Should we make English the official language in the United States?
The San Mateo Examiner columnist Gregory Kane thinks so. His argument goes as follows: The top spots on the list of major economic powers and of major military powers are not occupied by...
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On the Mari language and Mari schools
Russian Federation is a multi-lingual and multi-ethnic country with over 100 languages being listed for it in the Ethnologue.com. Yet many of these languages are endangered, with more and more speakers...
View ArticleEndangered Languages and the Wikipedia
If a Martian scholar trying to understand the cultural geography of our planet had access solely to the Wikipedia, he’d get a very biased and possibly misleading picture of our human linguistic...
View ArticleLanguage situation and language policy in Latvia
The Ethnologue’s page on Latvia states that there are five living languages spoken in this Baltic country: Latvian, Latvian Sign Language, Liv, Baltic Romani and Eastern Yiddish. But this is true only...
View ArticleOn language on film, again
In a couple of earlier postings, I’ve talked about language in films and specifically about my pet-peeves in this regard. Perhaps I am not supposed to be thinking about this, but I do. And more often...
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“Hen” said, “hen” said
In many Western countries concerns are raised about gender-specific language. The French hurry to get rid of mademoiselle. The Swedes are not far behind in wanting to get rid of ‘him’ and ‘her’. It has...
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“Language Nest” Program to Nurture the Enets Language
A “Language Nest” program has recently opened at the local kindergarten in the village of Potapovo, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The goal of the program is to maintain—and to some extent revive—the Forest...
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Belarusian Language
[This post was originally published in March 2014.] The recent post on the status of the Ukrainian and the Russian languages in Ukraine has generated a discussion of the status of the third—yet often...
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Brawl Breaks Out in Ukrainian Parliament Over Language Law
[This post was originally published in May 2012] On May 24, 2012, debates in Ukraine’s Parliament, the Rada, turned physical after members of opposition parties blocked access to the podium for the...
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Meeting Darwin’s Last Challenge: Matching Genes, Languages, and Geography...
In my previous posts (see here and here), I have analyzed Svetlana Burlak’s critique of Longobardi et al. (2015), posted on the Генофонд.рф website. The second critical response posted there is by...
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