The English language continues to function as a form of linguistic capital in former British colonies. Although previous studies on World English lexicon documented how and what English lexical items entered another language, few studies have been conducted to investigate the typology of lexical interaction between two postcolonial English varieties. This paper aims to describe how Cantonese-origin English culinary lexical terms were spread from either Hong Kong or Singapore, whilst illustrating the possible multitrajectory pathways of lexical interaction in the Cantophone world by demonstrating five types of translingual practices of food words with Cantonese roots. The lexical examples of food words discussed in this paper were taken from Instagram, Google Map, Google Search, Google Trends, and Oxford English Dictionary. Drawing on the theoretical notion of the ‘sunflower model’, this qualitative study argues that Sinograph (a logographic written system; also known as Honzi) is a space of mediation, which plays an influential role in shaping the trajectories of culinary lexical terms across multilingual Asia. Findings also suggest that individuals’ multilingual competencies and the bidirectional influences between two Sinitic varieties (Cantonese and Mandarin) could shape spelling variations and conventions in Asian Englishes.

International intelligibility among World Englishes is indisputably pertinent. Second language contexts, such as Nigeria, often adopt the Received Pronunciation (RP) to achieve intelligibility and serve as the pedagogical and descriptive basis of the language (Carr & Honeybone, 2007). However, studies on spoken Nigerian English (NE) have established that RP is unattainable by Nigerians, English language teachers inclusive (Akinjobi & Aina, 2014; Aina, 2014; Adesanya, 2020a; Agboyinu, 2018; Aiyeola, 2021). Search for an ancillary model of Standard English pronunciation in Nigeria, therefore, becomes a necessity.

Using a data set of nicknames of elite athletes compiled from the mainstream British sporting press and media, this article explores grammatical patterns in the way we create hypocoristic nicknames like Hughesie, Robbo and Macca. It outlines the purpose of nicknames and their particular role in sport, and provides an analysis of the predictable morphological and phonological rules that apply to a type of nickname categorised here as ‘transparent’. It offers some initial observations on the social distribution of particular nickname variants and on the potential for creativity and playfulness inherent in transparent nicknaming processes.

In a short, accessible book Linguistics: Why it Matters, Geoffrey Pullum, a leader in the field, offered an overview of what the study of linguistics is for the lay reader. In the penultimate chapter, titled ‘Machines that understand us’, Pullum (2018) set out to show what it would mean for computers to be able to use language like a human. He argued it would have to go beyond simple spoken or written word recognition and include processing of complex and novel structures. In this article, using ChatGPT, I revisit the tests that Pullum originally ran with Google and Microsoft Word, likewise for an audience curious about, but unfamiliar with, large language models.

Kirkpatrick and Lixun (2021) maintain that two significant morphosyntactic processes have been at play in early Englishes. These are simplification and regularization. Simplification refers to the relatively simplified inflectional morphology in English today. Kirkpatrick and Lixun (2021) provide an example for the word stan (i.e., stone in Old English) that showed great differences in the singular and plural form in nominative, accusative, genitive and dative case in Old English. Another process is regularization, through which some of the strong verb forms for past tense in English have changed to take the weak or the regular form. To illustrate, the past tense of work was wrought but over time, it has changed to worked.

A catapult into the world of social media, the title of our paper may be incoherent to some readers. What on earth does POV: me, an empath, sensing the linguistic urge ( . . . ) mean, and when and why would speakers say it? The title contains a jumble of three so-called text-memes – (1) POV, (2) me, an empath, VERB-ing X, and (3) the X urge to Y – all of which will be encountered in this paper. What we are calling ‘text-memes’ are memes that, in fairly neutral terms, have a purely textual form, as opposed to a pictorial one. Similar phenomena, which differ regarding their forms and functions, however, have been labelled ‘snowclones’ or ‘phrasal templates’ (cf. Pullum & Whitman, 2004; Know Your Meme, 2007–).

