In Episode 17 of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Rosemary Salomone about her 2021 book The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of…
Prepositions are the unnoticed and underappreciated workhorses of language. They are "grammar words" that indicate relationships. Essentially, their job is to connect other words with bigger and more important meanings.…
Editor's note: As the world anxiously anticipates the outcome of the US presidential election next week - and the consequences it will have for global politics - we've asked the…
One of countless internet memes about crazy English spelling (Source: angmohdan.com) During a dreary German winter in the 1980s, I would get up early each Friday morning, wrap myself up…
Dr Fadila Boutouchent during her guest lecture at Macquarie University When she was in kindergarten, my oldest daughter came home one day talking about "our soldiers" who "went to war for…
This week is Library and Information week (#LIW2018). Library and Information Week aims to raise the profile of libraries and information service professionals in Australia. What better way to celebrate…
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…
"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,…
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…
"Speak English or Die!" Vilification on a Melbourne bus caught on camera About a year ago, a video of a language-related altercation on a Melbourne bus was widely reported in…
Mariko Watanabe and Ingrid Piller celebrate their reunion at Yaccomaricard in Chit Lom This post is also available in pdf-format. Click here. In early July, YM Fashion’s CEO Mariko Watanabe…
Polish refugee section of the Catholic cemetery in Tehran When Kimie Takahashi and myself interviewed participants for Japanese on the Move, our video exhibition of transnational life-stories, one of our…
Constructing language learning as global choice on melale.ir Persian version of Vahid Parvaresh, "Supermarket Language Learning"; translated by Behnam Keimasi (بهنام کیماسی) در ایران، همانند بسیار دیگری از کشورها، دولت به…
Constructing language learning as global choice on melale.ir In Iran, as in many other countries, the state has traditionally been a very powerful actor in the field of second language…
Herzberg am Harz, the Esperanto City (Source: Der Spiegel) The rural Bavarian high school I attended in the late 70s and early 80s had two international exchanges going, one with…
Mehrsprachige Buecher - multilingual books - ketabhaye chand zabane The release of the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011 Census of Population data is an invitation to reflect on the composition…