William Steed writes: The 2011 census data is out. One of the questions it asked is about the language spoken at home. It reveals some things about the Australian populace that some people may find surprising. Hopefully, they also find it heartening. Across Australia, 20.4% of households reported speaking more than one language at home [...]
READ MOREJune, 2012
Bogan in the Oxford English Dictionary
Lauren Gawne writes: Every three months the Oxford English Dictionary announces a brace [Thanks to pedants Terry Reilly and Cyberfish - Ed.] a bevy of words that have found a new and legitimising home in its venerable list. This quarter there were such excellent additions as bling, dance-off and Super PAC, as well as those [...]
READ MOREDialects in the mist
ABC’s Jane Cowan ran into some accent issues in Alabama, USA. She also discovered the joy of discussing language differences in a new place. Discussing and laughing together over different words and pronunciations is a great way to break the ice in a new place. Everyone can find something that’s distinctive about how they speak where they’re from – a word, a particular way of saying something or odd sayings.
READ MORE
Karri-borlbme kun-wok ~ Learning language
Greg Dickson writes: We’re very happy to spread the word about a great new initiative from Western Arnhem Land that gives us all the chance to learn a bit of an Aboriginal language: Bininj Gunwok*. Through the Bininj Gunwok Language Project, you can now subscribe to an email list and receive regular bits of vocab, grammatical info [...]
READ MORE
