Yes, I've been away again. Manchester for the Massive Attack concert and then Sheffield for Linguistics conferencing, including a session on community languages. Found out that:

- 34% of the population of Leicester speak Gujerati

- Urdu is studied by more students for GCSE than Irish, Welsh or Italian

- 'linguisticism' is thriving in government policy (languages like French and Spanish are treated preferentially compared to languages like Urdu, Gujerati, Bengali, Kurdish, etc.)

- Sheffield seems to be built on seven hills like Rome (went for a cycle in the countryside and tired myself out just getting to the starting point)

- the USA spends 400 billion dollars a year on military hardware (Russia is in second place on 60 billion dollars a year)

- the Peak district is a good place to look at peewits

Here is a link on community languages.

B-)