J’ai désactivé les fonctions de vérification des « fautes » de mon logiciel de traitement de texte pour pouvoir rédiger ce billet sans devoir justifier à la machine que je suis trilingue. J’ai développé une aversion particulièrement aigue envers le correcteur automatique de l’application de messages texte de mon téléphone cellulaire. ¡Suerte que me sé de memoria los shortcuts del Código ASCII! (Alt+173 pour le point d’exclamation à l’envers; Alt+162 para la “o” con acento…)

Feeling libre de pensar

A few years ago, I was attending a conference run by L’Association canadienne des professionnels de l’immersion (ACPI). It was an excellent conference. The quality of the workshops was high, it was extremely well organized, and everyone had a great time at the events. I would recommend the ACPI conferences to any French immersion teacher or administrator, and I have great respect for all of the fantastic projects run by the hard-working people at ACPI. That conference also helped me to understand why I’ve never fully fit under that organization’s umbrella despite the fact that one of my main areas of research and work is immersion teacher education. The light bulb went off when, in one of the opening talks, the since-deceased historian, Serge Bouchard, greeted the ACPI crowd as ‘francophones et francophiles.’ I looked out at the room, and everyone smiled back at him, many nodding enthusiastically. But I couldn’t relate to either of those labels.

Ni Francophone, Ni Francophile

WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging applications worldwide, with over 2.5 billion active users (Statista, 2021). Through WhatsApp, users mobilize the different languages in their linguistic repertoire to voice their opinions about contextual political or socio-cultural events, or to share insights into their personal lives. They also use different mediums of communication (i.e., voice note, written message). The COVID-19 pandemic has increasingly turned digital mediums into an essential tool to accomplish day-to-day tasks. To illustrate how WhatsApp can be used as a creative tool for teaching language, I created a video that provides a contextual example of the exchange of verbal and non-verbal messages of a group of friends over a common WhatsApp group in Beirut, Lebanon.

WhatsApp as a Learning Tool: Linguistic mélange bi Lubnan

Everything starts in the middle.

Consequences of the roads before, pave the way for what comes next.

Always in the middle.

This piece started two years ago.

It’s not finished.

It’s in the middle.

I wanted to answer her question:

Where do you come from?

But without words.

I could’ve written this piece with thousands of words.

Hundreds of metaphors.

But I made the decision to:

Turn away from words.

PART 1  “Rocks Are Our Oldest Teachers”

The wall was the wall of the waiting room in the Winnipeg CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) station, sometime in the 1890s, perhaps. The station, around 1905, can be seen to be an impressive edifice. A nation-building edifice.

The intended reader of the writing on this particular wall was my great-grandfather, Wasyl Antonichuk, a young man at that time. He was part of the first great wave of Ukrainian immigration to Canada. As the Canadian Encyclopedia tells us, “The initial influx came as the Canadian government promoted the immigration of farmers….The first major immigration (170,000 rural poor, primarily from Galicia and Bukovina) occurred between 1891 and 1914.”

The writing on the wall was in Ukrainian

I have not written down at great length what we did at the nēhiyawak Language Experience (nLE) summer immersion camp 2022 until now. It is mostly out of ‘busyness’ in language revitalization work, and also the heaviness that comes with it too. As I think and write out these thoughts, I prepare miyākasikēwin (prayer and smudge) so that I can do this in the most humble of ways. This grassroots initiative has been my most gratifying work that gives me much joy and others too. The camp plays a major role in maintaining our land-identity and we are engaging in a long time, kiyās practice, that is, living and being on the land and speaking Cree naturally.

(nLE) nēhiyawak Language Experience

Two-thirds of the world’s 7000-7500 languages are Indigenous languages. One-third of Indigenous languages are experiencing language loss and “as many as 90% are predicted to fall silent by the end of the century” (McCarty, 2018, p. 23). However, languages do not simply “die”, nor do they magically disappear. All languages change over time, but language shift, endangerment, or “death” is not natural nor is it unavoidable. Languages are endangered and threatened due to inequitable sociopolitical structures and deliberate processes of oppression, discrimination, and violence. In this BILD blog post, I will illustrate some of the causes of Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) language endangerment. Gàidhlig is an endangered Indigenous language in Alba (Scotland) with approximately 57,000 speakers, around 1% of the Scottish population.

