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
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…
Emily FarrellJanuary 18, 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
I enjoy reading the (auto)biographies of multilinguals. The current issue of Begegnung (“Encounter”), the magazine of German International Schools, has a feature about one of my favorite actors, Jasmin Tabatabai.…
Ingrid PillerOctober 18, 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
You know you live in a truly multilingual and multicultural place when your local church does not only advertise their times of worship but also the languages in which the…
Ingrid PillerOctober 11, 2009
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