As we are only conversant in a mere 40 languages we cannot vouch that each of the greetings in the accompanying video is pronounced perfectly and/or grammatically correct. And of course we don’t know that there are any native Latin speakers around these days.
Nevertheless, requests by our sister site, Simple English News, to embassies, culture houses, students, teachers, priests and rabbis have enabled this multilingual New Year’s greeting. A special thank you, from Arabic to Yiddish speakers, to all those who contributed.
We would like to wish our loyal reader(s) a happy, successful, productive and peaceful 2012.
Frankly, I was a little surprised to receive word from the board of directors at Apple that they wanted me to become the company’s next CEO. They needed me immediately, they said. I was not sure about leaving my present post as a teacher of English as a Second Language in rural Lithuania all of sudden. This would certainly not sit well with the local head of the Peace Corps in Vilnius.
LinkedIn has added a distinctly Web 2.0 twist to holiday well-wishing.. Anyone who has checked the "Who's Viewed Your Profile" section on the right-hand side of the business networking side will have noticed that Snow E Mann, an independent snow management consultant, has perused their information.
In an interview with German tabloid Bild on Sunday, Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnastic supernova, disclosed that Playboy made inquires as to whether she would be interested in appearing in the men’s magazine in various stages of dishabille.
The piece, entitled, through our rough translation, “Who Would Want to See Me Naked?”, does not address the request for the star of the 1976 Montreal Olympics to undress until the end of the interview.
The recipient of seven perfect 10s and five Olympic gold medals told Bild she was unwilling to bare all.
Comaneci, who turned 50 on November 12, also strongly denies in the interview that she had an affair with Nico Ceausescu, the son of the former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
(This report, which has been covered in several European publications in the past two days, was first spotted here.)
While attempting to rip Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and his adherents to shreds in his latest piece, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman seems to have revealed more about his domestic life than he intended. We refer to the passage below in which he discusses the events following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008:
One popular Austrian commentator who has advised Paul, Peter Schiff, even warned (on Glenn Beck’s TV show) of the possibility of Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation in the near future.
So here we are, three years later. How’s it going? Inflation has fluctuated, but, at the end of the day, consumer prices have risen just 4.5 percent, meaning an average annual inflation rate of only 1.5 percent.
Clearly Mr. Krugman does spend his Sundays inviting Princeton colleagues over for coffee and home-made cakes. For if he did, he would know that flour, eggs, sugar and virtually any other food item – the stuff we need to stay alive — has risen by a heck of a lot more than 4.5 percent in the past three years.
Anyone who has spent any time in a kitchen during the past three years is likely to agree that it would take a gargantuan, Ben-Bernanke-bank-bailout-sized leap of faith to believe that the cost of living has risen such a modest amount since 2008.
