01/01/16–08/01/16 Headlines Algeria’s draft revision to its constitution, which was approved by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, has raised Tamazight to the status of national and official language, alongside Arabic. Tamazight is spoken by the Berber minority in the Arab majority country. Schools…

18/12/15–25/12/15 Headlines Asia Times reports on ISIS’ latest nasheed (‘chant’) produced in song, this time in Chinese. The song, with its repetitive lyrics and catchy—almost hypnotic—melody, contains a radical message of war. The Joan Ganz Cooney Centre and The New America…

11/12/15–18/12/15 Headlines Flüchtlinge (‘refugees’) is the word of the year for the Society for the German Language, in light of the exacerbated migrant crisis in many parts of the world today. Among the top 10 choices (German) this year was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s…

04/12/15–11/12/15 Headlines Scientists at McGill University (Canada) found that French-speaking children who were exposed to Chinese language at a very young age showed bilingual brain activity in fMRI scans later in life—even if they cannot speak a Chinese language. The…

27/11/15–04/12/15 Headlines Using the Uni gadget, an automatic American Sign Language (ASL) translator that can be attached on a tablet, deaf persons can now better communicate with hearing people who don’t know ASL! Uni records sign language gestures and translates them into speech,…

In the field of academic publishing, things often move slowly. Papers take a year or two to get to print, after rounds of editing going back and forth between reviewers and authors. Which is why I was surprised when the…

20/11/15–27/11/15 Headlines In Maioli city in west Taiwan, a radio station has initiated a programme to encourage Miaoli’s young people to speak Hakka. 大漢之音FM97.1 (‘Voice of Hakka Radio FM97.1’) hosts the “Heinai” (Hakka for ‘it’s me’) programme in a bid to encourage a thriving Hakka…

Yes, I am from Singapore, and no, I do not speak Singaporean (or its lesser-known dialects, Singaporeanese, Singaporisch, Singaporlish, and Singaporan). The reason for this is, quite plainly, that there is no such language. You’ll honestly be amazed at the…

13/11/15–20/11/15 Headlines A team from Newcastle University appears to have found that both monkeys and humans appear to be able to recognise the sequential nature of language after observing both species’ brain activity in response to several “made up language sequences”. As team leader Chris…

Johan Rooryck has been executive editor of Lingua, one of linguistics’ foremost journals, for 17 of its 66 years of existence. He cuts a striking profile against a backdrop of his hundreds of books as I speak to him via…

06/11/15–13/11/15 Headlines Turkey’s first Kurdish search engine: Serketin is now live! Serketin—meaning ‘success’ in the Kurdish language—took five years of research and technical development, and would enable video sharing and functionality in other Turkish language like Armenian, Laz, and Zazaki in the future, according…

30/10/15–06/11/15 Headlines For four years, Punjabi has been the third most spoken language in Canada where only 1.3% of the population are native Punjai speakers. After the recent election of 20 Punjabi-speaking lawmakers—who make up 6% of the House of Commons—Canada includes…