Jabal al-Lughat

According to Ethnologue - or even to the HCA - Chenoua (Tacenwit) is one of the larger Berber/Amazigh languages of Algeria, spoken west o...

" Nə-s-k-ibən " (2SG-NEG-anymore-appear) "You don't appear any more!" I heard this sentence several times during my...

It was a frustrating experience reading Poplack's Borrowing: Loanwords in the Speech Community and in the Grammar . On the one hand, it...

I recently came across a video, apparently from the little town of Souani near Tlemcen, of a poet, one Mohamed Tlemceni, performing a public...

The most sociolinguistically interesting protest song that I've come across since the last post is also among the earliest (28 February)...

This little clip, of sociolinguistic as well as non-linguistic interest, has gone viral in the Algerian online world (via Twitter ): The...

While I was doing my PhD at SOAS, I found myself one term helping teach a field methods class focusing on Uyghur , a Turkic language closely...

On a recent trip to Tamanrasset, Algeria's southernmost significant city, I was not surprised to see lots of signs in Arabic and French,...

As we reached the stop by the supermarket the other day, I told my son in English "Now we're getting off the bus." This caugh...

I really don't have the time to post these days, but I couldn't resist letting you all know about a strong contender for the most ri...

There's an article by Nathan Robinson that's been going around recently titled " Jordan Peterson: The Intellectual We Deserve ...

Two years ago, the Algerian state finally decided to make Tamazight (Berber) an official language . In practice, this has not by any means ...

In the course of the recent media furore in France sparked by Mennel Ibtissem 's rendition of "Hallelujah", a TV journalist n...

The Algerian government recently decided to make the Amazigh New Year (really the Julian New Year) - coming up tomorrow - an official holid...

In Oran (Algeria) when I was there a few days ago, political party posters were everywhere, advertising the recent local elections. Oran is...

In 1609, 117 years after conquering Granada, the Spanish state decreed the expulsion of all "Moriscos" - that is, everyone descend...

There are plenty of factors that one naturally expects to condition linguistic variation: age, sex, location, class, ethnicity, religion - i...

In Arabic as in English, social networks have a constantly flowing undercurrent of poorly sourced, manipulative stories being shared and res...

For decades, Algeria has been characterised by a divide between "Arabophone" and "Francophone" intellectuals . The divi...

"Write what you know" is what they tell aspiring writers. If you're an English speaker who made it through high school, you s...