Sadly, my sabbatical is drawing to a close and one of the things to think about now is souvenirs. My sabbatical involved visits to Germany, Iran and the United Arab…
Ingrid PillerJanuary 26, 2012
Toiletological English Can you guess what kind of product the following text is promoting? Your well-being is close to our heart rail&fresh areas are bright and friendly and leave nothing…
Ingrid PillerOctober 6, 2011
Thai alphabet Learning Thai has its many challenges but one of the great joys for me has been encountering the Thai script. At the start I felt like a five-year-old-child,…
Sheila PhamFebruary 11, 2011
Billboard advertising the Japanese food fair at Isetan I’ve never felt more welcome in a foreign city than where I am at the moment – Bangkok! It has to do…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江February 9, 2011
Persian version of my blog post about English as the non-language of globalization. Translated by Niloufar Behrooz (نیلوفر بهروز) (نوشتار شماره ٢ در مجموعه نوشتار های کوتاه درباره ی…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 7, 2011
The world in Arabia I spent my last day in the Middle East at Dubai Mall, the self-proclaimed “Centre of Now.” The mall guide has the heading “Welcome to Everything.”…
Ingrid PillerJanuary 21, 2011
Yesterday I spoke with a study agent here in the UAE and he told me that Australian universities trying to attract students from the GCC region just didn’t get the…
Ingrid PillerJanuary 17, 2011
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
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
Space challenged Shinjuku, Tokyo (September 2010): Photo by Kimie Takahashi Tokyo is getting more and more linguistically diverse every time I go back there. During this trip, I was really…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江October 15, 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
Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia) Italian version of my blog post about Chinglish. Translated by Emanuela Moretto Per un attimo provate a pensare che il New York Times abbia…
Ingrid PillerJuly 18, 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
As someone who is concerned about Australia’s monolingual mindset and the damage it does to individuals and our society as a whole, I probably should have been pleased to discover…
Ingrid PillerJune 17, 2010
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