This project investigates the languages spoken by elementary school children in Leiden: which languages or varieties do they use, what is their level of competence and in what domains do they use them?

This dissertation is the first comprehensive description of Makalero, a language spoken by approximately 6,500 speakers in the Iliomar subdistrict, in the south-east of the Republic of East Timor. While previous sources considered it to be a dialect of the larger language Makasae, the present study,…

Four years of protracted negotiations and bitter warfare passed between the declaration of Indonesian independence on 17 August, 1945, and the official transfer of sovereignty on 27 December, 1949.

Course, summer school

The pews of the Walloon Church were filled on Friday 23 May, as more than 120 former students of the French Language and Culture programme gathered to attend mini-lectures, a short theatre performance, and a discussion about the state of the discipline.

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

Modern Japanese culture can best be described in one word: cute. Hello Kitty, the most important symbol of cuteness, can be found in all layers of society. Leiden Japanologists Ivo Smits and Kasia Cwiertka put together a volume of articles on this curious phenomenon.

This PhD project investigates how grammatical features and lexical elaboration in Fulfulde Juguureere reflect aspects of cattle culture.

One of the ways of understanding another culture better is to examine what people experience when they read a text, or look at an image. Leiden experts have a lot of knowledge in this field, for example on culture in ancient Japan.

The Laiseang archiving project ensures the preservation of unique records of languages in the region which have been gathered by more than two dozen linguists at, and in collaboration with Dutch universities over the last 40 years.

This book presents an in-depth grammatical description of Kumzari, a mixed language spoken in remote villages on the Musandam Peninsula in northern Oman.

This thesis describes the use of the evolutionary approach in the study of language change, aiming to provide a better insight in the mechanisms that play a role in language change and to validate this approach in the field of language change.

University lecturer Aya Ezawa has received a Certificate of Commendation from the Japanese Embassy in the Netherlands for her efforts to promote reconciliation between the Netherlands and Japan, in particular by supporting Japanese-Indonesian war children. As a member of the Foundation for War Victims…

Hekmat Dirbas defended his thesis on 14 February 2017

This project investigates language choice and language use among Swiss mercenaries in the VOC and in the Dutch Colonial Army.

On 30 January 2024 Jurre van der Meer successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Japanese was not always the language spoken in Japan. Researchers link the arrival of the language in Japan with the migration of farmers around 400 BC. Linguist Elisabeth de Boer has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to carry out research on the further spread of the language in Japan.

In the specialisation in Modern Languages you will explore the structure, acquisition, history and use of one or more of these five languages in depth: Chinese, English, French, German and/or Italian.

Promotor: C.A.M.J.J. van den Hondel, Co-promotor: Sandra de Weert

By documenting lexical and morpho-syntactic patterns among P’urhepecha speakers in Mexico and the US diaspora, this project will investigate the sources of language variation. The ensuing online dialect atlas will serve as an online resource for speakers, learners and researchers of the language.

Thomas Mes defended his thesis on 9 January 2018.

Investigating the making of knowledge in anthropology and natural history in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia.

Chinese Linguistics at Leiden University offers you an excellent opportunity to benefit from our long-standing expertise in Chinese linguistics.

Nadine Akkerman's book Invisible Agents is the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies. The book foregrounds the agency of early-modern women, offering a corrective to the gender bias implicit in modern historiography.

This research project focuses on the extended documentation and investigation of these non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’) languages.

In his dissertation Michiel Hooykaas outlines the results of six empirical research projects focused at biodiversity awareness in the Netherlands, specifically people’s knowledge about animals.

On the 17th of January, Sarah Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Sarah on this achievement!

It is often claimed—in both scholarly and popular sources—that guide dogs for the blind are a modern innovation. But as this project demonstrates clearly, guide dogs also existed during the medieval period.

This proposal aims at the construction of a comprehensive and authoritative scientific grammar for Dutch and Frisian in the form of a virtual language institute: het Taalportaal/the Language Portal.

The LLMC is a Leiden-based centre of expertise that applies knowledge of language and AI to ensure the responsible, transparent and effective use of language models.

This abrupt climate change of 8200 years ago (the so-called 8.2k calBP climate event) has received wide attention among natural scientists, also because of today's rapid climate changes and their impact on our own society. The archaeological implications, however, have not been investigated so far.…

This project examines how speakers store and process regular pitch variation.