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Alias DA

Sat, Nov 29
David Astle is a cruciverbalist, a crossword setter; one 'lodged happily down the gnarly end' of the cryptograms that are published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age

Gaelic language day in the Scottish parliament

Sat, Nov 22
To mark last week's launch of the Scottish parliament's five-year Gaelic language plan, Holyrood has held two days of activities to promote and celebrate Scottish Gaelic

In defence of platitudes

Sat, Nov 15
'Like linguistic wallpaper', is how Sian Prior once thought of the category of expressions called platitudes; until she found good reason to use those trite, but true, terms herself

Call for a national Indigenous languages policy

Sat, Nov 8
Despite Australian Indigenous languages being among the most endangered in the world, their use in education facilities is becoming evermore restricted, with the focus instead on schools providing better English-language skills to Indigenous students

'Save the Last Word' project

Sat, Nov 1
Collins, the dictionary publishers, have a project underway to see whether 24 obsolete words can be brought back into popular usage

Italian Language in the World Week

Sat, Oct 25
For the 8th annual Italian Language in the World Week, the journalist and author Beppe Severgnini explains this year's theme of the piazza, a particular kind of gathering place that has been described as 'the concrete representation of language'

New English

Sat, Oct 18
Susie Dent, star lexicographer in the longest-running British television quiz show Countdown, describes how, in her just-published Words of the Year, 'the world's financial markets have been one of the biggest generators of vocabulary'

Speech pathology

Sat, Oct 11
The International Guide to Speech Acquisition provides an overview of how children learn to speak a range of dialects of English, as well as 24 languages other than English

The naming of roses

Sat, Oct 4
The rose is an ancient bloom of which there are now thousands of varieties, with hundreds more new types introduced each year

Words as tranquillisers

Sat, Sep 27
On the notion of words as tranquillisers - rest-giving, quietening, calming - in times of disturbing uncertainty

I go, like, 'Whatever!'

Sat, Sep 20
The words 'like' and 'go', when classed as 'new quotatives', have linguistic functions way beyond their traditional meanings

The Republic of Clichs

Sat, Sep 13
An eminently repeatable program in which the poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe discusses clichsthose hackneyed, stereotypic, well-worn words and phrases that we all make such handy use of in our linguistic repertoires, but that are so often and unfairly railed against; blamed for our own reliance on their reliability

'Allah' in Malay

Sat, Sep 6
The word for 'God', in all translations of the Christian Bible into the Malay language, has always been 'Allah'

Indigenous Literacy Day

Sat, Aug 30
On Indigenous Literacy Day, 3 September this year, Australian booksellers and publishers, writers, libraries and schools will join together to raise awareness and resources to promote literacy in English in remote Indigenous communities

Romani: a stateless language

Sat, Aug 23
Between three and five million people speak Romani, the language spoken by the Rom people, yet it originated in India

Picture this!

Sat, Aug 16
Images by the illustrator and author Shaun Tan adorn the Children's Book Council's advertising for this year's Book Week (16-22 August, 2008)

Aboriginal loanwords in Australian English: Lost and found

Sat, Aug 9
Borrowings from Aboriginal languages into Australian English have not been so numerous

Linguistic typology

Sat, Aug 2
The polyglot linguist Alexandra Aikhenvald describes the study of linguistic typology: classifying how languages are structured and comparing them to ascertain recurrent patterns and variations

Me and other languages

Sat, Jul 26
Marking the United Nations-declared International Year of Languages, as well as its goal to preserve and promote linguistic diversity, the linguist Alexandra Aikhenvald tells the story of her own multilingualism, which reflects the story of a country that no longer exists

Saying 'sorry' and being sorry

Sat, Jul 19
The word, 'sorry', has different meanings in Australian English and Aboriginal English

Learning Adnyamathanha language

Sat, Jul 12
There are only some twenty people still fluent in the Adnyamathanya language of the Indigenous people of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia

Join the British Army and learn to read

Sat, Jul 5
Some of those joining up to the British Army these days have less than adequate literacy skills, some as low as those normally expected of five- to seven-year-olds

Spelling costs

Sat, Jun 28
Countries where English is spoken have higher rates of dyslexia than those where languages with more consistent spelling are used

Spelling costs

Fri, Jun 27
Countries where English is spoken have higher rates of dyslexia than those where languages with more consistent spelling are used

Butter me up!

Sat, Jun 21

Who's a lesbian?

Sat, Jun 14
On the case heard last week, in a court in Athens, about the word 'lesbian', in which the plaintiffs are claiming that the prerogative to the term belongs to the inhabitants of the island of Lesbos

'Good American Speech' comes from Melbourne

Sat, Jun 7
How an Australian invented 'Good American Speech' in the golden age of Hollywood

Spelling still not simple

Sat, May 31
The Simplified Spelling Society is celebrating its centenary but without any success at reforming the complexities of written English

Linguistic typology

Sat, May 24
The polyglot linguist, Alexandra Aikhenvald, describes linguistic typology: classifying how languages are structured and comparing them to ascertain recurrent patterns and variations

Accent elimination

Sat, May 17
The daughter of multilingual migrants, American artist Nina Katchadourian has been obsessed with language, translation, communication and miscommunication

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