The White House (Image credit: Zach Rudisin, Wikipedia) Editor's note: The Trump administration has recently declared English the official language of the USA while simultaneously cutting the provision of English…
Rosemary SalomoneMarch 19, 2025
(Image credit: Sandy Millar via Unsplash) Are you a family who speaks Spanish at home? Do you have a school-aged child between 5 and 8 years of age? Are you…
Language on the MoveJuly 26, 2022
Mis dos voces (Image credit: Rayon Verde) Imagine this: you go out to a fast-food restaurant and order a burger. While you wait for your order to be filled, you…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 9, 2022
Editor’s note: The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the persistent health disadvantage of Indigenous populations into focus, as well as the exclusion of Indigenous languages from public health communication. In this…
Gregory Haimovich and Herlinda Márquez MoraJune 9, 2020
How is your Language-on-the-Move Reading Challenge coming along? One month has gone by and you should have ticked off at least one book from our list. I started with an…
Ingrid PillerMarch 1, 2018
"How bad is your cultural cringe?" (Source: Jenna Guillaume, BuzzFeed) Keith: I’m still really shit at pronouncing Lisa’s surname. With the umlaut o. Hanna: What is Lisa’s surname? (laughter) Keith:…
Hanna TorshJune 10, 2015
Bilingualism has a gender A while ago, I reported on the findings of a US study that demonstrated that children of immigrants who achieve high-level bilingual proficiency in both English…
Ingrid PillerMay 6, 2015
Children of migrant cotton field workers from Oklahoma (Source: Library of Congress) I’ve just come across a fascinating article about the schooling of migrant children during the Great Depression era…
Ingrid PillerApril 8, 2015
A locutorio shop front in Barcelona (Source: El Periodico) There is now a well-established body of work exploring the language work provided by service workers in call centres and tourist…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 22, 2014
Schneider, Britta. 2014. Salsa, Language and Transnationalism. Multilingual Matters. In my post on English in Berlin, I wondered what is required for a language to become ‘local’, and about the…
Britta SchneiderJune 11, 2014
The challenges of providing equitable services in linguistically diverse societies A few years ago, emergency service provision to speakers of languages other than English in Australia came under scrutiny when…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 6, 2014
English-Only Australia? (Source: blogs.crikey.com.au) In recent Australian political conversation, there is an increasingly bipartisan recognition of the value of cultural and linguistic diversity. So it’s fair to ask, what is…
Hanna TorshJuly 28, 2013
The Omidvar brothers on the road: amazing feats of discovery and language learning? In his most recent round of interviews with the magazine Særzæmin-e Mæn (“My Country”), Issa Omidvar, one…
Vahid ParvareshApril 29, 2013
Different languages for different jobs in this Los Angeles restaurant Are there language requirements for working in restaurants in Los Angeles? These two employment signs that I saw in the…
Calvin N. HoMarch 25, 2013
If you google images for "study abroad," you get many pictures of inclusive-looking racially-diverse groups of people such as this one. A persistent theme in research with international students in…
Ingrid PillerMarch 19, 2013
This work is licensed under a