Ingrid Piller writes:…
In the year in which I’ve been away from the UAE, the fervor for the use of “Arabian Gulf” instead of “Persian Gulf” has certainly heated up.
2010
A gulf by any other name
New wave linguistic innovation
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Hugh Lunn thinks young Australians speak unimaginatively. We, he claims in his new book Words Fail Me, don’t use all those wonderful words of old that made Australian English so cute, but use far too many words and phrases from American popular culture. I say “we” here, because I [...]
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Pavlovian response
Piers Kelly writes: …It’s official. The great Aussie meringue dessert we know as a Pavlova, actually originated in New Zealand. Except that none of this is really news.
READ MOREUntie mi, Barry
She got a text message from a Kriol-speaking relative but she didn’t know who. The number wasn’t stored in her phone. So she replied with a ‘who’s this?’ type message and then the reply came, “Untie mi, Barry”
READ MOREDeep verticals
Piers Kelly writes: A recent Fairfax email from Don Churchill to all staff begins: Dear colleagues This morning you have all received email and video messages from Fairfax Media CEO Brian McCarthy explaining the new strategy which the company’s Board, staff and senior management have been involved in developing. To briefly repeat Brian’s key message, [...]
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Walcome to Malbourne
Debbie Loakes, John Hajek and Janet Fletcher write:…A curious transformation is happening to Victoria’s vowels, and it’s not going unnoticed. For a while now, many Victorians have been confusing “el” sounds with “al” sounds, so that celery sounds like salary, pellet like palate and telly like tally. In other words, Victorians don’t know if they’re Allan or Ellen.
READ MORECracked on Language Mind-Control
It’s hardly surprising that the idea that your language controls the way you think keeps coming up again and again. It’s a topic that grabs the attention of even the most faintly-linguistically inclined people. Language affects how you think?! Whaaaaaa?! Mind trip!
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NT education policy is a giant croc
From the forensic team on the Chamberlain case, to the UFO-spotting and croc-wrestling of the NT News, the Territory has a solid reputation for frontier fringery. The allergy to evidence comes from the top down. Just yesterday, a story in The Australian pointed out that the plummeting attendance rates in some Northern Territory schools is linked [...]
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And the UN Award goes to… (how do you say that in Gumbaynggirr?)
I love statements like the one Aden Ridgeway has made. Influencing language policy isn’t just the stuff of governments, lobby groups, reports and other potentially snore-worthy documents. Language policy decisions and changes also happen on community and personal levels.
READ MOREVideo: mockery in the Maldives
News outlets this morning are all over the story of a couple renewing the vows in a ‘traditional’ ceremony at a luxury resort in the Maldives:
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