Students in a Tibetan-medium school in Kathmandu study for their exams. By knowing the number and age of speakers of a particular language, policy makers can better plan for their…
A restaurant sign featuring both Tibetan and Chinese, in a village where the Tibetan residents speak Ngandehua, one of Tibet's minority languages (Image: Gerald Roche) As elsewhere in High Asia,…
Language choice in bilingual couples as habit (excerpt from Piller, 2002, p. 137) In my research with bilingual couples, habit emerged as one of the main reasons for a couple’s…
The national language is the mother tongue of the vast majority of citizens in most European states (Source: Josu Amezaga, MQ Lecture, 22-11-2017) Last week, Professor Josu Amezaga from the…
Map of European languages (Source: SB Language Maps) Invitation to public seminar about "Minority Languages" at Macquarie University What: Minority languages: what are we talking about? And why are we…
King Sejong the Great (1397-1450) (Image source: Wikipedia) Today, South Koreans celebrate Hangul Day. Hangul Day is a national holiday to celebrate the Korean script. I am not aware of…
NAIDOC Week 2017 Logo Every year, the first week of July marks NAIDOC Week - a time to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and recognise the achievements of…
Alexandra Grey proudly holding the physical product of her PhD research My university will shortly require only a digital copy of each PhD after it has been examined and awarded,…
Top 10 languages other than English spoken in England and Wales, 2011 (Source: ONS) Modern languages are not merely European languages. Obvious as this may seem, it needs restating as…
Something has been nagging at me recently. I read a lot of tech news, and it seems automated translation is about to get a whole lot better, and a whole…
Cover of 2008 movie "Mad about English" (Source: Zhang, Jie. Language policy and planning for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. ) We are repeatedly told that people around the world are…
ESL teachers play an important role in home language maintenance (Image Credit: Macquarie University) Learning the host country’s language is important for migrants but we should not forget that maintaining…
The Linguistic Ethnography Forum’s e-seminar devoted to Ingrid Piller’s recent book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics is currently running. Some discussions so far are concerned…
Australia: The White Man's Land (Source: NLA) Australia has a proud national narrative of migration and multiculturalism. It also has an equally prevalent history of exclusionary and discriminatory migration policy.…
"The English" migrated to their "ancestral homeland" in the first few centuries of the Common Era (Source: Wikipedia) “Indigenous languages” and “immigrant languages” are much discussed in language policy research,…
Hutatma Smarak (Martyrs's Memorial) on Flora Square in Mumbai constructed in the memory of 106 people killed during the agitation for the creation of Unified Maharashtra. The two individuals in…