Pardonnez moi, please excuse my English

Heckler I've just read Harriet Veitch's Heckler column ''Mon dieu! It's a nightmare'' (October 4). I am French, but I fully agree that French is hard to learn as a second language.

English for dummies

Heckler Living abroad for more than a decade, I have observed with voyeuristic fascination the creeping bastardisation of the English language in Australia.

Academy puts hard word on English

Erin McKean The Queen's English Society, self-appointed defender of proper speech and writing since 1972, has announced plans to set up an Academy of English.

Comments 22

Don't listen to the purism pedants, English is doing just fine

Rob Forbes Our language is not going downhill - it's changing, it always has.

Little gain in lazy English mangling

Julian Fernando Idiotic abbreviations are not a language change we should be celebrating.

Top marks in English fail to spell proficiency

Sarah Michael Until my first year of university last year, when one of my tutors quite bluntly pointed it out to me, I had always written ''definately'' instead of ''definitely''.

Lost for words in the universe of expanding English

Elizabeth Farrelly I'm cultivating the knack of being diametrically out of whack with public or market opinion. It's a potentially dangerous pursuit, considering my line of work, but I see it as a sort of x-treme sport.

Comments 21

First languages first, then English

Mary-Ruth Mendel The average four- to five-year-old has a listening vocabulary of 2800 words, which grows to an amazing 13,000 words by the time the child is between five and six.

Comments 10

English by numbers - students find formula for HSC success

Adele Horin Not so long ago politicians such as Bob Carr were denouncing the dumbing down of the Higher School Certificate curriculum. John Howard, no less, took up the cudgels, singling out HSC English.

Comments 18

Industry's learning difficulty

When a federal Coalition MP says a group of public employees deserve to have their wages more than doubled to a top rate of $150,000, listeners are bound to wonder if their hearing is faulty.

Macquarie's mitts all over our supposed Strine

Germaine Greer Australian academics have been laying down the law about my mother-tongue — oops, I mean, of course, mother tongue.

How to rekindle interest in the great Australian stories

Michael Heyward We are in the thick of a debate about how we value our literary heritage. So many writers who matter are out of print. Australian studies are on the margin at many of our universities.

Haven for kids living on the edge

Charles Waterstreet Atlanta and I travelled in a taxi driven by a fat man who spoke no English.

Why are women hell bent on destroying each other?

Stephanie Peatling Parenting websites and mothers' groups are the next generation of high school where everything people say is judged, discussed and used in evidence against them as factions take shape and shift.

Comments 132

It's up to us to help young Africans fit in

Denise Ryan Fear is stopping many from welcoming our city's newest migrants.

Comments 41

Spain's pain exposes the problem with putting your faith in football

Paul Sheehan In the cathedral of hope, 96,000 worshippers each held aloft a square of red, or blue, or yellow paper. Collectively, they formed a giant picture for themselves and for the millions watching on TV.

Why Australian literature is alive and well and living in our universities

Ken Gelder In the Sunday Age and elsewhere over the past few months, universities have been accused of failing to teach enough Australian literature.

Mysteries of anarchy in the US

Peter FitzSimons My first contact with US soil for a couple of years saw me right in the middle of a protest.

Idea of a fair go lost at altar of politics

Philip Clark I WAS walking though Queen Street Mall in Brisbane recently when I came across a gathering of hundreds of disabled people and their carers all clad in bright red T-shirts listening politely to music,...