global English
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Posted by Jim Ronald on May 14, 2013
Our series on English as a lingua franca continues with a post from Japan. We asked Jim Ronald, Professor of English Linguistics at Hiroshima Shudo University, to provide a perspective on Japan’s engagement with English. Jim has discussed the subject with four of his students, and they give their views here. __________ What impact is [...]
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Posted by Macmillan Dictionary on May 10, 2013
A big thank you to everyone who took part in our “Say the Word” competition. The brief was to find any words in Beatles songs which are not ‘red words’ in the Macmillan Dictionary. And this isn’t easy. We mentioned in an earlier post that the Beatles’ lyrics are mostly made up of basic, high-frequency [...]
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Posted by Janet Byron Anderson on May 02, 2013
Today’s guest post comes from Janet Byron Anderson. Dr. Anderson is a medical editor and runs Medical Linguistics Consulting. Her book Sick English: Medicalization in the English Language is available at Amazon.com. _______________ If you’re of a certain cast of mind and want to know your prospects for life, death, and happiness you can open [...]
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Posted by Adrian Tennant on May 01, 2013
Back in early 1997 I was working as an English teacher in Quito, Ecuador. My family were over there with me and my daughter – Aliz – would have been 5½ at the time. I don’t think I’m any different from other English language teachers in being fascinated by the way our children pick up [...]
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Posted by Karen Richardson on April 24, 2013
While not having one specific influence on the way I think or work, the word (and plant) dandelion is one that has accompanied me all my life. When I was small, my grandmother taught me and my sister how to tell the time by blowing the seeds of a dandelion clock. Although the method was [...]
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Posted by Miles Craven on April 17, 2013
There is one word in the English language that I will never forget. It’s a word that I had heard of, but I didn’t really know what it meant until it affected me personally. Back in 2008, someone who is very dear to me had a stroke. A stroke is a brain attack. It happens [...]
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Posted by David Crystal on April 10, 2013
Since The Story of English in 100 Words came out in 2011, I’ve been giving talks based upon it to literary festivals. The idea was to choose 100 words, each of which represented a strand in the history of the English language. The hope was that, jigsaw-like, at the end of the book the reader [...]
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Posted by Kati Sule on April 05, 2013
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit [...]
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Posted by Jonathan Marks on April 04, 2013
Our series on English as a lingua franca continues with a post by Jonathan Marks about Poland. Jonathan looks at the ways in which English influences the local language. ______________ Previous posts in this thread were from Denmark, Iceland and Germany, where the national languages are – like English – Germanic, and where, except in [...]
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Posted by Liz Potter on April 03, 2013
When I was a student at Edinburgh University, more years ago than I like to admit, I was sitting in my room in halls one evening with the door open, talking to a friend, when a dark skinny man with an impressive Afro and an equally impressive moustache walked past. “Michael,” he said to my [...]
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