Professor Naomi Nagy's Book Launch at the Canadian Language Museum

Professor Naomi Nagy (department chair) introduced her new work, Heritage Languages: Extending Variationist Approaches, earlier this semester at the Canadian Language Museum at Glendon College. 

This book is a part of the larger Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto project (HLVC), and an accumulation of hard work of linguists at the UofT, and heritage language speakers across the city. 

Professor Nagy at the Book Launch

Read the publication at this link, accessible through University of Toronto libraries.

Congratulations Professor Nagy on your publication and launch! 

Canadian Language Museum
Picture credits: Craig Diegel

Elaine Gold Receives the Governor General's Meritorious Service Award

Director Elaine Gold at Glendon Hall

Elaine Gold, retired from the Linguistics Department, and head of the Canadian Language Museum (CLM) has been awarded the Governor-General's Meritorious Service Award. Congratulations!!

The co-Chair of the International Network of Language Museums has seen her museum's exhibits touring across the world, including and especially those pertaining to Indigenous languages. 

Director Gold's star-studded career since retirement from our Department includes speaking about Canadian Indigenous Language policies at the Austronesian Languages Revitalization Forum in Taipei, September 2023.

She and the CLM are now collaborating with the Indigenous Languages Research Foundation to translate their booklet, Indigenous Languages in Canada, into Mandarin. 

The CLM also hosted the art exhibit Anthem: Expressions of Canadian Identity during the fall, which will be presented from May to September at the Canadian Embassy's Prince Takamado Gallery in Tokyo. On June 20th, she, her team, and four artists, will attend the exhibition's reception. 

Director Gold giving her presentation in Taipei, September 2023.

Currently on display in the CLM is "Toronto Voices," an exhibit created as part of community outreach, exploring and detailing the identity of young Torontonians through their vocabulary in collaboration with The Spot, a drop-in center in the Jane-Finch area. 

This recognition of Gold's tireless devotion to languages of Canada, and especially of Toronto, is a fantastic credit to her work in both national and international linguistic communities.

We are so inspired by Gold's impact on reconciliation and language revitalization, especially in the field of Indigenous languages and cultures.

Elaine at York University this week

In conjunction with the newest exhibit of the Canadian Language Museum, Elaine Gold (faculty) is giving a talk this week for the Centre for Research on Language and Culture Contact at Glendon College, York University: "Sign languages in Canada's Anglophone, Francophone, and Indigenous communities." This is taking place on Wednesday, February 10, from 12 PM to 1 PM, with Zoom details available here.

The Canadian Language Museum's most recent exhibit, 'Sign Languages of Canada', includes six languages: American Sign Language, Langue des signes québécoise, Maritime Sign Language, Inuit Sign Language, Oneida Sign Language and Prairie Indian Sign Language. Dr. Gold will describe the process of creating the exhibit and what the team learned about the history of sign languages in Canada, the relationships between them, and the work being done to maintain those that are endangered.  The presentation will include contemporary and archival videos of the different languages.

Elaine on the Lingoblog

Elaine Gold (faculty) has contributed an extensive post to the communal Lingoblog on the foundation of the Canadian Language Museum, a project to which Elaine has been tirelessly devoted (and for which she has been very deservedly recognized) since 2011.

Indigenous language materials at the Fisher Rare Book Library

On Friday, November 15 from 3 PM through 5 PM, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is holding an open house on the Indigenous language documents and resources that it has available for use in research!

Canadian Language Museum exhibit opening

Following a preview at this year's meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, the Canadian Language Museum, under the direction of retired faculty member Elaine Gold, is launching its latest exhibit: 'Beyond Words: Dictionaries and Indigenous Languages'. The opening is at the permanent home of the Canadian Language Museum at Glendon College, today from 7 PM through 9 PM. More details here.

Canadian Language Museum exhibit on lexicography in Indigenous communities

Under the continued steady direction of founder Elaine Gold (faculty), the Canadian Language Museum's new exhibit, 'Beyond Words: Dictionaries and Indigenous Languages', will be on display for the first time at the 2019 annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, being held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from June 1 through 3. The exhibit will be free to view for all and is located in the Level 2 Foyer of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

This exhibit highlights the complex relationship between Indigenous languages and dictionaries over several centuries, from word lists and dictionaries developed for exploration, colonization, conversion, and assimilation purposes, to online language materials being developed by Indigenous communities to transmit the elders' language knowledge to today's youth.

For more details, see the Facebook page.

