics. What do people around the world call “the beautiful game”? Is it soccer, football, or something else? The answer can be found on this brilliant language map.
Do you prefer board games over ball games? In "The Invasion of the German Board Games,” Jonathan Kay tell us how German board games are changing the way Americans play—and are shaping an industry in the process.
Living abroad can clarify values that are important to you personally and how they compare to values of your home culture. Michael Skapinker of the Financial Times has lived in four countries, and reflects on how each experience changed him. He also tells of research on whether living abroad gives people greater personal insight.
Which are the world’s most influential languages? In the Power Language Index, Kai L. Chan offers ways to measure the reach and power of languages.
Chinese, Russian and English are all competing to be Central Asia’s lingua franca. Anna Tiido explains how this affects domestic political cultures and the region’s ties to the rest of the world.
Do we make better decisions in a foreign language? Anyone who has tried learning a different language knows that it takes time before you feel you can articulate your true personality. It takes time to joke in a new language, for instance. But those working on language tell us that people may be more considered, and make more dispassionate decisions, in another language.
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