カテゴリー: Language
No resettlement for Afghans | Cool or cold? | Inspired delivery | Harking backIt seems that the government has decided to cancel the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme to new applicants with no notice. …
With half of all languages predicted to die out in decades, activists are turning to online tools to preserve themEvery year, the world loses some of its 7,000 languages. Parents stop speaking them to their children, words are forgotten and communities…
Prof Rawinia Higgins tells the Guardian that te reo Māori is under threat from the rightwing coalition despite long-running efforts to revive itNew Zealand’s Māori language commissioner has described government policies to limit the use of the Indigeno…
‘Talking dictionaries’ among the tools used by researchers to document languages and record Indigenous environmental knowledgeJoe Natuman watches for falling leaves and new shoots on trees as a sign it’s time to garden. Then, when a southern wind begin…
Dr Steph Kaefer spent three weeks documenting unique colloquialisms on the frozen continent after newcomers were struck by the distinctive vocabularyIf you know what it means to be a “fidlet” going for a “jolly” in your “doo”, then you are part of an e…
Exploring the whistling traditions of the Hmong people of northern Laos, whose language straddles the boundary between music and speech, this film witnesses a collision of ancient tradition with modern urban life. With urbanisation and the advent of mo…
Shakeel Suleman, Penny Salter, Jamila Begum and Richard Lamsdale respond to an article by Saima Mir on how language can become lost through generations of immigrantsSaima Mir (My children don’t speak my mother tongue – as a second-generation migrant, i…
The character, chosen by public vote, reflected feelings about the state of the world and anxiety over living cost pressuresPeople in Japan have chosen the kanji character for “war” as the symbol that sums up 2022 – a year marked by conflict in Ukraine…
The island’s Indigenous people are in a race against time to save their native tongues before they are lost foreverIn a modest conference room near the edge of Taiwan’s Sun Moon Lake, Panu Kapamumu holds up an unwieldy A3 booklet. The home-printed docu…
Group of language experts is taking local governments and organisations to task for their over-reliance on machine translationEncountering mangled English is a frequent source of mirth for many residents of Japan, but for one group of language professi…