13 March 2025: today I have published my latest blog in which I consider the present status of French as a world language; the French language is secure at home and in Belgium, Switzerland and Canada but elsewhere, whether it is trade and investment, defence considerations or cultural prestige, the arguments for continuing to use French are weakening; the time when French is no longer considered a world language may still be decades away but it is coming into sight; read the blog here
15 February 2025: today I have published my first blog of the year on English as a European lingua franca; despite Brexit, it appears that the use of English as a lingua franca within the EU and the rest of Europe is continuing to increase; however, while some innovative linguistic features have become established, these are principally ones which build on existing trends within British, American or some other variety of English; what is less clear, therefore, is whether a second-language variety of European English is emerging, as some claim (or hope); read the blog here
27 September 2024: my latest blog is on the linguistic landscape of Dieppe, the town in Normandy, France which I know well; as expected, a number of uses of English are to be observed; however, despite the fretting of the Académie Française, the people and businesses of Dieppe seem at ease in their use of English, employing anglicisms when it suits their purposes without any apparent threat to the French language; it is not in the resistance to English but in the (complete or relative) absence of other languages to be observed in public in Dieppe that the obsession with ensuring the primacy of French reveals itself more clearly; read the blog here
2 September 2024: today I have published my latest blog about the results on the Gaelic and Scots languages in the 2022 Scottish Census; the headline figures from the Census suggest a large increase in the number of people with language skills in Gaelic and Scots but I suggest that these represent a wilful deception as to the true status of the languages; Gaelic and to a lesser extent Scots are endangered languages; the most important result of the 2022 Census which was not highly publicised is that for the first time Gaelic is a minority language in its heartland the Western Isles; I further conclude that the Census is not fit for purpose in terms of gaining an accurate picture of the different languages spoken in Scotland; read the blog here
6 August 2024: my latest blog is Language policy in Canada; this blog reflects my interest in language policy towards minority or endangered languages and follows a holiday in Canada in June 2024; the blog concludes that, while officially Canada is a country in which English and French have equal status, efforts are being made to preserve Indigenous languages and respect is paid to the languages of immigrant communities, in practice there is a ‘linguistic hierarchy’ in which English speakers are dominant over French speakers, speakers of Indigenous languages and of the languages of immigrant communities; read the blog here
25 May 2024: my latest blog is What makes a world language?: an appreciation of Nicholas Ostler’s Empires of the Word; in this blog, I attempt to identify the factors behind the growth, spread, decline and occasional disappearance of major languages throughout history; read the blog here