A discussion of loan translations, metaphors and other usages that have arisen in the English of Hong Kong in recent years

A report on the dominant images and expressions in contemporary American homosexual usage

The Oxford English Dictionary, already more than a century in the making, is currently being computerized and up-dated. One of James Murray's successors describes how the conversion to an electronic OED is being done.

Some emerging features of speech that distinguish usage in New Zealand from the rest of the Anglophone world

Almost every Taiwanese university has some form of an English Department, some with straightforward names (e.g., Department of English) and some with ambiguous names (e.g., Department of Applied Languages). The so-called ‘Applied Courses’ are in fact English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses covering a range of Business and Tourism topics. While pursuing my doctorate I taught these courses as an adjunct lecturer in several universities. This experience continuously reaffirmed suspicions that one particular aspect of English language education was being neglected in Taiwanese secondary and tertiary education, that is, how to translate the names of the foods and dishes that make up the culturally laden Taiwanese cuisine.

How mixed language usage evolved as a natural compromise between educational policy and social reality

A reply to Tom McArthur, ‘Error, Editing, and World Standard English’, ET65 (Jan 01)

When modern linguists focus exclusively on speech, they're overreacting to their predecessors' preoccupation with writing. Descriptivists have a bias toward studying speech; prescriptivists have a bias toward studying writing. Both are important. Speaking precedes writing. It's the essence of language. Yet writing is a form of language worth studying in its own right. For some reason, though, many linguists refuse to recognize this.

Yiddish has served the English language as a comparatively minor donor language of words and meanings over the course of time. However, Yiddish has provided English with a number of borrowings that have become fairly common in present-day usage. This paper provides a rounded overview of the different lexical domains to which Yiddish contributed in the form of new words and expressions over the centuries, which has been relatively neglected in existing studies. The focus of linguistic concern is on those Yiddish-derived terms that have become established in current English.

A re-examination of a widely-established view of how English works in the world

DONALD MacQUEEN flies a linguistic kite regarding how the rhotic/non-rhotic division might have arisen in the English of Restoration London in the seventeenth century.

ROBERT ILSON takes up the issue of possible missing indefinite articles in phrases such as ‘He's nice man’, raised by Tom McArthur in ‘Is it new way of speaking?’ (Comment, ET40, Oct 94)

By means of katakana, a time-honoured script for domesticating foreign sounds, Japanese is currently absorbing thousands of English words.

MICHAEL BULLEY takes a wry look at the work of those linguists who consider that the essence of language can be found in our DNA.

A reprint of the main part of the editorial of‘Cross Currents: An International Journal of Language Teaching and Cross-Cultural Communication’, a Publication of the Language Institute of Japan, Vol. XVI, No. 2, 1989. Both ‘Cross-Currents' and ‘English Today’ welcome readers' comments, which could appear in future issues of both periodicals.

Following recent articles on language awareness, we provide here an opportunity to listen in on the debate in Japan regarding language, culture and the outside world

As English Today notches up a century, it's high time to acknowledge Tom McArthur's inimitable contribution to the study of English worldwide.

Tom McArthur's contribution to English language studies has been immense, and has had a powerful impact at a number of levels. Tom started his life as an educator, gaining crucial exposure to English across the globe very early in his career, when in one of his first jobs teaching English at the Cathedral School in Bombay (Mumbai). After a varied academic career, which included a post at the University of Quebec, Tom returned to the UK to start a new journal for Cambridge University Press, English Today. Tom's brief at that time was to be the founding editor of a journal that would inform a wide readership about the highways and byways of the English language, during an era when English was becoming a global language at an unprecedented speed.

A description of the language as used in this West African country and a consideration of its status there