In Episode 12 of the Language on the Move Podcast, I speak with James McElvenny about his new book History of Modern Linguistics. This book offers a highly readable, concise…
Map of Transoxania (Source: Wikipedia) Editor’s note: Arabic language learning is experiencing a revival in many parts of the world, such as China, where it may be a source of…
Just before the holidays, Professor Aneta Pavlenko and I chatted about Aneta’s new book Multilingualism and History. We talked about amnesia and ignorance pacts in contemporary sociolinguistics, ghost signs that point to dark…
In this latest installment of Chats in Linguistic Diversity, I talk to Professor Aneta Pavlenko about multilingualism through the ages. We start from the question whether the world today is…
Remember Joseph speaking to his brothers through an interpreter? Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers Academic interpreting often labors under the assumption that the profession…
Diagram of the ‘radial definition routes’ of Panoptic Conjugation (Ogden 1930: 12) A fascinating turn in recent Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) scholarship is the development of 'Minimal English', an international…
One of countless internet memes about crazy English spelling (Source: angmohdan.com) During a dreary German winter in the 1980s, I would get up early each Friday morning, wrap myself up…
Front of postcard sent by Private Jacob Isak Sicherman on 1 June 1916 Remember library stacks? Browsing among books? Serendipitously finding on a nearby shelf what you didn’t know you…
Barely legible today but evidence of 'super-diversity' in the 9th century: Runic graffiti in Hagia Sophia On a parapet in Hagia Sophia’s gallery there is an obscure little graffiti written…
Ernst Reuter, West Berlin's post-war Mayor, was Professor of Urban Studies in Ankara from 1938 to 1946 (Source: turkishpress.de) While the internationalization of higher education is a hot topic at…