U of T Science Rendezvous 2019

We're very happy to be returning to the annual U of T Science Rendezvous, which this year is taking place on Saturday, May 11 on St. George Street between Harbord and College. Celebrated in dozens of places across the country at once, Science Rendezvous is an all-day science festival for people of all ages, aimed at generating enthusiasm for science and promoting university enrollment in related subjects. We will once again have a booth: come check out what your mouth is doing when you're speaking, learn words from dozens of languages spoken in Canada, and maybe even take home a personalized souvenir!

Congratulations, Elaine!

Congratulations to Elaine Gold (faculty), who has been selected as this year's recipient of the National Achievement Award from the Canadian Linguistic Association! The award will be presented to Elaine on Sunday, June 2, at this year's CLA meeting in Vancouver, B.C. Elaine will also be giving a plenary talk about her work. CLA President Wladyslaw Cichocki describes Elaine's accomplishments as follows:

Dr. Elaine Gold has demonstrated exceptional effectiveness in communication and knowledge transfer about language and linguistics. Her work with the Canadian Language Museum has reached communities across Canada, both within and beyond the university context. Dr. Gold holds an MA in the History of Art and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Toronto. Until her retirement in 2017, she held teaching positions at Queen’s University and at the University of Toronto, where she served as Undergraduate Coordinator and Lecturer in Linguistics. Her teaching covered a wide range of topics, and her scholarly output has contributed a distinctly Canadian focus in areas such as sociolinguistics, aspect and loanwords in Yiddish, Indigenous Englishes, and Canadian English. She has made notable contributions to the now-flourishing research area of Canadian 'eh' and to the study of aspect in Bungi, a Scots English/Cree creole that arose during the fur trade. Dr. Gold’s most important contribution to linguistics in the public realm has been as founder, in 2011, and executive director of the Canadian Language Museum (CLM) (www.languagemuseum.ca). This unique institution has achieved a great deal for the outreach of linguistics into communities across Canada. In her work, Dr. Gold has been able to identify areas of research on languages in Canada that are of relevance to the wider public, to select researchers active in these areas, to oversee the development of itinerant museum exhibits on the relevant topics, and to manage their circulation across the country. Dr. Gold routinely recruits and mentors students from the University of Toronto’s Master of Museum Studies program, who create and curate each exhibit as part of their graduating-year Exhibitions course. The CLM’s exhibits showcase and celebrate the diversity of Canadian English, of French in Canada as well as the many Indigenous and heritage languages spoken in Canada. The latest exhibit, Beyond Words: Dictionaries and Indigenous Languages, is occasioned by the United Nations’ proclamation of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages. The CLM travelling exhibits have had extensive geographic coverage, criss-crossing the country from Victoria to St. John’s. These exhibits have been displayed on nearly 100 occasions to date in diverse venues, including universities, schools, public libraries, community centres, government buildings, museums, historic sites, even hospitals. Museum exhibits have been featured at academic conferences and at large international events, for instance as part of the Aboriginal Pavilion at the 2015 Pan American Games and at the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education (Toronto, 2017). In 2016, Dr. Gold’s vision and advocacy resulted in the establishment of a permanent home and exhibit space for the Museum at the Glendon Gallery (Glendon Campus of York University, Toronto). Beyond this permanent location, the CLM continues to function as a virtual museum with a substantive social media presence. In 2018, it launched its first digital (web-based) exhibit, Échos de la mosaïque/Messages from the Mosaic, and produced an original documentary, Two Row Wampum: Preserving Indigenous Languages in Toronto, that can be viewed on the CLM website. In summary, Dr. Gold has set a stellar example of what it means to be a 'public scholar' in our discipline. Her work on the CLM has reached non-academic audiences, and it has engaged the general public around issues of language and linguistics in a manner that is accessible and informative. The Canadian Linguistic Association is delighted to recognize this great service by awarding Dr. Gold our National Achievement Award for 2019.

Exhibit at OISE on the linguistic landscapes of Toronto

The Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at OISE, in conjunction with the U of T School of Cities, is hosting an exhibit: 'Linguascaping Toronto', about the linguistic landscapes of the city. This will be taking place on Monday, April 15, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM, in the Nexus Lounge on the 12th floor of the OISE building.

Yiddish Spring at the Canadian Language Museum

The Canadian Language Museum is opening its latest exhibit, 'Yiddish Spring', on Thursday, April 4, from 7 PM to 9 PM, at its headquarters (the Glendon Gallery). There will be live music, refreshments, and special guests. Berlin-based composer Paul Brody has created a sound installation for the CLM based on the voice-melodies of eight Toronto Yiddish speakers. Well-known European and Canadian klezmer musicians are contributing responses to the piece. On the walls will be the exhibit 'Komets-Alef-O! Back to School at the Yiddish Kheyder' (the Yiddish classroom): an introduction to the Yiddish language, created by Toronto Yiddishist Miriam Borden. The exhibit will be on display from April 5 through June 27, and there will be a number of special events held in conjunction with it.

