Louise Rolland

Save the date! On Tuesday 24 March at 2pm UK time, Dr Paul Clist from University of East Anglia will present "Bilinguals in the Lab: Why Does Randomising Language Affect Cooperation?" It draws on experimental work in Uganda. Join us! Register here: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/k16YaHVH1U

AI’s ‘memorisation’ problem: the novels it can’t forget Research that shows LLMs memorise more training data than previously thought raises questions about copyright infringement

‘The world’s top AI models can be prompted to generate near-verbatim copies of bestselling novels, raising fresh questions about the industry’s claim that its systems do not store copyrighted works.’
www.ft.com/content/e4b7...

Event poster for 'Literature and identities in Moldova, Romania and the diaspora with Tatiana Țîbuleac' with images of book covers by Tatiana Țîbuleac. In-person and online.

We are pleased to invite you to an evening talk with bestselling author and EU Prize for Literature winner Tatiana Țîbuleac, who will discuss how #Moldovan, #Romanian and diasporic history and identities reflect throughout her writing.

🗓️ 13 March at 5pm
➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/arts-humanit...

International Mother Language Day: Youth Voices - NALDIC On International Mother Language Day (IMLD), many of us working in multilingual education celebrate the day by developing, refreshing or sharing our resources

Great blog by Denise Amankwah, highlighting how to involve young people in planning initiatives that explore and celebrate multilingualism: naldic.org.uk/internationa...
#NALDIC #Multilingualism #RepresentationMatters #YouthVoices #Collaboration #Languages #Lingsky #Langsky

I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day | Anonymous Objectification, hate, rape threats: the politicians debating online abuse mean well, but to truly understand, they need to see what I see

The daily barrage of misogyny, as encountered by a 15 year old on social media.
#Misogyny #YesAllWomen #HateSpeech #StopHatingWomen #SocialMedia #VAWG #Discourse #UK
The Guardian

400 jobs at risk. A campus set to close.

This film explains what’s happening at the University of Essex and why staff, students and the local community are organising to stop it.

📍 Southend rally | 5 February

English lessons shouldn’t be an immigration test – why the UK’s new policy risks deepening exclusion The UK government says tougher English rules will aid integration. Esol experts warn they risk turning language learning into a tool of exclusion.

Excellent article about how language acquisition is positioned as a test of one's commitment to citizenship, disregarding the reality of language learning - and facilitating discrimination/abuse on linguistic grounds: theconversation.com/english-less...
#lingsky #immigration #English #policy #ESOL

Call for Applications: Wasafiri Translator in Residence – Endangered Languages We are excited to open applications for a UK-based Translator in Residence working with/in Endangered Languages — and invite proposals from translators…

Job opportunity for translator specialising in translating from an endangered language into English, in any genre. The endangered language can belong to oral or semi-oral traditions, collaborative or community-based practices, and non-standardised forms.
www.wasafiri.org/news-and-eve...
#langsky

It’s Sunday and the world is burning, but you can’t fight if you’re burned out, so take care of yourself. Read. Create. Check on your friends and family. Spend time with your pet. Go for a walk. Watch a movie. Eat tacos. Hope you have a good one.

Reform UK’s London mayor candidate condemned for burqa stop and search remarks Laila Cunningham accused of endangering Muslims after saying it ‘has to be assumed’ people hiding their face for a criminal reason

Abhorrent islamophobia from Reform UK, and as usual linguistic diversity is painted as un-British. We are all free to express ourselves in whichever language we please: shock, horror, "The signs are written in a different language"!
#hatespeech #lingsky #multilingual
share.google/9zKXeZTVQoaq...

Gĩkũyũ word of the day: "ngarĩ" (meaning leopard in English). According to the Rebel Girls book about the late Kenyan activist Dr Wangarĩ Maathai, Wa-ngarĩ means "belonging to the leopard". Gĩkũyũ is a tonal language spoken by over 4 million people in Kenya.
#Gĩkũyũ #Bantu #Kenya #langsky

Hehe, his friend Ξανθή taught him that word and it was an obvious connection for him as a French speaker. He is a prankster and languages have become part of the game 😂

Spain decides Spanish is too hard, makes English official language

! Murcia Today - Spain Decides Spanish Is Too Hard, Makes English Official Language share.google/WXmXiThI8EXj...
#Langsky #España

Finland Gave Two Groups Identical Payments. One Experienced 33% Better Mental Health. New research from Finland's basic income experiment proves that simply trusting people with money—not just the money itself—significantly improves mental health

New article from me today about the new study of Finland's basic income experiment that found recipients of unconditional income had 33% better mental health than the control group that got the same amount of money with conditions. I also dive into a lot of other evidence about UBI and mental health

This one is for you, @alexantrageo.bsky.social !! Joys to come 😅

My 5 y.o. asking a family member, in English : "What Greek word is the same in French?" Received the answer : "McDonald's!" 🤣
Of course, he was hoping to elicit the word κακά / caca... C'est kif-kif! 🤣
#translanguaging #langsky #Greek #French #English #humour

Please support staff at the university of Essex, who are at risk of massive redundancy in particular in my former department of Language and Linguistics, by sharing this letter and writing to your MP to express concern if you live in any of the constituencies near the University. #Essex #HE #Lingsky

📣We're launching the MCCRA research workshop series!

