Language documentation is increasingly seen as a collaborative process, engaging community members as active participants. Collaborative research produces better documentation that is valuable for both the academic community and the speakers. However, in many communities, speakers and language advocates lack the skills necessary to fully engage in…

The diversity of language in Australia in pre-invasion times is well attested, with at least 300 distinct languages being spoken along with many dialects. At that time, many Indigenous people were multilingual, often speaking at least four languages. Today many of these languages have been lost, with fewer than 15 being learned by children as a…

The relationship between Eastern and Western languages is explored. Possible origins and the spread of language over the Eurasian land mass are discussed. (CW)

This paper presents patterns of accentual alignment in two varieties of Spanish spoken in the Basque Country: Lekeitio Spanish (LS), with speakers whose other native language is Lekeitio Basque (LB); and Vitoria Spanish (VS), with monolingual speakers of Spanish from the city of Vitoria. These patterns are compared to those of Madrid Spanish (MS),…

This brochure explains in lay terms what an accent is and how it occurs, focusing on how learners of English-as-a-Second-language come to have what is perceived as an accent. It begins with an explanation of two kinds of accent: that of a non-native speaker and that of a speaker from a particular region in which a language is spoken. The second…

This report provides data on standard and non-standard African language varieties occurring in urban areas of South Africa, drawn from nine smaller reports. It illustrates the language use patterns in black urban communities and describes the language varieties spoken in them. It was found that the impact of non-standard varieties on the use of…