Mohawk exhibit at UTM

In conjunction with the designation of 2019 as the United Nations International Year of Indigenous Languages, the Mississauga campus will be home to an exhibit this week on Kanien’kéha, or Mohawk. It will be in the CCT Atrium on Tuesday the 12th and Wednesday the 13th between 10 AM and 2 PM. Bring along your headphones to listen to the exhibit and samples of spoken Kanien’kéha, featuring Ryan DeCaire (faculty).

The exhibit is jointly hosted by the UTM Indigenous Centre, the Centre for Student Engagement, and the Equity and Diversity Office. It comes from the Indigenous Language Spots project, a collaboration between Hart House and Ciimaan/Kahuwe’yá/Qajaq Indigenous Language Initiative at the Centre for Indigenous Studies. Indigenous Language Spots is a series of audio recordings in made for the radio in early 2018, created to amplify exposure and attention to Indigenous languages and to inspire curiosity about Indigenous culture, history, and the importance of preserving and sustaining endangered languages.

LIN362 poster session

The students of LIN362: Historical Linguistics, taught by Aleksei Nazarov (faculty), will be presenting their final projects in the form of a poster session in the department lounge on Tuesday, December 4, from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. All department members are encouraged to attend!

Exhibit on Yiddish language at Robarts

The current installation at the bottom of the elevators on the ground floor of Robarts Library is "Komets-alef: o: Back to school at the Yiddish kheyder", curated by Miriam Borden, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.

Through the lens of the kheyder (the traditional religious classroom for children among the Eastern European Jewish population), the exhibit introduces the Yiddish language (orthography, phonetics, dialectology) and a bit about literature and culture.

The exhibit was designed by Rowan Van Berk, and co-sponsored by the Al and Malka Green Yiddish Studies Program, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. Originally planned to be shown only until the end of July, it has now been extended to the end of October and is free and open to the public. If you're on campus and have a minute, have a look!

Linguistics in the community: Grade 8 school project on constructed languages

Shortly after arriving in Toronto in July, Professor Nathan Sanders began mentoring local student, Ben Kramer, for his Grade 8 project at the Halton Waldorf School in Burlington.  Every student in the grade selects a major project for the year and seeks out a mentor to help guide them.  For his project, Ben designed his own constructed language, Gəfedbemar, and wrote up a grammar, which includes an abjad orthography, rules for building words and sentences, a glossary of hundreds of words, and sample translations.  The finale to the project was a well-delivered and well-received public presentation on March 7th, in which Ben spoke in Gəfedbemar and described the process of building the language.  Signed copies of his grammar were very popular with the crowd!

‘A Newfoundland Treasury of Terms for Ice and Snow’ (Canadian Language Museum exhibit opening, Feb. 1st, 2018)

A message from Elaine Gold and the Canadian Language Museum:

You are all invited to attend the opening of the exhibit ‘A Newfoundland Treasury of Terms for Ice and Snow’ at the Canadian Language Museum’s gallery, in Glendon Gallery, Glendon College. This is an award-winning exhibit of photographs and videos by Newfoundland artist, Marlene Creates. U of T’s Linguistics band F-Zero will be playing Newfoundland tunes, Prof. Jack Chambers will speak about English in Newfoundland, the artist will Skype in from Fogo Island, and there will be some Newfoundland treats!

You can get here by TTC, but if you drive you’ll have to pay for parking in Lot A (see map below #4); you can park there, or drive around to Lot B (#5).  You can also park in the ravine (Lots #1, 2) (and pay there)  and hike back up!

Click here for the map.

What’s new in Undergrad Linguistics

We’ve been having a busy semester on the undergraduate front! On September 28, we had a back to school “Welcome Tea” event for our undergrads where they got to come by and chat with professors, staff, and fellow students and hang out over some tea and pastries. This was the first of hopefully many social events geared to undergraduates.

Naomi Nagy (faculty) with a crowd

Nicholas LaCara, Peter Jurgec, and Nathan Sanders (all faculty). Photo credit: Mary Hsu

A crowd, including Sali Tagliamonte (faculty) in foreground. Photo credit: Mary Hsu

Greg Antono, Deepam Patel, Calahan Janik-Jones, Katie MacIntosh, and Katharine Zisser (undergrads)

At this event, we also announced our 2016-17 award winners:
McNab Scholarship: Toshiaki Kamifuji, LIN Specialist
Jack Chambers Undergraduate Scholarship: Katherine Alexandra Sung, LIN Specialist
Henry Rogers Memorial Scholarship Fund: Yan-Lum Charissa Chan, LIN Major

And a brand new award, the “Elaine Gold Award for Undergraduate Achievement in Linguistics”, which went to Jeffrey Wang (LIN Major). Two honourable mentions went to Toshiaki Kamafuji and Cal Janik-Jones.

