This chapter firstly outlines the phonological structure of Gaelic and aspects of phonetic implementation. I then consider methods used so far in the study of Gaelic phonological acquisition and review work in this area. The journey of language acquisition is varied across different sectors of the Gaelic-speaking population, as well as individuals. For example, while some children acquire Gaelic and English virtually simultaneously in the home, other children acquire Gaelic sequentially through a form of immersion schooling known as Gaelic Medium Education (GME). Many lie somewhere on a simultaneous-sequential continuum. Adult acquirers of Gaelic are a hugely diverse population, which naturally leads to a range of differing outcomes in the acquisition of phonology. In this overview of the field, I consider the different factors associated with multilingual phonological acquisition, and how they have predicted or challenged results obtained from data-driven studies of Gaelic. The chapter ends with a discussion about the multiple future directions needed for research in this area, including larger studies of primary-aged populations, and more focus on universities as an important locus of adult language acquisition.

This chapter examines the acquisition of Welsh in its social and cultural context, with a particular focus on how Welsh being a minority language influences how children speak it. The primary perspective taken will be sociolinguistic, that is variation in children’s Welsh. We review the literature on the linguistic effects of language contact between English as the dominant language on Welsh in the speech of children as well as adults, including discussions of code-switching and diachronic grammatical change. Next, we turn to examining the social factors that have been found to affect children’s acquisition of Welsh, especially language exposure and how this can vary considerably from child to child. The next section reviews one of the main methodological approaches that has been used to collect data in Welsh linguistics, namely corpus data, and considers some of the benefits and challenges that such a method provides for researching child language as well as directing readers to relevant corpora and making some recommendations on considerations for future corpora of children’s Welsh. The chapter concludes with ideas for research directions in this field that the reader may find useful.

The material in this section sets the stage for the content in the subsequent chapters. Key notions, including ideology, are pointed out, and the focal geographic area, the Balkan peninsula of Southeast Europe, is identified as a hotspot for multilingualism and language contact, with specific reference to the structural and lexical parallelism seen in the Balkans and to the key construct of the “Balkanism”, i.e., a contact-induced convergent feature. Mention is made as well of the range of handbook-like presentations about the language situation in the Balkans. Finally, in light of the many works on the Balkans, a justification is provided for the present volume, and the place that it aspires to in treatments of the Balkans from a linguistic perspective.

Chapter 3 discusses the key methodological and theoretical issues relevant for Balkan linguistics as a specific manifestation of complex language contact. On the one hand, other proposed linguistic areas are discussed, such as Amazonia, Araxes-Iran, the Caucasus, Ethiopia, Mainland Southeast Asia, Meso-America, the Northwest Coast of North America, and parts of Papua New Guinea and Australia. In that regard, the Balkans represent not only the most studied such case but also the most studiable, in that of all the sprachbunds that have been discussed in the literature, the Balkans offer the greatest amount of, and the longest time-depth for, information on the linguistic history of the area, the social history of the peoples in the region, and relevant reconstructible linguistic prehistory. On the other hand, mechanisms of, and relevant factors for, contact-induced change are presented, including multilingualism, interference, accommodation, simplification, pidginization and creolization, code-switching, borrowing, calquing, and language ideology. Further, other methodologies, including the Comparative Method, linguistic geography, and typological assessments offer additional sources of information for both Balkan linguistic prehistory and Balkan dialectology.

We will look at attitudes and value judgments which speakers and communities have about English dialects and discuss their social relevance of language in general. We will see that language is not only a means to share information but an essential part of social life which helps us organize ourselves and define our identity. There are different levels of usage (regional, social, ethnic, individual) and that variation has regional, social and individual dimensions. We start with a short discussion of general attitudes about language varieties, look at social prejudice based on language usage, find out why some varieties are stigmatized whereas others have high prestige and get a first glance of perceptions about standard and non-standardized varieties. Looking at examples from English around the world, we take a look at perceptual dialectology to demonstrate how views toward dialects affect our ives – not forgetting their negative side effects.

