In this latest episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, I spoke with Jasna Novak Milić, the director of the Croatian Studies Center at Macquarie University. The Croatian Studies…
Alia Amir's grandfather with his three daughters, ca. 1950 (Copyright: Alia Amir) I admire people, who, on the move, maintain and transfer their heritage languages to the next generations. By…
An area under "total lockdown" (Image credit: rappler.com) Lockdowns everywhere The lockdown discourse has become ubiquitous, especially in current affairs and social media. In fact, ‘lockdown’ and ‘quarantine’ have been…
With Sydney in lock-down again, my team mates farewelled me over Zoom Writing en route to Manila I am onboard Singapore Airlines as I am writing this, flying back to…
The Sumerian Empire under King Shulgi (2094 to 2046 BCE) (Image Credit: Wikipedia) Do you know in which language the Sumerians started the written chronicle of humanity? It is a…
You can order free hard copies of the booklet Have you received your COVID-19 jab yet? Are you thinking about getting vaccinated? Are you confused by all the conflicting information…
Vaccination starts with registration and obtaining a date Editor’s note: Last year, here on Language on the Move, we ran a series devoted to language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis,…
Editor’s note: The language challenges of the COVID-19 crisis have held much of our attention this year. Here on Language on the Move, we have been running a series devoted…
Carla Chamberlin, Ingrid Piller, and Mak Khan in conversation TESOL and social justice One of the thrusts of my research has been a critical examination of the social consequences of…
Editor’s note: Covid-19 has exposed fractures in the social and linguistic fabric in many contexts internationally, as we have been documenting in our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis…
Readability scores of the two selected public service information texts by the NSW Government This morning I googled “nsw corona/covid restrictions”. The top hits all refer to NSW Government websites,…
The NSW Federation of Community Language Schools offers an online master class about "Literacy in heritage language maintenance" as part of its community language teacher training development series. This series…
Few people have ever heard about a fascinating form of visual communication used by Indigenous Australians: message sticks. When I teach about the invention of writing, I usually mention them…
Editor’s note: The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a renewed focus on linguistic diversity and the way it intersects with social inclusion. In this latest contribution to our series of language…
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…
The Phoenician abjad - the ancestor of almost all scripts in use today (Image credit: Wikipedia) Today, literacy has become near universal with the global literacy rate around 85 percent.…