Orthography
The Creole Struggle (Haitian Creole)
Play videoComedic video that captures the struggle of the Haitian diaspora. One person in this video plays someone who seems to be fluent in English and understands kreyòl, but struggles to speak it. The other is fluent in kreyòl and insists upon the conversation taking place in kreyòl. Fluency in kreyòl is also heavily linked with Haitian identity, as seen in how the kreyòl speaker criticizes how the other wears a Haitian flag all the time and displays other well-known markers of Haitian culture, but is not able to speak kreyòl (indicating a discontinuity of identity).
Belizean National Kriol Council Website
The National Kriol Council of Belize promotes the usage of Belizean Kriol, an the English-based Creole language of Belize; they hope to standardize a grammar and and phonemic latin-script orthography for the language and promote its education, use, and legitimacy.
Evolution of the names of metals from Proto-Indo-European to English
This person goes through the names of "iron", "lead", "copper", and "gold", tracing them from Proto-Indo-European to current American English pronunciation. He even has them in IPA! It's pretty cool :) quite unrelated to contact languages (languages in contact, languages, contacting languages, etc. etc.) but I thought it was cool. [Published on 04-14-2025]
Council for German Orthography Enshrines "Idiot's Apostrophe", Move Decried as Another "Normalization of Anglicisms"
This article details some of the immediate reactions to the Council for German Orthography announcing that using an apostrophe to indicate possession will now be considered 'correct' German grammar. Some German grammar purists consider the move to be a result of excessive encroachment of English conventions into the German language, but others point out that this may not actually be the case. [Published on 10-08-2024]
What’s the big deal about mocking someone’s accent?
A discussion of prejudice against certain accents from the perspective of someone in the UK. This mirrors many of the things we have seen about the US -- people less willing to rent apartments, more willing to think someone's guilty of a crime, etc. if they speak in a different accent. It also talks about the "politics of transcription" in the way 'non-standard' accents are transcribed, for example, in subtitles, and suggests that mocking people's accents is seen as a more socially acceptable form of prejudice since it's "not a big deal."
Language Log: A bilingual, biscriptal product designation in Taiwan
An ad on a food label in Taiwan can be read as either Mandarin or Taiwanese, and speakers' competency in each language influences their reading. [Published on 02-07-2014]