We take a look at fundamental principles that operate when social and/or regional varieties of English are in contact with each other or with other languages. We take a historical look at English and explore various contact settings which have shaped its development, from contact with Old Norse, Latin and Norman French to the present day. We discuss patterns of bilingualism and multilingualism, that is when speakers use two or more languages in their everyday lives. As the product of migration and colonization, different kinds of English have emerged in different locations around the world. We learn how new dialects emerge as a product of new-dialect formation and how contact-derived varieties such as pidgins and creoles develop under conditions of language contact, with emphasis on different theories of origins. Finally, we discuss the so-called Global Englishes which have emerged as a product of second-language learning around the world.

This chapter asks whether there is an Ottoman intellectual history and, if so, what makes it distinct from other forms of intellectual and cultural history. We argue that the answer resides in the methods and questions that Ottoman intellectual historians have asked their sources based on a long intellectual, philological, and philosophical tradition generated by the Ottomans. To do so, we discuss major methods, sources, and challenges of Ottoman intellectual history and how historians have engaged with them. Embracing a flexible and encompassing definition of intellectual history, we aim to highlight the undeniable and necessary place of intellectual history within Ottoman studies in the context of new developments in the field. Last, we discuss current methodological developments in intellectual history and their possible implications for the discipline’s future. With this short contribution, we hope to start a conversation about what is next in Ottoman intellectual history.

This chapter examines the ideologies of language use in the context of an EMI university in multilingual Hong Kong from the perspectives of a group of international students. Based on the findings of the study, the chapter shows that international students’ ideologies of language use in the EMI university classroom are much more complex and nuanced than what is written in the institution’s official language policy documents. The majority of international students are found to hold ideologies of English as the default language for university education and English monolingualism as the norm in the EMI classroom. However, there is also evidence of varying degrees of acceptability of multilingual language practices in the classroom. The chapter draws attention to the complex ways in which international students’ language ideologies intersect with their concerns about social exclusion, linguistic disadvantage and educational inequality in the EMI classroom. It also demonstrates how their language ideologies contribute to sustaining and reproducing linguistic hegemony and social injustice in EMI higher education.

A major challenge facing South African sociolinguistics today is to find ways to engage with activists and be activists in reconstructing meaningful intervention in public debates about problems of language and multilingualism in a post-apartheid democratic context. To tackle this problem, in this chapter, I propose the idea that sociolinguists doing the work of activism, with language activists, in the public, are (1) invested in the artistic representation of linkages between language reinvention and new relationalities, and (2) highlighting, documenting and framing interventionist debates around language. To illustrate this idea, and the related points, I draw on my activist work with Afrikaaps ´language´ activists in the advancement of a public sociolinguistics that concern two broad strategies of intervention: one as a form of rear-guard intervention and the other as a vanguard one. I analyze how activists working with the Afrikaaps ´language´ movement concerns developing a new perspective on language based in actions of reinvention and the goal of establishing common relationality through multilingual communication. Following the analysis, I offer a number of conclusions on how public sociolinguists could continue to cultivate and sustain such activism embedded in the history of language formation, reinvention and future.

The study of Roman history has always been multilingual, and some of the most important work on the Roman Republic is in German. Today, however, fewer and fewer anglophone students and scholars read German. The result is that major work published in German can go unread and uncited. This new essay by Amy Russell surveys the problem and potential solutions, as well as exploring some of the difficulties of translation from German to English and a glossary of untranslatable terms. It is important that we balance the benefits of multilingual publishing with the need to make Roman history accessible to all. Translation and collaboration are among the methods recommended. Translation from German brings specific problems, as some concepts can be expressed more easily in one language or the other; Russell takes a case study of the term Öffentlichkeit and its similarities to and differences from English phrases such as ‘public space’. Those differences have significantly affected how scholars writing in German and English have conceptualized the public and the political in the Roman Republic. A glossary elucidates a range of other hard-to-translate concepts.

In this chapter, language policies are examined with reference to how they are debated in public discourse. The chapter argues that, like in politics, the space afforded to language policy in conventional media is often narrow, and depends upon how language-related issues invoke broader narratives of identity and ideology, though more significant debating often occurs in new media. The case study examines debates about language policy in Singapore, drawing on examples from traditional media (in the form of letters to the editor) to comments under a Facebook post by a local media outlet.

The book concludes with a brief discussion of a number of the themes covered in the book, in particular, multilingualism. The chapter points out that linguistic contact is likely to be more central to the processes of language change than has been assumed by many specialists.