European languages

Book review: ‘European Language Matters’ by Peter Trudgill

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Skaermbillede 2022 01 30 kl. 18.34.12

There’s a particular experience that I have encountered many times during my life, and which you might recognise from your own, that I tend to think of as ‘the geographic eureka’. I’m walking in an area that I’m familiar with, and I decide to stray from the path I know in order to explore some road less travelled. I’ll walk around for a stretch of time, every turn or fork in the road leading me to new areas with varying degrees of interest, and eventually I turn the corner that, completely unexpectedly, puts me back on familiar territory; which is when the feeling hits me: “Oh, so that’s where I am!”. Peter Trudgill’s newest book, European Language Matters, consistently … ↪

Liet International 2020 in Aabenraa, Nordschleswig/Denmark: songs in 20 languages 

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Zaman

UPDATE: Because of the Corona virus, the event has been cancelled/postponed.

The line-up of 20 participants of the 13th edition of Liet International 2020 on 3 and 4 April 2020 in Apenrade/Aabenraa, Denmark is set. 45 songs were submitted for Liet International 2020, the song festival for regional and minority languages. These 45 songs show a huge rise in applications, and showing a growing interest in Liet International.

A selection jury consisting of Anneke Holwerda (The Netherlands), chairman of the jury at Frisian song festival Liet 2019, Laura Fosten (United Kingdom), member of the Cornish band The Rowan Tree, winner of Liet International 2018, and Uffe Iwersen (Denmark), culture consultant at Bund Deutscher Nordschleswiger, the organisers of Liet International 2020, … ↪

Culture and language of the Kalasha

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kalashabook

Denmark has a special connection with the Kalasha people in northern Pakistan. The Danish scholar of religious sciences Halfdan Siiger visited the Kalasha people in 1948, and he wrote a book – not yet published – about their religion. Later, the anthropologists Mytte Fentz and Svend Castenfeldt undertook field work in the Kalasha valleys. They wrote several articles and books about their observations, in particular Myth Fentz’s wonderful book The Kalasha: Mountain People of the Hindu Kush, published in Denmark at Forlag Rhodes.

The Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus possesses a lot of objects from the people, including some gand’aw, or wooden sculptures of ancestors. In addition, Copenhagen linguist Ida Mørch and Jan Heegård visited the area and studied … ↪

Around Europe in Sixty Languages by Gaston Dorren. Book review.

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Dorren cover lingo

This post is a book review of Gaston Dorren’s Lingo: A Language Spotter’s Guide to Europe AND Lingo. Around Europe in Sixty Languages. First edition 2014. New York: Grove Press. Accompanying website: https://languagewriter.com/.

A friend of mine went all the way to the United States and all she bought for me was this book, “Lingo”. The similarity between the name of this blog, Lingoblog.dk and the book is purely coincidental. The author of Lingo is the Dutch language journalist Gaston Dorren.

Lingo is an English adapted version of his Dutch book Taaltoerisme, or “language tourism”, which Dorren wrote a few years ago. A respected friend and colleague had read the book in its Dutch version, and his judgment … ↪