After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian language has lost its popularity in Kyrgyzstan, especially in remote areas of the country. Suddenly, English, as a world language, was appealing to everyone and became very popular, even though for us learning English is harder than learning Russian.
Many years have passed since then. Today, majority of population of Kyrgyzstan has a good knowledge of neither Russian nor English. If you visit, say, Osh, you can see a lot of billboards and signs in horribly misspelled Russian. And the same you can say about English.
Have a look at an advertisement of Pharaoh Night Club, one of the popular night clubs of Bishkek. The ad is in the website of Odnoklassniki.ru, famous Russian social network, which is also very popular in Kyrgyzstan.
Either PR staff of Pharaoh suck or the a flash builder had “F” for English at school. Well, I think it is both.
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Cool poem! If you speak Uzbek, you must listen to it 
Hooray, yet another showcase of the greatness of influence of Web 2.0 instruments into people’s lives! Langauge experts believe that social networking, blogging, micro-blogging, podcasting and video-casting, and other stuff that in general referred as Web 2.0 instuments, play a big role in peoples daily life. You say why?
Read this piece of news.
According to the association’s [American Dialect Society] latest round of popularity studies into the English language, Google (as in ‘Google it’) has emerged as the top word of the last decade, while ‘tweet’ has been crowned the top word of 2009.
Google, as a word, has firmly grasped its place not only in English language, but also in Russian – as a verb ‘прогуглить’ (read as progooglitj), which means ’search in Google”. It is becoming more and more often when you hear people saying “прогугли его/ее”. For instance, I use it in average 15-20 times a day. However, you cannot say the same thing concerning the word ‘tweet’, either because Twitter is not that popular as Google in Russian speaking part of the world, or it is hard to make a derivative from word ‘twitter’ in Russian language. Though, there is a word ‘фолловить’ (read as followitj), derived from the word ‘follow’ (Twitter’s “follow me” phrase).
There are also such words as ‘юзать’ (read as yuzatj) derived from the word ‘use’, ‘зафрендить/отфрендить’ (read as zafrenditl/otdrenditj) derived from ‘friend’ (‘add as a friend/remove from friends’).
Unfortunately, I could not find similar analyses of Russian language experts about such ‘internet era’ words.
Yesterday I got informed by friends that someone using my name was adding them to Gmail chat by email tolkun.umaraliev@gmail.com. I was really surprised, but did not pay much attention thinking it was a joke. However, I got the same invitation today in the morning when I opened my Gmail account.
I have no idea who is doing this, as I do not know any other person with my name. I still tend to think it is a jooke, as the person added me and my friends to his/her G’chat. Anyway, if you get this invitation, please, do not accept it! If you get an email from this account (tolkun.umaraliev@gmail.com) where a sender claims my authorship, please delete it, as it is not from me! Please, do not fall victims of e-mail fraud called spoofing!!!
Sabina, click here to download the happy B’day podcast from Mirsulzhan and me
Have you ever eaten manty with pumpkin, a delicious Central Asian meal? If not, you must try it! It is chopped pumpkin in dough wrapper cooked in a special manty steamer.
These manty are a New Year gift for me from a very good friend of mine. Yummy
Dears, happy New Year to all of you!!! Love and be loved always! Achieve all your New Year resolutions for coming 2010!
ABBA rulez
Isn’t it great, when you enter your first (only first) name in the search bar of Google, and before hitting “Search” button it automatically suggests your full name on the top of others, and after hitting “Search” it gives a link to your blog on the top, and after hitting “I am feeling lucky” it automatically directs you to your blog? And it is not a cash thing of my web browser. You can check it in your own computer
Isn’t it a very good sign for a personal blog which is just 5 months old? Well, I consider it Google’s New Year present for me!
“Jing bells” to all!
At the front doors of the OSCE Academy, 2008
What is going on??? I was shocked by the news that the OSCE Academy in Bishkek may lose its license for the masters degree program in political science! The news says that the State Licensing and Accreditation Inspection decided to terminate the education activities of OSCE Academy, because its MA program has not been held in accordance with the state standards, and that no state-recognized diplomas were given (!). The State Licensing and Accreditation Inspection told media that the OSCE Academy has been giving advanced trainings, but not MA program degree, and that there is not hidden political motive under their decision, but they want to “bring activities of universities in line with the legislation and regulations of the Kyrgyz Republic.”
The decision of the State Inspection to recall the license of the OSCE Academy for the Master’s degree program was assertion of the existing situation per se and was preliminary agreed on with the top management of this university. This decision was accompanied with the indispensable condition to issue the license to this university for supplementary education program (advanced training) in political science.
What the heck is going on? Is it yet another political game the Kyrgyz government is trying to play? There is no need to explain and prove that the OSCE Academy is one the best educational institutes not only in Kyrgyzstan, but in whole Central Asia, because it really is, and it is recognized in the world! Why? ‘Cuz the Academy selects only recognized and high level academics, specialists and representatives of international organizations, who are experts in their fields of studies, with excellent education and experience backgrounds. Every year, excellent feedback of previous students and high demand of the Academy for its staff and students result in high entrance competition. Therefore, in most cases only best applicants become students of MA program of the Academy. And students come not only from Central Asian countries, but also from other CIS states. And most graduates of the Academy are surely better equipped in terms of knowledge than, say, those who graduate from the Academy of Management under the president of Kyrgyz Republic, whose license will never be recalled! I am not hyperbolizing by saying this, cuz I have seen this myself, when I did MA studies in Political Science at the OSCE Academy during 2007/2008 academic year. And I am sure there are a lot of people, who agree with these statements of mine.
Maxim Ryabkov, director of the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, told [ru] to Bishkek Press Club that the information about recalling Academy’s license was a surprise for him.
The press press-release [about recalling Academy's license] was a real surprise for me. It states about the recalling of licenses of 14 universities, and Academy is one of them. No one informed us about termination of education activities of our university. On the contrary, yesterday the Ministry of Education [of Kyrgyz Republic] informed us that our license was valid through June 20, 2009, and it would be prolonged after.
I called the Academy today to get more info about this news. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to talk Mr. Ryabkov. However, the staff of the Academy say the given issue is just the “misundestanding, and the negotiations are going on between the Academy tops and state officials”, and that “the situation will be solved for Academy’s advantage very soon.” Well, lets keep fingers crossed and wait to see what happens.
PS. The OSCE Academy’s lame uneffective userunfriendly web site does not have any info on the issue. And media resonance was practically zero (at least from the foreign media side).
