When the Danish news agency Ritzau sent out the announcement: “Researcher: Denmark has a new dialect” on the morning of February 4th, my phone started ringing non-stop from 6:20 am. Several Danish news outlets, radio stations etc., including TV2 News, P1, P2, P3, P4, Radio Nova, Radio 4 … ↪
Editor’s note: This is a translation of an article originally written in Danish based on a Danish study. The conclusions thus apply to a Danish context, and whether or not they could be true for other contexts/languages is not considered here.
When journalists write articles on burglaries, they most often … ↪
A friend asked me this question recently. I thought the answer was simple, something along the lines of ‘it is the sound you make in unstressed syllables when your oral articulators are doing nothing and your vocal folds vibrate’. A sort of unmarked setting of the articulatory muscles if you … ↪
A central discipline within linguistics is language description, which in many cases is carried out by white, Western researchers doing fieldwork on languages that are not spoken in the West. It is no secret that this tradition has its roots partly in European colonization and partly in Christian missionary work. … ↪
– but it cannot learn languages attending language classes once a week
Back when I was a cheeky 14-or-so-year-old, I taught my mom how to say this English sentence: I am an old and ugly witch! She didn’t have a higher education, but at the age of almost 50, when … ↪
Can language cause harm? Can a speech act be an act of violence? These are important questions – especially in times when citing the right to freedom of expression is used as a way to legitimize hate speech. This is a tactic employed by people like the Danish right-wing politician … ↪
This week we’re bringing you the English translation of Johanne Nedergård’s Lingoblog post on aphasia in West Greenlandic! The original Danish version can be found here.