English belongs to everyone? The claim that “English belongs to everyone who uses it” has continued to gain more and more cultural cache, at least in global (English) academic circles.…
Hungarians in RomaniaUp until a few decades ago, the academic consensus – along with public opinion – was that bilingualism is detrimental to the individual and society. Nowadays, that has…
I know some people think what I am doing with my daughters – speaking German to them one-hundred percent of the time even though German is a second language for…
I have frequently wondered how my experiences speaking German in public with my two daughters, 7, and 5, whom my wife and I are raising as English-German bilinguals in the…
“What is the meaning of the choice of English in the slogan on this car?” That was one of the questions I asked the participants in the 2nd Language-on-the-Move Workshop…
Mi-Cha Flubacher, Alfonso Del Percio and Alexandre Duchêne (Institute of Multilingualism, University/PH Fribourg), are inviting papers for the thematic session "The legitimate speaker in a transforming political economy" (Session ID…
Recently, I watched a TV documentary about the proliferation of Nomura jellyfish in Japanese coastal waters. It was a shocking tale of the devastating environmental, economic, social and human impact…
Toiletological English Can you guess what kind of product the following text is promoting? Your well-being is close to our heart rail&fresh areas are bright and friendly and leave nothing…
Having lived and taught English in Japan for more than fifteen years, until last night I’d thought I’d seen it all. That was until I stumbled across the もし彼氏が外国人だったら英会話 (What…
I recently returned to China from graduate study in Australia and soon reestablished my old habit of reading the newspaper over breakfast. One Sunday morning, this color flier was enclosed…
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…
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…
Amoo ('Uncle') Poorang Persian version of my recent post about "Ridiculing accents" Translated by Behnam Keimasi (بهنام کیماسی) آیا مایه گذاشتن از اقلیتهای زبانی برای سرگرم کردن کودکان کار درستی…
Amoo ('Uncle') Poorang Is it ok to entertain children at the expense of linguistic minorities? That was the question I asked myself a couple of months ago when I was…
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…
Thai alphabet Learning Thai has its many challenges but one of the great joys for me has been encountering the Thai script. At the start I felt like a five-year-old-child,…