This edited book explores the rising interest in minimal languages – radically simplified languages using cross-translatable words and grammar, fulfilling the widely-recognised need to use language which is clear, accessible and easy to translate. The authors draw on case studies from around the world to demonstrate how early adopters have been putting Minimal English, Minimal Finnish, and other minimal languages into action: in language teaching and learning, ‘easy language’ projects, agricultural development training, language revitalisation, intercultural education, paediatric assessment, and health messaging. As well as reporting how minimal languages are being put into service, the contributors explore how minimal languages can be adapted, localised and implemented differently for different purposes. Like its predecessor Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), the book will appeal to students and scholars of applied linguistics, language education and translation studies, as well as to professionals in any field where accessibility and translatability matter.

This book introduces a new tool for improving communication and promoting clearer thinking in a world where the use of Global English can create numerous comprehension and communication issues. Based on research findings from cross-linguistic semantics, it contains essays and studies by leading experts exploring the value and application of ‘Minimal English’ in various fields, including ethics, health, human rights discourse, education and international relations. In doing so, it provides informed guidelines and practical advice on how to communicate in clear and cross-translatable ways in Minimal English. This innovative edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of applied linguistics, language education and translation studies.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick. “A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school—who does? Rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered. Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.

This edited book presents case-studies and reflections on the role of languages and their analytic study in development practices across four regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. The authors highlight the importance of conceptual studies of languages and cultures, as well as language choice, for enhancing development practices, demonstrating the value that language analysis and the humanities can add to the already multi-disciplinary field of Development Studies. The chapters draw on the fields of linguistics, human geography, education, diverse economies, community learning, sociology, and anthropology, and topics covered include some significant areas of interest to sustainable human development: education, work, finances, age, gender; as well as a key approach to development (asset-based community development). Chapters on informal adult learning provide opportunities to explore how and why language and linguistic analysis is relevant to development projects. The volume aims to promote collaboration and interdisciplinary dialogue and should be of interest to academics, practitioners and students of language and development, and to those working in the field of development globally.

The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics provides a comprehensive introduction and essential reference work to cognitive linguistics. It encompasses a wide range of perspectives and approaches, covering all the key areas of cognitive linguistics and drawing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in pragmatics, discourse analysis, biolinguistics, ecolinguistics, evolutionary linguistics, neuroscience, language pedagogy, and translation studies. The forty-three chapters, written by international specialists in the field, cover four major areas: • Basic theories and hypotheses, including cognitive semantics, cognitive grammar, construction grammar, frame semantics, natural semantic metalanguage, and word grammar; • Central topics, including embodiment, image schemas, categorization, metaphor and metonymy, construal, iconicity, motivation, constructionalization, intersubjectivity, grounding, multimodality, cognitive pragmatics, cognitive poetics, humor, and linguistic synaesthesia, among others; • Interfaces between cognitive linguistics and other areas of linguistic study, including cultural linguistics, linguistic typology, figurative language, signed languages, gesture, language acquisition and pedagogy, translation studies, and digital lexicography; • New directions in cognitive linguistics, demonstrating the relevance of the approach to social, diachronic, neuroscientific, biological, ecological, multimodal, and quantitative studies. The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is an indispensable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for all researchers working in this area.

"A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book Review The classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind In The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.