How can a dead language be causing a kerfuffle?

Social media round-up for August 26, 2016

If you aren’t part of the community already, the somewhat heated discussion about the use of Latina/Latino or Latinx may surprise you. Read more about it here.
The phrase “be a man” has caused people do many things over the years. How powerful is it? The film “The Mask You Live In” looked at the power of language in shaping traditional gender roles. Read about it here in the New York Times.
Oxford English Dictionary’s Words blog explored money idioms from around the world, with adorable and shareable illustrations to go along.
Likely everyone heard this past week that Tesla Motor’s translations for markets in China are being altered. Due to misunderstanding of what the autopilot is capable of having possibly caused confusion and automobile accidents. Read the full story on Bloomberg.
We read about another language debate. This time in Whitehall, London, and over Latin instruction. How can a dead language be causing a kerfuffle? The Guardian has the story over here.
We saw this adorable animated GIF with rain sounds from different countries by illustrator James Chapman.
Is the term “Nutella Bar” and the sweet, chocolatey confection leading to “westernization” in Iran? Middle East Eye has the story about the sweet treats facing the chop over the language controversy here.
How did we miss that?! August is Women in Translation Month! The Reading Matters Blog has a great list of books in translation to get you started.
The Huffington Post Business Blog had this story, “A New Era in Language Targeting” which talked about how it is sometimes worthwhile to localize within modern, cosmopolitan cities in order to reach target audiences, for example if you wanted to reach Germans within NYC. So interesting!
Over at PBS we read about how one million US students could be studying Mandarin by 2020. Sounds great!
And finally, we read on IFLScience blog that an average 20-year-old American might know 42K words. That is a lot of words – is it really average? The article is here, so you can read for yourself!