Figure 1: Multilingual sign in Abu Dhabi with power disparities indicated through order and size of text In the critically acclaimed Barbie movie, released in cinemas in mid-2023, Barbie and…
Mis dos voces (Image credit: Rayon Verde) Imagine this: you go out to a fast-food restaurant and order a burger. While you wait for your order to be filled, you…
Figure 1: Bilingual Squamish and English placard in West Vancouver’s Park Royal shopping village As the Covid-19 pandemic heads toward its third year, with the Omicron variant in full swing,…
Dr Fadila Boutouchent during her guest lecture at Macquarie University When she was in kindergarten, my oldest daughter came home one day talking about "our soldiers" who "went to war for…
Condemned to consume My migration newsfeed in the past few weeks has been dominated by news about the Syrian refugee crisis and the various European and international responses. But there…
Linguistic diversity in Sydney (Source: Sydney Morning Herald) The media in Anglophone countries regularly engage in a bit of a bragfest about the linguistic diversity of their cities. In Sydney,…
Multilingual Hyderabad (Source: Wikimedia) It is by now widely known that bilingualism delays the onset of dementia. What is less widely known is the fact that this knowledge is almost…
Persian translation of my recent post about the tyranny of language and inclusive linguistic practices. Translated by Manouchehr Kouhestani. همکار ما در کراچی، محمد علی خان، مرا از وجود کتابی…
Our contributor in Karachi, Md. Ali Khan, has alerted me to what seems to be a fascinating book: The Tyranny of Language in Education by Zubeida Mustafa published by Ushba…
Commemorative stamp, German Federal Post, 1989: 300 years French School Berlin I’ve been teaching about bilingualism for more than a decade and when I speak about bilingual education and dual-immersion…
In the past couple of years, I have been a passenger in Sydney taxis driven, inter alia, by an agricultural engineer from India, a civil engineer from Somalia, a surgeon…