Contrary to traditional thought in linguistics and editing, recent studies using corpus-based evidence suggest that historical English usage patterns influenced prescriptive usage manuals’ guidelines more than the other way around. To explore the modern relationship between English language prescriptions and usage, this study focuses on the wide-reaching genre of written online news and the topic of gender-fair language. It compares changes regarding gender-specific titles in the Associated Press's stylebooks to actual usage trends as documented by the News on the Web (NOW) corpus. Results from NOW show -man title variants as the dominant form in the early 2010s, consistent with AP style at that time. However, many gender-neutral (including -person) variants saw rapid uptake in usage in the mid-2010s to become the most frequent forms by 2021, contrasting AP guidelines that only started listing -person and other neutral forms as ‘acceptable' around 2017 and as the prescribed forms more recently. These results indicate both an increased cultural consciousness for changing gender equity standards as well as a willingness of many news writers, editors, and publishers to defer to culturally significant language trends even if authoritative guides do not yet endorse them.

The literature on the use of articles in L2 varieties of English reports both the overuse and the underuse of the definite article. An excellent synoptic discussion of such apparently contradictory results is Sand (2004). Because L2 English varieties have developed in a sociolinguistic environment where they were in contact with indigenous languages, Sand (2004: 284–287) reviews what research findings show about ‘substrate influence on article use’. Two substrate languages she mentions (p. 286) as examples are Hindi (which is expected to have influenced Indian English) and Swahili (which is expected to have influenced Kenyan English). Regarding Indian English she writes: ‘Typically, we find reference to a “lack of articles” in descriptions of contact varieties like Indian English [ . . . ]’ (p. 286). But a few lines later she adds this:

Korean popular music (K-pop) has expanded its cultural reach among Western audiences over the past 20 years (Lie, 2015), and groups like BTS and BLACKPINK have achieved unprecedented global success recently (McIntyre, 2022). As K-pop evolves into a global cultural export, scholars have paid more attention to the code-mixing of English within its lyrics (Yeo, 2018; Ahn, 2021).

The aim of this study was to examine spoken Namibian English by investigating how multilingual Namibian speakers produce vowel durations in pre-lenis and pre-fortis positions, and how those vowel durations compare to British English vowel durations in the same words. In British English and most other English varieties, vowel duration is affected by the voicing of the following consonant, so that vowels preceding phonologically voiced consonants are longer (pre-lenis lengthening) and vowels preceding phonologically voiceless consonants are shorter (pre-fortis clipping). The production data was collected using orthographic stimuli that were monosyllabic English words with voiced and voiceless final consonants after the target vowels. The data were collected from 14 multilingual Namibian English speakers. The vowel durations produced by the speakers in pre-lenis and pre-fortis position were first compared to each other and then to those produced by nine British English speakers in an earlier study. The results showed that the pre-lenis vowels were clearly longer than the pre-fortis vowels, and there were no differences between Namibian and British English vowel durations in most of the tested words. The results offer new insights into the realization of vowel duration in pre-lenis and pre-fortis positions in Namibian English.

Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) Americans are an understudied speech community in sociolinguistics. In terms of racial classification and identification, MENA Americans have been legally and historically classified as white but are not socially perceived as white (Beydoun, 2013, 2015). While early immigrants from MENA regions to the US were mostly Christians, ever since 1947, the majority of immigrants from MENA regions to the US have been from Muslim backgrounds (Orfalea, 2006); this demographic change can result in more ethnic visibility for MENA Americans in the US (cf., e.g., Shryock & Lin, 2009, for a discussion of ethnic visibility of MENA Americans in southeastern Michigan). Higher ethnic visibility can in turn lead to certain linguistic performances on the part of MENA Americans. Several studies have looked at the interaction of ethnic identity/visibility and local vowel patterns such as the merging of the low back vowels (the vowels in THOUGHT and LOT1). For example, Hall–Lew (2009) showed that Asian Americans in San Francisco took part in the low back vowel merger and high back vowel fronting, which both index local meanings being part of the California Vowel Shift (Eckert, 2008). Going beyond one particular locality, Wong and Hall–Lew (2014) demonstrated clear influence of local dialect on the speech of Asian Americans in two different localities, with Asian Americans from NYC having distinct low back vowels and those from San Francisco merged low back vowels. Comparing the speech of three different ethnic groups in the multicultural context of Toronto, Hoffman and Walker (2010) explored two features of the Canadian Vowel Shift: the retraction of TRAP and the lowering and retraction of DRESS. Their findings showed that while Chinese Canadians disfavored these two patterns, British/Irish and Italian Canadians favored them. In another study in the context of California English, Cardoso et al. (2016) looked at subclasses of the TRAP vowel in the speech of Chinese Americans and white Americans of San Francisco. They found that the nasal split of TRAP (it being raised when followed by a nasal consonant, and being retracted and lowered when followed by an oral consonant) was more advanced for white speakers than the Chinese group. Cardoso et al. (2016) associated the observed difference to the social meaning of the TRAP nasal split in California indexing white or non-Chicanx social personae.

