In TALK TO THE SNAIL: Ten Commandments for Understanding the French (Bloomsbury, $14.95), available in January, Clarke intersperses jaunty chapters — "Thou Shalt Not Work: Why long weekends are good for the French economy"; Thou Shalt Be Polite (and simultaneously rude)" — with idiosyncratic language charts.
Although Spain isn't the only erstwhile colonial power to have been thoroughly upstaged by its brash former charges when it comes to pop, the scale of Latin American domination of Spanish-language chart music outstrips even the US's hold over Britain.
Chinese is only 10th on the list of targeted languages (chart below).
Last August, Hellerstein ruled that Shakira's Spanish-language chart topper, and another song by a Dominican rapper known as El Cata, illegally ripped off a recording by Ramon Arias Vasquez called "Loca con su Tiguere".
Two years ago, the surge of Spanish-surnamed pop singers who topped the English-language charts was labeled the "Latin explosion" in the press.
Just 30% bother with French, by far the favourite second language (see chart).
Under the auspices of the Weinsteins, it did a decent $10m in the US, putting it 25th on their highest-grossing foreign language film chart, but a storming take in Germany ($79m), plus strong showings in Spain, Italy, Japan, South Korea and beyond, took it to $419m worldwide: 148th on the all-time box-office chart, the highest for a film not in English, if you discount The Passion of the Christ.
Basically, we want it to be a complete Energy 101 education in language and charts and graphics that we all can understand.
After 20 days, the site had over 600 articles; six months later, it had 6,000; by year's end, it totalled 20,000 articles in a plethora of languages (see chart 2).As problems of vandalism, prejudice and inaccuracy ensued, Mr Wales was reluctant to clamp down.
Apple worked closely with Frogdesign during the eighties, creating Apple's early design language and charting the visual path of Apple computers from the Apple IIc to the Macintosh.
They may communicate through sign language, picture charts, typing, body language, or behavior.