On October 22, we welcomed thousands of prospective undergraduate students at U of T’s annual Fall Campus Day, which took place at Hart House this year. Our little Linguistics booth saw quite a bit of traffic, thanks to the efforts of our fantastic volunteers from SLUGS and the LGCU (Laila Faqiri, Cal Janik-Jones, Pocholo Umbal, and Isabelle Ladouceur-Séguin) – huge thanks to them for their time and enthusiasm!

Isabelle Ladouceur-Séguin (MA), Calahan Janik-Jones (undergrad), and Suzi Lima (faculty). Photo credit: Pocholo Umbal

 Photo credit: Pocholo Umbal

Laila Faqiri (undergrad), Keren Rice (faculty), and Pocholo Umbal (PhD)

Linguistics at UofT Science Rendezvous 2017

Science Rendezvous (an annual all-day nation-wide science festival) is happening on May 13th this year, and our department is participating!

From Inuktitut syllabics to sociolinguistic variables to spectrograms and ultrasounds, our team (Emily Blamire, Vidhya Elango, Ruth Maddeaux, Olivia McManus, and Katharina Pabst, led by faculty member Peter Jurgec) has developed a program to give participants a taste of our field. Check out the website here: https://www.futurelinguist.com/

More information from Peter:

On Saturday, May 13, 2017, for the first time ever, the Linguistics Department at the University of Toronto will be taking part in the 10th annual Science Rendezvous.

Science Rendezvous is an educational outreach event that boasts dozens of exciting exhibits and many fun activities for attendees of all ages. The University of Toronto St George campus will be open to the public throughout the day.

At the Linguistics booth, there will be hands-on activities including ultrasound, spectrogram, a mini-sociolinguistic experiment, an Inuktitut morphology puzzle, immersive videos, wug cookies, and much more! We have an enthusiastic team of linguistics students and volunteers who have worked hard to make all this happen.

You can check out the Linguistic Department’s website for the event at https://www.futurelinguist.com
The University of Toronto Science Rendezvous page with the information about exhibits on campus is here: http://www.sciencerendezvousuoft.ca
The Canada-wide site is at http://www.sciencerendezvous.ca

The event runs from 11 to 4.30, and will take place on and around St George Street between Harbord and College. The Linguistics Booth will be on the main floor of Sidney Smith Hall.

Read Between the Signs: 150 Years of Language in Toronto (Canadian Language Museum exhibit opening)

Read Between the Signs:
150 Years of Language in Toronto
Toronto's diverse languages shape our city's streets. These languages are part of the landscape, visible in storefronts, building facades, and street signs. They can reflect, and sometimes even obscure, the communities that live and work in this city. In presenting a visual history of Toronto's languages, this exhibition makes use of historical and archival photos.

When:
Wednesday May 3, 2017
6pm - 8pm

Where:
Canadian Language Museum
Glendon Gallery, Glendon College
2275 Bayview Avenue
Toronto M4N 3M6   Click here for the Canadian Language Museum's website.

Linguistics Event #2 for Canada 150

The Department of Linguistics is hosting three events in celebration of Canada's Sesquicentennial, the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation this year in 2017.

The second one, "Toronto Language Tapestry: Exploring Heritage Languages", is being held on Friday, April 28th. Click here for the website, or see below for the schedule and poster.

12pm	Reception Canadian Language Museum Exhibit, French in Canada Posters on language maintenance and attitudes
1:00	Welcome & Introduction Dr. Naomi Nagy, University of Toronto
1:05	Schwa in Ontario French Dr. Darcie Blainey, University of Toronto & Dr. François Poiré, Western University
1:30	The bilingual experience of Spanish heritage children in the Nation's Capital Dr. Joanne Markle LaMontagne, University of Toronto
2:00	Perception of Cantonese tone Rachel Soo & Dr. Phil Monahan, University of Toronto
2:30	Coffee and Tea Break
3:00	Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Student Showcase Cantonese Tone, Sam Lo & Katherine Sung Cantonese Consonants, Ziwen Tracy Tan Polish Case and Code-switching, Paulina Łyskawa
4:00	Discussion with Audience, Reception to follow