Sites like twitter have a played a big role in helping protesters organize in Iran. But it’s hard to carry on a conversation and analyze the situation with so many urgent posts that pertain to people on the ground in Tehran in the #IranElection topic.

That’s where sites like English, baby! come in. Beth Arnold, a Paris-based writer I’ve been writing and twittering back and forth with about Ebaby! for a while, featured the conversation about Iran on Ebaby! in a piece for the Huffington Post. It focuses on how the Chinese–who don’t vote–are reacting to claims that the vote was stolen in Iran.

We’re honored that our site and our members are part of the discussion about the events in Iran on one of the first sites we look to for political news and commentary, and we couldn’t think of a better place to have our contribution go than Beth’s “Letter From Paris” column.

A lot of people around the world have a lot of expectations for Barack Obama. We even started a page to share these hopes. But one thing the world’s English-learning population may not expect to get from Obama’s presidency but almost certainly will is improvements in their grammar.

When I was choosing which candidate to vote for, one of the things I asked myself was, “Who would I rather hear on the radio every day for the next four years?” And while the American president is certianly covered less-often in foreign media, there are still plenty of quotes and soundbites to be found around the world, I’m sure.

But this hilarious satire column by Andy Borowitz got me thinking about how confusing the last eight must have been for people who are learning English. How many ESL students are out there mispronouning “nuclear” courtesy of George W. Bush?

And when, as a native speaker, I sometimes struggle to follow Sarah Palin’s sentence structure, I can’t help but wonder how many more gerunds would have been misused if she and John McCain had won (see the Palin quote at the end of Borowitz’s article for pretty realistic represtation of the Alaska Governor’s passion for misplaced -ings).

So, the world wanted Barack Obama to win the election by about a 60% percent margin. And even if you with the one-fifth of the world who liked John McCain better, you will likely Obama in part to thank when that Moroccan rug salesman haggles with you in complete sentences, or the business call from India is perfectly intelligible.