The United Arab Emirates are celebrating their 39th national day this month. Trucial Oman, as it was then known, became independent from their semi-colonial relationship with Britain in December 1971…
Ingrid PillerDecember 5, 2010
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…
Ingrid PillerNovember 24, 2010
Joe Hill front cover Today 105 years ago, on November 19, 1905, Joe Hill was executed in Utah. Although his name is rather forgotten today, Joe Hill was arguably one…
Ingrid PillerNovember 19, 2010
Language in the catfish war I’ve just read False Economy and in addition to learning many new intriguing things about economic history, I’ve also learnt that the catfish war, was,…
Ingrid PillerNovember 13, 2010
Earlier this term I intercepted a note my 7-year-old had written to her teacher: “Ger Ger Ger; Don’t be so rude.” She was objecting to a reading comprehension exercise about…
Ingrid PillerNovember 6, 2010
Michael Clyne with Emi Otsuji, the 2009 winner of the Michael Clyne Prize I was saddened this morning to read the Australian Linguistics Society’s news about Michael Clyne’s passing! Australian…
Ingrid PillerOctober 30, 2010
Commemorative stamp, German Federal Post, 1989: 300 years French School Berlin I’ve been teaching about bilingualism for more than a decade and when I speak about bilingual education and dual-immersion…
Ingrid PillerOctober 26, 2010
Persian version of my recent blog post about the magic of English Translated by Behnam Keimasi (بهنام کیماسی) در چند هفته ی آینده دانشجویان من در درس مبانیِ جامعه…
Ingrid PillerOctober 24, 2010
If you read English-language news, you could be forgiven for thinking that Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel recently came out strongly against multiculturalism and immigration. You could be forgiven, but you'd…
Ingrid PillerOctober 20, 2010
As a non-speaker and non-reader of Japanese I went to Japan fully expecting to be confused. However, the only confusing moment I experienced had nothing to do with anything Japanese:…
Ingrid PillerOctober 6, 2010
I had been led to believe that Japan was a very monolingual place interspersed with Engrish ads, commercial signage and T-shirts. Well, that has turned out to be just another…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 28, 2010
Working women on the move The International Gender and Language Association conference at Tsuda College, Tokyo, kicked off yesterday with a panel about Working Women on the Move organized by…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 19, 2010
I can only speak Pashto ABC News yesterday broke a whistleblower report that US army interpreters deployed in Afghanistan often don’t speak the local languages. ABC News reports that up…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 10, 2010
Persian version of my blog post about language evolution Translated by Anna Mirzaiyan (آنا ميرزاييان) آخرهفته سری به سایت ای بِی زدم، اما به جای وسيله ای كه دنبالش می…
Ingrid PillerAugust 31, 2010
In the past couple of years, I have been a passenger in Sydney taxis driven, inter alia, by an agricultural engineer from India, a civil engineer from Somalia, a surgeon…
Ingrid PillerAugust 27, 2010
This work is licensed under a