I missed the UN’s French language day! It’s not the fact that I missed it that bothers me – I’m late for pretty much everything – it’s the fact that…
Ingrid PillerApril 4, 2010
English-speaking countries have a poor track record when it comes to language learning. Educators in Australia, the UK and the USA regularly bemoan that fact and call for a change…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 21, 2010
Must-read post by Dennis Baron over at the Web of Language! A US university student who majors in Middle Eastern Studies was detained at Philadelphia Airport for carrying Arabic language…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 13, 2010
National holidays are there to celebrate the nation and the opinion pages tend to be full of self-congratulation on such occasions. Australia is no exception and one of the more…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 3, 2010
Deborah Cameron noted in 1995 that “linguistic bigotry is among the last publicly expressible prejudices left to members of the Western intelligentsia.” In the same vein, one could point out…
Ingrid PillerJanuary 22, 2010
London Dairy ad on a building in Abu Dhabi, UAE Igloo ad on truck in Abu Dhabi, UAE I’ve just come across a 2006 University of South Africa MA thesis investigating…
Ingrid PillerJanuary 15, 2010
While my Christmas post was of the gloomy kind, most blogs I follow had more heart-warming stories. Sociolingo Africa picked up a press release coming out of Orlando, Florida issued…
Ingrid PillerDecember 31, 2009
Finally, today on Day 3 of our conference on Fostering Multiliteracies Through Education: Middle Eastern Perspectives someone asked “Where is the Arabic?” “How come a conference devoted to multilingualism and…
Ingrid PillerDecember 20, 2009
The current global order has thrown up yet another bewildering language problem: the monolingual sniffer dog! I glean the following from a recent NYT article about Rabbis in Montana: with…
Ingrid PillerDecember 11, 2009
Ridiculous English signs English speakers sometimes like to amuse themselves with ridiculous English signage from around the world. www.engrish.com is a typical example and I have to admit that there…
Ingrid PillerNovember 26, 2009
The Blackwell Compass series is organizing an interesting-looking virtual interdisciplinary conference for the second half of October at http://www.blackwell-compass.com/home_conference. It's free and there's still time to sign up. Sneak previews…
Ingrid PillerOctober 15, 2009
Seeing that Kraft’s idea to brand their new Vegemite cheese spread as iSnack 2.0 has just backfired badly on them, I’m not so sure about the wisdom of talking about…
Ingrid PillerOctober 12, 2009
Muslims around the world were celebrating the holy month of Ramadan recently and the greeting de jour here in Abu Dhabi was Ramadan Kareem!, which literally translates as “Ramadan is generous.” Ramadan…
Ingrid PillerOctober 11, 2009
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