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Language work in the internet café
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 businesses....
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Voice of China on the move
Voice of China Sydney 2015, Program Booklet It’s a weeknight at the Sydney Town Hall, an ornate 19th century building in the city centre. Almost everyone bustling in the entryway is of Chinese...
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Mongolian on the market
‘Luxury permanent’ Mongolian yurt for sale on Alibaba Last week when I saw in my friends’ Wechat group an advertisement for delicately made Mongolian yurts, I thought of an article I had read earlier...
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Strolling in Barcelona with Sanskrit and Devanāgarī
Tapas bar Samsara Strolling in Barcelona’s city center reveals an astounding variety of spoken languages: there are the languages used by the throngs of visitors coming from literally everywhere, and...
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‘Detours’ taken by Mongols on WeChat
A monument near Baganuur (Outer Mongolia) with an inscription of poem “My Native Land” by Natsagdorj (Source: Wikipedia) In the middle school Mongolian textbooks there is a well-known text called...
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Disenchanted in Bangkok
Burmese newspaper in a Bangkok restaurant [tab:English] “When Thai people ask me where I’m from, I tell them, “Oh I’m from the Philippines or Singapore. Then, I don’t get that look!” A young woman from...
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English is excellence
Are university rankings like an iron cage that leaves no option but to submit to its logic? “Using English is the sign of a great mind. Discuss.” Sounds like an absurdly bigoted essay topic? While I’ve...
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English in Myanmar
English textbook used at the non-Government school “I take a bilingual approach, so you might not understand some parts of my class. But I hope you’ll enjoy it.” Dressed in a blue traditional dress, a...
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Japanese in Yangon
Japan Store near the University of Yangon “Welcome to the Golden Guest Inn, Ms Takahashi! We’ve been expecting you!” A Chinese-Burmese man warmly welcomed me on my arrival at his family-run inn in...
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English at the Olympics
Many people would agree that English is the language of globalization. English is almost always adopted as the official language of international events, including the Olympic Games. It does not mean,...
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Superdiversity: another Eurocentric idea?
Website of the German Club Montevideo, founded in 1866 The current issue of Begegnung (“Encounter”), the magazine of German International Schools, has a feature about the German School in Montevideo,...
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Bodies on the Move: Salsa, Language and Transnationalism
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 perhaps...
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Sink-or-swim for international students
For international students, it’s sink or swim (Image source: luvimages.com) It is one of the basic findings of decades of research in bilingual education that language submersion is not a productive...
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Internationalization as Englishization
Graduating students at Anadolu University (Source: Anadolu University) The process of internationalization of education has been a pivotal issue across the world, in particular with regards to the...
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Temples helping heritage language maintenance in Australia
Murugan Temple, Colombo (Source: Andy Nobes) Do you know which non-Christian religion has grown the fastest in Australia since the new millennium? You might be surprised to hear that it’s Hinduism....
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Why does English spread in global academia?
The Linguistic Ethnography Forum’s e-seminar devoted to Ingrid Piller’s recent book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics is currently running. Some...
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