🎓The inaugural talk, 27 January at 2pm UK time, will be by Prof. Kristian Gleditsch.

✏️Sign up below to get invited to our monthly online research talks on armed conflict and/or language in African countries.
forms.office.com/e/k16YaHVH1U

Babel No53: Out now!

📯 Babel No53 is online now! Trinidadian English Creole, Estonian humour, the roots of fruits, and much more

🖥️ Digital subscribers can read on at: cloud.3dissue.com/18743/41457/...

✉️ Print copies will be posted out through December

🏪 Subscribe at babelzine.co.uk

Poster for a festive trail at the Queen's House, Greenwich, London, UK. Features two paintings and an image of a stocking, plus text explaining how to take part in the trail until 4 January 2026.

Partial photo of a blue and white Christmas stocking with a sign bearing the number 2 and the question "Who learnt ancient and modern languages?". Part of a festive trail at the Queen's House, Greenwich, London, UK.

Guess which historical figure learnt ancient and modern languages? Part of a festive trail at the Queen's House, in Greenwich. Merci, Royal Museums Greenwich, for highlighting language learning as a human endeavour throughout the ages!👏🏻
#Langsky #mfl #ancientlanguages #history #Greenwich #UK #quiz

Allez, on fait monter l'aïoli! 🔥
#Provençal #France #langsky #mfl

It's official: 400 redundancies and a campus closure. At-risk staff will get a letter next week. Absolutely no serious consideration of any of the union's counterproposals.

Please share widely.

🔊 Denise Amankwah (University of Essex): 'The Languages we Keep: African Parents’ Perspectives on Heritage Language Maintenance in the UK'
📅 Thursday 04 December 2025, 12-1 pm
💻 lnkd.in/eZKHWecX
#multilingualism #UK #lingsky #langsky #Africa

Today, I receptioned (also a gallicism!) a pair of snow mittens & briefly thought of them as "muffles" (-> French "moufles")! 🤣 Am I in bilingual mode, translanguaging or just sleep-deprived? This after a morning of writing in English, whereas snow is very much in my French domain, QED mash-up! ❄️

Reviewing Research on the Teaching and Learning of Arabic as an Additional Language: Challenges, Opportunities and Implications

Our @education.ox.ac.uk
Applied Linguistics Lunchtime Seminars continue Tues 4th Nov 13-14:00GMT with a review of the research on Arabic as an additional language by Drs @robertwoore.bsky.social and Anna-Maria Ramezanzadeh. Join us online via Teams - details: www.education.ox.ac.uk/event/review...

The men who raised the flags Nigel Farage says this summer’s movement was led by ‘ordinary people’ expressing their patriotism. That’s not what we found

"it is striking how many of the key players we have looked into — the people who have gone out of their way to put up hundreds of flags — seem anything but ordinary."

manchestermill.co.uk/the-men-who-...

An illustration by Tosin Akinkunmi from the front cover of What Happens Online - a boy smiling and leaning his face on his fist as he wears a gaming headset. Plus a quote from author Nathanael Lessore: "Fiction teaches empathy and creativity, and can be a powerful tool in the fight for a more positive masculinity"

"The discussions or reflections that books inspire can change lives for the better. I know because I’ve seen it."

Author Nathanael Lessore believes fiction can play a big role in supporting positive attitudes to boyhood and masculinity.

Here's how 👇

https://bit.ly/3JqsAug

Doctoral Landscape Awards The AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award is a major new funding scheme from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Its aim is to grow the UK’s capacity for doctoral research in the arts and humanit...

📣 PhD studentships for UK/Home students: research interests inc. English Linguistics! At least one studentship at
@mybcu.bsky.social will be dedicated to a candidate from a *Global Majority background*. Apply by 27/01/26👇🏻
www.bcu.ac.uk/research/doc...
#linguistics #BAME #PhD

African languages for AI: the project that’s gathering a huge new dataset When a language isn’t in the data, its speakers aren’t in the product – and AI cannot be safe, useful, or fair for them.

Most large language models today speak only a handful of the world’s 7,000+ languages.

Across Africa, researchers & technologists are tackling this imbalance head-on — collecting ethically sourced, high-quality speech data & building AI that understands African languages.

🔗 tinyurl.com/3689x8bu

The Voiced festival went out with a bang of #multilingual #poetry last night! We heard extraordinary performances in Spanish, Finnish, Galician, French, German, Scots, an endangered language from the Philippines, Dutch, English & more, before joining voices on 'The silence ends', by John Farndon 👏🏻