Languages do not “die”, they are persecuted: A Scottish Gael’s perspective on language “loss”

There has been a contemporary and resurgent interest in the language of Black America. Reports involving African American (Vernacular) English 1 (AAE) can be found today in globally syndicated media outlets. The Washington Post, for example, published an August
2022 article for which I and my colleague Jamaal Muwwakkil were interviewed, detailing contemporary appropriation of Black American language . Many are discovering for the first time that the linguistic features often heard in Hip-Hop music or in motion pictures are not simply “slang” or “broken English,” but rather belong to a complex and systematic language variety. Scholars of language, particularly in linguistics, have published copious research on the linguistic variety of Black America throughout the past 50 or so years, including technical descriptions, histories, and social implications of its use in such domains as housing, law, education, employment, healthcare, and beyond. The 2015 Oxford Handbook of African American Language contains an encyclopedic account of research on AAE. Scores of individuals—scholars, writers, artists, and so on—have contributed to the representation and study of AAE. In this regard, some of my recent research has focused on one early figure who is towering in some respects, yet underexamined in others: Zora Neale Hurston.

Zora Neale Hurston and the Linguistic Documentation of Black America

What is in a recipe?
Few of us dwell over this ubiquitous form of literature, yet recipes are behind almost every meal we have, and forming the foundation of our eating habits.
Those of us fortunate enough to have friends or relatives who know their kitchens like the back of their hands may have had the chance to receive some of their prized recipes. Perhaps great-aunt Flores’ renowned soufflé, whose vague measurements requiring “some eggs” and “flour as needed”, eluded you; just as your friend Minh’s “2.5 g of cinnamon” tested the limits of your kitchen scale. It may well be that trying to reproduce your grandmother’s recipe, you find that your version simply does not taste the same as when she used to make it.

A Recipe for Success: How Women Have Kept Their Heritage Alive Through Cookbooks

My name is Marlene Hale and I am from the Wet’suwet’en Nation, born in Smithers, BC north.

I am a Chef/ Activist/Filmmaker.

I am speaking today on “The Making of a Matriarch.”

Sometimes pop culture makes us feel like there are only two options for us as women…you’re either a young maiden or an old matron.

My circle of women and I are on a mission to demystify the process of aging gracefully and transforming ourselves into strong feminine archetypes.

We have created a space where we can come together to share our experiences, knowledge and tips gained from initiation and from life.

This is a space for you to feel supported on your individual journey as a woman and a place for you to recharge yourself through connection with other women.

The Making of a Matriarch

By: Janan Chan 陳臻
What began as an uncomfortable question led me down a research rabbit hole that has changed how I view one of my teenage obsessions. Around the age of thirteen, my father bought me Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward, 2009), a first-person-shooter war video game rated for players at least seventeen years old. First-person-shooter (FPS) is a genre of video game where players look through the eyes of a shooter, often with the barrel of a gun occupying the lower screen, ready to shoot and kill virtual enemies. FPS games often feature online multiplayer matches, where players are placed into opposing teams and run around a circumscribed location to complete objectives such as reaching a target number of kills. Despite the hours I lost in running around these locations, it was only recently, while watching gameplay from the 2022 Call of Duty entry in the series, that I noticed the aesthetic choices of these locations. On the walls of narrow corridors and on the facades of bombed buildings was graffitied text which looked like Arabic. I wondered then, how would it feel for someone who knows Arabic to see this text? Why did the game designers choose Arabic?

The Writing on the Walls: “Foreign” Languages in US-Made War Video Games

In the opening of Tuck's (2009) article, she recounts a popular story from her childhood. Inspired by her approach, I highlight a legendary character from stories in Jamaican and Caribbean folklore: Anansi. Originating in West Africa and brought to the Caribbean by slaves, Anansi, the trickster spider, appears in numerous stories as the main character. He is renowned for his mischief, cunning reputation and his ability to outsmart even the sharpest minds. So much so, that the term Anansi is now used in everyday speech to refer to someone who is a trickster and even inspiring the term Anansi-ism in scholarly literature to refer to trickery in people or systems.

