“Japanese guys aren’t the most popular creatures on earth when it comes to romance. Sad but true.” That’s the claim of Meiko Mochizuki Swartz, self-professed bilingual, bicultural ‘expert’ and author…
Lachlan JacksonJuly 7, 2010
Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia) Persian version of my recent blog post about Chinglish Translated by Tahmineh Tayebi (تهمینه طیبی) & Vahid Parvaresh (وحید پرورش) تصور کنید که…
Ingrid PillerJune 21, 2010
Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia) Korean version of my recent blog post about Chinglish Translated by Sun-Young Chung (정선영) 뉴욕타임즈가 독자들로부터 그들의 재미난 금발머리 농담이나 유색인종 사람과 관련된 배꼽…
Ingrid PillerJune 7, 2010
Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia) Malay version of my recent blog post about Chinglish Translated by Ridwan Wahid Bayangkan sekiranya akhbar New York Times meminta pembacanya menghantar ‘blonde jokes’…
Ingrid PillerJune 2, 2010
Non-English speakers’ access to emergency services in Australia is in the news again as a Melbourne man has been convicted of the murder of his wife. What makes the case…
Ingrid PillerApril 12, 2010
About ten years ago an overseas student from South Korea who was about to fail a unit I was teaching left a suicide note under my office door. She described…
Ingrid PillerMarch 16, 2010
“Child pornography and English language learning”?! Could there be a connection?! Difficult to believe but true - I’m referring to a best selling English phrase book for Japanese high school…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江March 8, 2010
English-speaking countries have a poor track record when it comes to language learning. Educators in Australia, the UK and the USA regularly bemoan that fact and call for a change…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 21, 2010
Japan’s aging population and the growing number of young Japanese shunning ‘3D’ jobs (dirty, dangerous and demanding) has resulted in an increasing demand for foreign nurses and eldercare workers. In…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江February 17, 2010
I went onto e-bay this weekend and, instead of the gadget I was after, found some non-standard uses of English negation: “We not ship to Russia” or “We not use…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 10, 2010
If you could choose to learn a foreign language, which one would it be? And why? Such choices are usually constrained by what is on offer. However, someone must choose…
Ingrid PillerDecember 14, 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
Some people just can’t win it seems. Second language speakers are in that category. I can’t even begin to count how many people who have read a fraction of the…
Ingrid PillerNovember 19, 2009
For the last so many years I have been feeling sorry for Tourism Australia. Since their Paul Hogan (our one and only Crocodile Dundee) mega hit tourism campaign in the…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江November 5, 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
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