The Diacritics Affair

Oct 19, 2016 by

The Diacritics Affair

[This is a guest post, written by Roger Fernàndez from Barcelona, Spain] Can a few simple accents become the center of a controversy that occupy headlines? In Catalonia, yes. Catalan is the language of this northeast Spain region,...

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Making my case

Dec 26, 2011 by

Making my case

In the last couple of posts, I’ve discussed the issue of grammatical complexity and have shown that even if an objective measure of such complexity is absent, languages clearly differ as to which grammatical distinctions they...

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Languages of Italy: part 2

Sep 8, 2010 by

In yesterday’s posting I discussed linguistic varieties spoken Italy and noted that there is a divide between northern Italy and central/southern Italy. The development of northern Italian dialects was influenced by the Langue...

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Languages of France

Sep 2, 2010 by

In yesterday’s posting I mentioned that nation-states, which are typically conceived of as having “one nation, one language”, are rarely if ever so. And what better example of a nation-state than France! When I ask...

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Language and ethnicity: Spain

Sep 1, 2010 by

Undoubtedly, language constitutes an important ingredient in one’s ethnic or national identity. What is essentially the same language, may be perceived — by speakers themselves — as distinct languages, based on...

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