Africa is home to amazing languages. In this entertaining video, I go on a linguistic safari around the languages of Africa, exploring their complex grammar, magnificent array of speech sounds (including the unique click consonants) and some of their home-grown writing systems. Semitic languages span three continents and I look at how Amharic, the main language of Ethiopia, changes verbs at the b… Read More
In May 2018, I had the great pleasure of being a speaker at TEDx Chula Vista, in Southern California. https://youtu.be/pL_jzxpRaEU I say it was a great pleasure, and it mostly was. The audience were fabulously warm and welcoming. They laughed in all the right places and none of the wrong ones. They were incredibly patient when I forgot my words, resulting in a long pause which the editors th… Read More
My great friend Joke, aka Elfy Jo, a multicultural polyglot magical musician, recently interviewed me on her radio show. The conversation careers around topical hairpin bends, as it always does on Joke's red sofa in Guangzhou – usually with the assistance of a G&T. We talk about our shared love of languages, discuss the power of coaching and delight in human diversity. Along the way, we… Read More
I managed to drag myself out of bed to get interviewed at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning by the inimitable Ernest Hackmon on his Importance of Being show. There was lots of humourous banter. Apparently, I am 'linguistic'. That explains a lot! We covered a lot of ground: from my three-year-old self watching Buongiorno Italia and नै ज़िन्दगी/نئی زندگی, to the oft-recurring theme of espionage.… Read More
Puns and plays on words are a huge feature of Chinese. There are lots of words that sound similar, and Chinese characters enable people to make visual puns too – playing with characters that look alike or share visual elements. In the year of the dog, which just started, many greetings involve the play on words between wàng 旺, meaning abundance, and wāng 汪, the sound that dogs make. Yes,… Read More