The debate about the language of instruction in schools has obscured and hampered effective research into improving the learning of students who do not have English as their first language (and more and more). Shanghai is trying to untangle the mangled English of Chinglish. Arabic was never easy, but if the language spoken by some 240 million people with its convoluted verb forms and guttural phonology suddenly starts appearing in Latin script, then things get really complicated. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Well, you should: Germany to promote "language of ideas". Carme Riera on why Catalan's days are numbered. How English erased its roots to become the global tongue of the 21st century. Sexy people speak their own language — and it’s Hebrew, according to America’s top movie. Ever since Partition, Hindi and Urdu have always been pitched as hostile to each other. A review of Merde Encore!: More of the Real French You Were Never Taught at School. Linguistic Apartheid: South African essayist Thomas Dreyer considers the ugly history of his native tongue. Timothy Farrington reviews Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language by Robert McCrum (and more and more and more). The language divide at the heart of a split: Belgium doesn't exist, only Flanders and Wallonia as Dutch and French communites live apart. What does French culture signify these days when there are some 200 million French speakers in the world but only 65 million are actually French? A London-based translation firm is looking for people to help translate Brooklynese. Will banning foreign abbreviations help? Many opponents to the ban say it is difficult to deliberately exclude foreign abbreviations from Chinese people's daily life. Toilets as an object of sociolinguistic research not likely? Think again.
