The world is becoming increasingly connected, but local accents still define who we are.
Statues like these - here Paul Kruger at Pretoria’s Church Square - are a reminder of a time when Afrikaners were the ruling class in South Africa.
Mike Hutchings/Reuters
Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis that’s pitted its English speaking citizens against the central government could result in the country being denied preferential trade agreements with the US.
The terribly good Brief Encounter (1945).
The BFI/Eagle Lion Distributors
To understand the full scale of the world’s linguistic diversity, we should be thinking about languages and how speakers relate to them.
Far fewer Americans speak a second language than in most other developed countries – and the problem starts in the classroom.
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Whether it’s due to native language loss or unsupported high school curricula, the lack of bilingualism in the US is notable. Why can’t more Americans speak another language? How should that change?
Language and herbs travel thanks to the Rastafarian community around Cape Town.
David Harrison/Mail & Guardian
Ethical engagement in multilingual communication is about mutual respect. More importantly, it’s about shaping a shared future through face-to-face communication.
The small city of Hazard, Kentucky, rests in the heart of Appalachia.
AP Photo/David Stephenson
The founder of the West Virginia Dialect Project hopes to debunk some of the myths about the way Appalachian people speak and instill pride in a rich, oft-maligned culture.
It’s not enough for textbooks just to be present in a classroom. They must support learning.
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Textbooks in sufficient quantities are effective in improving the quality of education but in Africa language poses a problem to how pupils interact with the material they are taught.
Black South African students need fewer excuses and more support from universities.
Kim Ludbrook/EPA
Students from South Africa’s public school system battle to cope with the rigorous demands of any university degree without genuine, committed support.
Year 12 students in NSW will study fewer texts in their English course.
Dan Peled/AAP
Schools and universities in post-colonial contexts still operate within the logic of coloniality. This is starkly illustrated by their language policies.
English has been reshaped in Africa’s exceptionally multilingual context.
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In Africa, standard English dominates in formal institutions. But in everyday usage it is supplanted by the continent’s abundance of languages – and the varieties of English these gave rise to.
In South Africa there’s a value judgment attached to students who take part in universities’ English for Academic Purposes programmes. This shouldn’t be the case.
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire wrote extensively about education that oppresses.
Nic Bothma/EPA
The lessons Paulo Freire learnt nearly 90 years ago and the theories he developed from painful personal experience still resonate across Africa’s schooling systems today.