Headlines Discussions surrounding racial justice have been on the rise in light of recent events and many people are more willing now than ever to address racism. This article gives an overview of different measures some states have taken to eradicate language that is representative of the history of slavery, segregation and oppression of Black people. In order to understand and protect the biodiversity of the world, the Indigenous cultures and languages must also be protected. This article talks about the life of Iawá, the last fluent speaker of Kuruaya, including her experience when a hydro ..read more

Headlines In these pandemic times, wearing a mask might seem to interfere with both speech production and comprehension. While masks limit mouth movement, they also cut off visual cues (e.g. lip reading) that we rely on as listeners for processing what is being said. However, studies have found that comprehension difficulties surrounding mask-wearing are usually attributed to noisy (and/or socially distant!) conditions, and not so much to the lack of audio-visual cues. While those studies suggested that minimising noise or using transparent masks might improve comprehension, it’s probably bett ..read more

Headlines The Oxford English Dictionary issues regular updates throughout the year to include new words and meanings. This year, the editors released special updates to document the impacts of COVID-19. Many of these changes include the rise in usage of older phrases (social distancing) and medical terms as well as the inclusion of new meanings (self-isolation, elbow bump) and even blended forms of existing words (zoombombing). Throughout the rainforests of Brazil, the COVID-19 pandemic has so far claimed the lives of more than 200 Indigenous elders who had been serving as cultural and linguis ..read more

Headlines The first dictionary of Umpithamu, one of Australia’s indigenous languages, has been published, after a long compilation process of 17 years and more tragically, after the deaths of its two last active speakers. Dr Jean-Christophe Verstraete worked with the two, a pair of sisters, hand-in-hand, to preserve the language, one of five spoken by the Lama Lama people of north-east Australia, in the form of a dictionary and a companion audio app with the recordings of the sisters’ voices. Though most members of younger generations have not grown up with the language, it is hoped that the 6 ..read more

Headlines While being under quarantine is challenging in a number of ways, Sophie Hardach talks about the benefits quarantine has had on language use in multilingual families around the world. Children are spending more time around their direct family and are immersed in their caregivers’ mother tongues, in many cases resulting in a resurgence of heritage languages. This is not only good news for language transmission, but is also strengthening families’ engagements with their cultures and providing familiarity and comfort in an ever-changing time. Despite having signed and ratified the Europe ..read more

Whether they are first, second, third or nth language users; or users of English dialect x, y or z; most speakers of English know of two ways to do English comparatives—adding the word more before an adjective or a word ending ‑er to it. See which you prefer in (a) and (b) below: (a) They’re more pesky than we thought. (b) They’re peskier than we thought. More in more pesky and the suffix ‑er in peskier are what we call ‘comparative forms’ or ‘comparatives’ in short. If you cannot definitively choose between more and ‑er in (a) and (b) above, you are not alone. You may identify with some who a ..read more

“Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.”   You might be wondering where this paragraph came from. A theatre play? A novel? A manual for English learners? Not quite. While the paragraph may not be famous, it has actually been read and recorded more than 3,000 times. All you have to do ..read more

Most linguistics students trained in Hong Kong have attended courses which focus on the comparison of Mandarin and Cantonese. While courses of this kind can help us appreciate the fascinating diversity of the Chinese language(s), they may also create or reinforce the common impression that Mandarin, despite its size, is an astoundingly uniform language which barely leaves any room for internal variation. Pretty soon I realized that there must be something wrong with this notion—when discussing syntax questions, “native speakers” of Mandarin often had considerable disagreements over the accepta ..read more

Language enthusiasts may notice one thing almost all language education platforms and applications have in common: if they offer a Portuguese language learning option, the icon representing that language is often the flag of Brazil. One might assume that learning Portuguese is equivalent to learning Brazilian Portuguese. Is this really a surprise? By learning Brazilian Portuguese, anyone will be able to communicate with over 200 million native Portuguese-language speakers living in and outside of Brazil, in countries as different as the United States, Japan, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Franc ..read more

I. Translate to validate It is 1741 in New Spain, in the pueblo of Santo Domingo del Valle, to be exact, in what will eventually become the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Don Pedro de Zarate finishes translating a bill of sale, an official record of individuals exchanging land and money. In doing so, he legitimizes a legal act and galvanizes it for the future. In effect: “Yes, this property was and is owned by Zapotec people.” Signed, sealed, and put away for the potential resolution of future disputes. There’s a discomfort in the need for translation. Zapotec speakers wrote the bill of sale, and it ..read more