I wasn’t sure of the best way to enter the Language-on-the-Move community. I’ve decided simply to start by telling you a little bit about me and my ongoing quest to…
Christof Demont-HeinrichNovember 16, 2011
KOALA Buchstabenhaus (Adapted from: Urbanek, R. et al. (2006): Tinto grün. Arbeitsheft 1. Schreiben. Berlin: Cornelsen) Contemporary Germany is the 3rd largest immigrant-receiving country internationally. In 2008, 15.6mio inhabitants (19%…
Victoria BenzSeptember 13, 2011
I was so grateful to read Ingrid Piller’s in-depth critical post on German language politics, where she offered a profound analysis of the assumptions underlying the campaign “Ich spreche Deutsch”.…
Bettina KleinerAugust 31, 2011
Ads for a campaign to speak German are currently all over Germany. The campaign is called “Ich spreche Deutsch” (I speak German) and aims to convince migrant youths to learn…
Ingrid PillerJuly 20, 2011
Translation of Christoph Gutknecht, “Codewort Schibboleth”, originally published in Jüdische Allgemeine, July 07, 2011 Each time I visit France and have breakfast there, I am reminded of Goethe. In his…
Ingrid PillerJuly 14, 2011
When I lived in Basel, a city in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, I often found myself performing an involuntary field experiment in language attitudes. As likely to speak English…
Ingrid PillerMay 20, 2011
Over the past year or so I’ve started to make my daughter do daily arithmetic practice in German. My reason for doing so stems from my dissatisfaction with the ways…
Ingrid PillerMay 9, 2011
A most amazing book has just landed on my desk: Do you speak Swiss, edited by Walter Haas, is the final report on a Swiss National Research Project devoted to…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 14, 2011
Even a casual observer of the linguistic landscape in Iran will have to conclude that Iranians have a collective fetish for English. Almost all public signage is bilingual in English…
Ingrid PillerDecember 30, 2010
Condoms in translation It’s been impossible to escape this week’s media coverage of the pope’s comments about condoms and male prostitutes. There has been a lot of debate about what…
Ingrid PillerNovember 28, 2010
I love public libraries. Here in Sydney, our family regularly spends time in our local public library and in the Persian library in Parramatta. We treat public libraries a bit…
Ingrid PillerNovember 24, 2010
Earlier this term I intercepted a note my 7-year-old had written to her teacher: “Ger Ger Ger; Don’t be so rude.” She was objecting to a reading comprehension exercise about…
Ingrid PillerNovember 6, 2010
Michael Clyne with Emi Otsuji, the 2009 winner of the Michael Clyne Prize I was saddened this morning to read the Australian Linguistics Society’s news about Michael Clyne’s passing! Australian…
Ingrid PillerOctober 30, 2010
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…
Ingrid PillerOctober 26, 2010
The social networking market research site Inside Facebook has some intriguing language stats. In July, the fastest-growing languages on Facebook were Portuguese, Arabic, Spanish and French. The Portuguese growth rate…
Ingrid PillerAugust 2, 2010
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