Multilingualism – Page 20 – Language on the Move

Research reflections

In memoriam Michael Clyne

Michael Clyne with Emi Otsuji, the 2009 winner of the Michael Clyne Prize I was saddened this morning to read the Australian Linguistics Society’s news about Michael Clyne’s passing! Australian…

Ingrid PillerOctober 30, 2010

Multilingual histories

Providing bilingual education since 1689

Commemorative stamp, German Federal Post, 1989: 300 years French School Berlin I’ve been teaching about bilingualism for more than a decade and when I speak about bilingual education and dual-immersion…

Ingrid PillerOctober 26, 2010

Intercultural communication

What did Angela Merkel really say?

If you read English-language news, you could be forgiven for thinking that Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel recently came out strongly against multiculturalism and immigration. You could be forgiven, but you'd…

Ingrid PillerOctober 20, 2010

Linguistic landscapes

Tokyo: Elegantly Multilingual

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

Linguistic landscapes

Multilingual Tokyo

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

Language at work

The monolingual mindset goes to war

I can only speak Pashto ABC News yesterday broke a whistleblower report that US army interpreters deployed in Afghanistan often don’t speak the local languages. ABC News reports that up…

Ingrid PillerSeptember 10, 2010

English as a global language

Barbarous multilingual devil worshippers

I’ve just run a search for the terms “multilingual” and “multilingualism” in the National Library of Australia’s archive of Historic Australian Newspapers, 1803-1954. In the process, I have learnt that…

Ingrid PillerAugust 16, 2010

Linguistic landscapes

نام های تجاریِ نویسه گردان

Persian version of my blog post about transliterated brand names Translated by Setareh Felfelian (ستاره فلفلیان) London Dairy ad on a building in Abu Dhabi, UAE Igloo ad on truck…

Ingrid PillerAugust 12, 2010

Language learning

The monolingual myth

The monolingual myth This critique has been an important one but it runs into a problem when we consider the idea of monolingualism itself. At the same time that this…

Alastair PennycookAugust 10, 2010

English as a global language

Multilingualism 2.0

The social networking market research site Inside Facebook has some intriguing language stats. In July, the fastest-growing languages on Facebook were Portuguese, Arabic, Spanish and French. The Portuguese growth rate…

Ingrid PillerAugust 2, 2010

Language in Australia

Diversity made invisible in 2010 Australian federal election

This weekend, if you were out shopping, you couldn't escape the electioneering for the 2010 Australian federal election. I do my grocery shopping in Eastwood, one of Sydney’s most multicultural…

Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江July 26, 2010

Language at work

English-Only at Bon Secours

English-Only at Bon Secours From what I read, there is a nursing shortage in the Global North. From North America to Japan and from Europe to the Gulf countries, rich…

Ingrid PillerJuly 19, 2010

Language and globalization

!دست از سر چینگلیش بردارید

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

Linguistic landscapes

Banal multilingualism

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

Language politics

Shibboleth: Kyrgyz or Uzbek?

In his recent post “Accent and History,” Khan asked whether it’s possible to escape the prison of our accent and our language. Looking at the civil war and humanitarian disaster…

Ingrid PillerJune 15, 2010

Multilingual histories

Accent and history

This is the story of a young Pakistani man, let’s call him Reza. Reza spent his early years in what was then East-Pakistan and what is today a different country,…