Who of the three women in this image do you think German employers are most likely to consider as a potential employee and call for a job interview? Obviously, the…
Rashid al-Din Monument in Soltaniyeh, Iran (Source: Wikipedia) Recently, I signed a contract for a revised second edition of my 2011 book Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction to be published…
Preschool in Karlsruhe, Germany (Source: DW) Ever since my research for my 2002 book Bilingual Couples Talk I’ve regularly been told by people – or been asked to confirm their…
Auburn parking ticket (left: quadrilingual on back; right: city logo on front) In Australia with its persistent monolingual mindset coming across any kind of official institutional multilingual communication always feels…
The National Institute of the English Language in Tehran has used the slogan "A new language is a new life" for more than 50 years I’m preparing my lecture on…
Yasemin Yildiz (2012) Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition. Fordham University Press. This book review was originally published in Language in Society 42 (4), 463-466. Access pdf version of…
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…
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%…
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…
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…
The supermarkets of Germany are the site of a more sinister example of multilingual diversity marketing. The pictured chip packet leaps off the shelf with its mix of German, English…
This chocolate wrapper turned up in my child’s trick-or-treat bag and now we don’t know which language Prestÿ is! Anyone out there who can help? One dad in our trick-or-treating…