Rachel Laudan

Most people in the world are bilingual (though of course famously not English speakers). Among the strong incentives for becoming fluent in two languages are growing up or marrying into mixed communities, seeking an edge in employment, and migration. Is it possible to be bicuisinal? How many people in the world are bicuisinal?   Are the [...]

OK, now let’s begin on ten of the things that food historians might learn from historical linguistics. Linguists estimate that there are somewhere between three thousand and ten thousand living languages, most plumping for the  four or five thousand range. How many cuisines are there?  For all the outpouring of cookbooks, handbooks, and encyclopedias of [...]

The theme of the  2009 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery was Food and Language.  I gave a paper on a topic I had been mulling over for some time, “What can the culinary historian learn from the linguist?”  It has now been published by the marvelous Prospect Books, which I urge you to support [...]