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Get the latest from our columnists here. There is something for everyone, with topics ranging from French cinema to Lusophone culture, and from dead languages to the Sanremo Music Festival.


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Linguistics, Tongue Tied Kieran McGreevy, Columnist Linguistics, Tongue Tied Kieran McGreevy, Columnist

Tongue Tied IV - Sámi on the Brink

‘Tongue Tied’ is a short tour through Europe via some of its most at-risk languages. In a series of four articles, Columnist Kieran McGreevy will examine four languages from across the corners of Europe, with the aim of showing what has led these languages to the brink of extinction (and sometimes back), by untying the history of the people, the linguistics of the language itself, and the efforts being made to keep these tongues alive. In the last instalment, Kieran looks at Ume Sámi, a descendent of Uralic language used along the north of Sweden, and how it differs from Scandinavian languages.

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Linguistics, Two Birds One Stone Pippa Mentzel, Columnist Linguistics, Two Birds One Stone Pippa Mentzel, Columnist

Two Birds with One Stone - New Leaves

Columnist Pippa Mentzel explores the brilliant and bizarre linguistic phenomena of idioms to uncover what they show us about our cultural heritage and how our imaginative human mind revels in describing the world around us. In the first instalment, Pippa talks us through the origins of ‘turning a new leaf’ and discusses a new way to ask after others.

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