Bilingualism has long been a subject of linguistic and cognitive inquiry, evolving from strict early definitions to more fluid and inclusive conceptualizations. It has been reflecting different research paradigms, cultural contexts and social attitudes toward language use.
Multilingual societies are a testament to the vibrancy and complexity of human culture, where multiple languages coexist and evolve within a shared social framework. These societies are not simply collections of diverse linguistic groups but intricate networks of communication that weave together histories, cultural identities, and social dynamics.
This is an interview with a young student, Lambrini Papachristodoulou, whose documentary about a disappearing language, Arvanitika, emphasises the importance of maintaining dialects to safeguard cultural wealth.
Icelandic society is very welcoming towards immigrants. The government helps newcomers, providing translators and mediators to them in order to smoothly adapt to the new reality. English is widespread in the country and used as the primary means of communication between newcomers and locals.
Audio From Cultural Identity Model to Language Identity Model UIL I recently translated the Third Culture Model into a Third Language Model for multilinguals, and I want to share my translation of the Cultural Identity Model from D. Pollock and R. Van Reken, into my Language Identity Model©: (my design is inspired by the Cultural Identity
We all know that maintaining our mother tongue/father tongue, mother language/father language, heritage language is important to transmit our children a sense of belonging through this language, and to the culture that is attached to it. What if we want to transmit a dialect or regional variant? Especially families who raise their children abroad tend to
Children love cartoons, movies, games and we all know that the villains, the “bad guys” are not only characterized by features that make them unpleasant, but also by foreign accents. Sociolinguist Calvin Gidney started to study language patterns in animated kid’s entertainment after noticing that Mufasa had an American accent, whereas Scar, the lion of the
When I saw this interview with Roger Federer the other day, I couldn’t resist but share it in my facebook group Multilingual Families. It is a perfect example for why, when we use our language in international settings, we shouldn’t assume that sayings, metaphors (and abbreviations!) are universal. https://twitter.com/thefield_in/status/1409944054020722693?s=20 In this particular example,
Learning a new language is always very exciting. Especially when the new language we’re learning is similar to one we already know. These similarities can be at different levels (phonetical, lexical, syntactical etc.). The Dutch language belongs to the West-German branch of the Indoeuropean languages and is actually close to German (and Swissgerman). [The simplified
Many bilinguals (and with this term I mean people who talk two or more languages, so including also plurilinguals) feel annoyed by all kind of questions that refer to them being able to understand, speak, write and read two or more languages. Instead of listing up these negative examples, I think it would be good