Of Labels, Marginalised Youth and Folklore: Lessons from Anansi

I have been following the work of Mike Mena for a while, as we both share a passion for metal music. I have found his work fundamentally important as a way to challenge hegemonic ways of knowledge mobilization; his famous YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@MikeMena ) is a great example of how academic knowledge can be disseminated in other non-text based forms.

Counter Soft Linguistic Terrorism (by Dr Yecid Ortega)

Sitting with my mom in her room at her retirement home, my mom points to an unopened letter with a return to sender sticker. "Did you send me this?" my mom demands. It takes a moment to understand what I'm looking at.
"I think you tried to send this to me," I tell her. "Can we read it together? Did you write this for me or for Moster Karen in Denmark?" My mom's sister, my Aunt Karen, died long ago.
"How the hell should I know?" she demands.
Sometimes, my mom asks me who I am. Last week, she said, "I keep calling you Karen. I know you're not Karen, but you remind me of her." On her wall, my mom switched up a picture frame. My oldest brother, Oluf, is at the top, followed by my brother Thomas. I used to be in the bottom frame, but Mom replaced me with a photo of her sister. "Like a movie where you disappear from your own life," my brother Oluf remarked.

Losing and Finding Words and Connection: My Danish Mother and Dementia by Karen Andrews

Re/framing the colonial past

Wewe ni mwali wa nani? (Whose daughter-in-law are you?) Walking along a path in our rural Tanzanian home, this question from a group of women gave me a warm sense of comfort, with their base assumption that I am home, I belong. After I had named Ma Sirima and they had energetically placed me with smiles in the Mmbo clan, with fingers pointing to where this places me geographically, they said, Kumbe yule ni mtoto wako huko shuleni! Tulikuwa tunaulizana yule mzungu ni mtoto wa nani. (Oh that is your child at the school! We were wondering whose mzungu [white] child that is.) There is no anonymity for an mzungu, or her mixed-race Chagga children, in this social context.

Home amongst the migomba, mifereji, and masale:  On identity, mothering, and raciolinguistic othering

From the Sea to the Classroom

万花筒: 我的 poème translinguistique

Being seen and belonging: Reflections from a summer of 茶道

Replicating Colonial Narratives: Second-Generation Immigrant Representation in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

Joël écrit : En somme, les quelques propositions didactiques qui sont faites ici devraient permettre à l’enseignant de rendre l’élève plus actif dans son apprentissage du système verbal français. En ne misant pas exclusivement sur la mémorisation de patrons de conjugaison, ce type d’enseignement peut aider l’élève plurilingue à développer la variété des connaissances qui sous-tendent l’utilisation des verbes en français et, donc, à s’engager efficacement et avec confiance dans des pratiques communicatives.

http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/cinq-pistes-pour-enseigner-le-verbe-en-contexte-plurilingue-by-dr-joel-thibeault/#more-3310

Cinq pistes pour enseigner le verbe en contexte plurilingue - Joël  Thibeault

"Food connects us to the land even when we are no longer there.

For thousands of years, food and people have travelled across borders.
I am made of the world’s many peoples, but never appreciated that the world has been feeding me all my life. I have a belly full of the world. It grew these limbs and these hands—in fact, it’s been nurturing my development my entire life, and all of my relations."

http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/a-love-letter-to-the-land-by-rhonda-chung/#more-3510

A Love Letter to the Land

http://bild-lida.ca/blog/
*Belonging, Identity, Language, Diversity Research Group (BILD) 
*Groupe de Recherche Langage, Identité, Diversité, Appartenance (LIDA)

We want to start conversations about local happenings and experiences in and outside of Montreal. We consider and write about the world around us from a critical sociolinguistic perspective. We welcome you to join the conversation and share your own local perspective(s).

BILD / LIDA

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