In the last few decades, there has been a growing interest in the linguistic landscape (LL) study of shop names, street signs, and signboards. However, the LL study of shop names has yet to be studied in Bhutan. More specifically, there is a need to evaluate the relationship between LL and language policy, and signage guideline practices in the shop names. To fill this gap, this study set out to examine the LL of shop names in the main street (Nordzin Lam) of Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan. A quantitative approach was employed to collect photographs of the shop names displayed in front and conspicuous areas. The findings indicate that English is prevalent in all the shop names irrespective of monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual shop signs. In addition, Dzongkha has a high presence in the bilingual signs, but English is the most preferred language of the shop signs. However, there is an inconsistency in the font size and layout of the shop signs. In terms of code preference, shop owners prefer Dzongkha above other languages and are aligned vertically. Taken together, the findings presented in this study add to our understanding of how shop signs adhere to signage guidelines and language policies. Policy implications for the effective implementation of signage guidelines and relevant language policies are discussed.

The distinction between ‘Singapore English’ and ‘Singaporean English’ is interesting. It appears that small places tend to use the bare name of the country, while larger countries use the derived adjective. So we find: Singapore English, Hong Kong English, Brunei English; but American English, German English, Malaysian English. On this basis, we might favour Chinese English over China English, because China is big.

Through the analysis of English in the linguistic landscape (LL) of Tokyo, this article demonstrates the diverse functions of English on signage and argues that the use of English in different areas of Tokyo mirrors the distinct socioeconomic characteristics of each area, aiming to highlight how English contributes to shaping the multifaceted Tokyo's cityscape. This study specifically contrasts the three areas: Asakusa and Tsukiji, Shibuya, and Roppongi and Azabu. The data consists of photographed signs, supplemented with fieldnotes, obtained from fieldwork in 2023. Considering all the aspects of the observed signs, the diverse English use on signage can be viewed as a manifestation of its proliferation and localisation as a global language, adapting to a diverse audience, including Japanese locals, visitors from overseas, and local foreign residents. As a result of such manifestation, along with the varied functions and interplay with social contexts, the aggregate of English signs of each area collectively crafts the complexity of Tokyo's mosaic cityscape.

The proliferation of English as an international language has had significant ramifications for the teaching and learning of languages in various educational contexts (Yu & Liu, 2022). Within the realm of higher education, the adoption of English-medium instruction (EMI) has been a particularly contentious issue, with debates raging over its potential benefits and drawbacks (Bolton et al., 2022; Bolton, Botha & Lin, 2023). One potential approach to addressing the challenges posed by EMI is the adoption of translanguaging practices, which involve the utilization of multiple languages or language varieties in communication and learning. While the concept of translanguaging has gained increasing traction in recent years, there remains a paucity of empirical research on its implementation and impact within Sino-US educational institutions where translanguaging and EMI are facing enviable pedagogical dueling.

This study explores the effects of World Englishes teaching practice in improving EFL learners’ self-confidence in English-speaking performance (SCIESP) with a mixed methodology design comprising both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data were gathered through a survey with the Self-Confidence in English-speaking Performance Questionnaire, students’ reflective notes, and focus group interviews. Two teaching classes with no significant difference in self-confidence were randomly chosen as the experimental class (EC) and control class (CC). The two classes shared the same teaching implication except that the EC had four lectures on World Englishes while the CC got four lectures on English History. After one semester the research team surveyed students’ SCIESP again. The result showed a remarkable improvement in students’ SCIESP in EC than in CC. It was found that World Englishes teaching contributed significantly to increasing students’ SCIESP.