This article examines the impact of social media on the linguistic and communicative practices in post-socialist countries, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Mongolia -- the contexts very much under-represented in the discussion of translingualism. Relocalisation of social media-based linguistic resources in the languages used in these…

One of the central paradoxes of textbook authorship in Indigenous languages is that some of those for whom the textbooks are intended find it challenging to read them. Here, through examining cases of Quechua across the Andes in Peru and in Ecuador, we consider the role of orthography in this paradox. Textbook authors must decide on an alphabet…

To isolate cross-lingual phonological effects during visual-word recognition, Arabic-Hebrew bilinguals who are native speakers of Spoken Arabic (SA) and proficient readers of both Literary Arabic (LA) and Hebrew, were asked to perform a visual lexical-decision task (LDT) in either LA (Experiment 1) or Hebrew (Experiments 2 and 3). The critical…

To expand our understanding of script-general and script-specific principles in the learning of letter names, we examined how three characteristics of alphabet letters -- their frequency in printed materials, order in the alphabet, and visual similarity to other letters -- relate to children's letter-name knowledge in four languages with three…

In 1924 Jabbar Baghcheban created a manual system that employed the phonetic characteristics of spoken Persian and Perso-Arabic orthography for use in the education of deaf students (Ibrahimi 2007). This article is a first exploration of variation and change in this system as it has evolved into the Iranian manual alphabet. Data on the…

This article discusses a relatively under-explored phenomenon that we call Tranßcripting -- writing, designing and digitally generating new scripts with elements from different scriptal and semiotic systems. The data are drawn from examples of such scripts created by multilingual Chinese users in everyday online social interaction. We analyse the…

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

The aim of this paper is to explore the phonetic nature of vowels in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Although Arabic is a Semitic language, the speech sound system of Arabic is very comprehensive. Data used for this study were elicited from the standard speech of nine informants who are native speakers of Arabic. The researchers used themselves as…

There is a consensus among language teachers and researchers that language course design is always a work in progress. This is influenced by variables such as the type of language being taught and whether the teaching of this language has been researched. Arabic is one the languages that have created a perennial debate among its teachers about the…

Arabic Literacy acquisition was studied among Israeli Palestinian low socioeconomic status kindergartners within the framework of an intervention study, implemented by teachers. On pretest, letter naming, alphabetic awareness, and phonological awareness were very low. Whereas the comparison group hardly progressed throughout the year, the…

The dictionary for the Northern-Central variety of Thai is designed as a reference for use by Peace Corps volunteers assigned to northern Thailand. An introductory section gives an overview of the dictionary's content and design and of the use of the Central Thai alphabet (the old Northern alphabet is rarely used). Most of the words included are…

This survey of the world's written languages consists of a series of historical sketches of different languages, each including a table of signforms in their standard order and their variations, but focusing primarily on how the sounds of the language are represented in writing. A brief text in the language(s) the script is used for is also…

This instructional guide for Tunisian Arabic is designed to be used in language training of Peace Corps volunteers in Tunisia. It consists of 15 thematic units focusing on daily living skills and activities. Each contains a brief dialogue in transliterated Arabic, an English translation, lists of vocabulary and expressions, comprehension…

Three articles on the orthography of Australian Aboriginal Kriol include: "Aspects of Developing a Writing System with Particular Reference to the Revision of the Kriol Orthography"; "A Guide to the Kriol Writing System"; and "A Resource Guide to Kriol." In the first two papers, issues of dealing with orthography in a…

A discussion of the situation of Idoma, a Nigerian language, begins with different accounts of the language's origin, referring to both local legend and cosmology. It then proceeds to a review of modern linguists' efforts, since 1927, to classify the language. A statistical overview contains information on the number of speakers of Idoma as a…