In the opening chapter of his Introduction to African Languages (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003), George Tucker Childs expresses a frustration that I’m sure will be familiar to many: A linguist? When meeting new people, particularly in the United...

Weblog reader William Taylor draws my attention to the Sino-Platonic Papers, an occasional series edited by Victor H. Mair of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, the purpose of which is to make...

In translating Sergei Chavain’s novel Elnet into English, one of the most difficult aspects of this mainly straightforward tale is the bilingualism of its setting. The simple Mari villagers whose trials and tribulations the novel depicts often come...

This article from the Bashkir Mari newspaper Čolman is inspiring not only because it talks of a young person who continues using the Mari language, but also because it shows that at least some people still enjoy chess and belles lettres, even as...

CNN featured yesterday an article about the Liet International song competition, where contestants sing in European minority languages. Since being established in Friesland in 2002, Liet International has become a hub of the minority language music...