The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers various Dutch language courses, ranging from online courses, intensive and non-intensive classroom courses of several weeks, and custom-made language trainings. More information can be found here >

The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers English language courses at different levels, intensive summer courses, tailor-made language training and various courses such as academic English, legal English, and financial English. More information can be found here >

Anyone who creates a page for a magazine, a PowerPoint presentation, a brochure, a poster or dreams up an idea for an infographic is faced with important questions:

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

Indigenous Peoples possess rich worldviews and unique knowledge that form part of our global heritage. Oppressing these peoples and violating their natural environment is leading to the destruction of this knowledge. Leiden researchers aim to counter this through collaborating with Indigenous Peoples…

Research combining a conceptual and practical perspective within the field of teaching and learning second languages.

Collaborative linguistic research on indigenous languages of Ecuador: description, documentation & materials

Humanities, Institute for Area Studies

How did common people write in the late eighteenth century? Little is yet known on this topic, since our knowledge is mainly based on printed texts written by a small part of the (male) elite population. This dissertation – written from a sociolinguistic point of view – gives us new insights into late-…

Anja Groten contributes the essay 'The Workshop and Cultural Production' to Amsterdam-based publication platform 'Open!'

Languages spoken around the world differ vastly from  the more familiar Indo-European languages. The courses in this theme aim to introduce you to the immense linguistic diversity still found in the world today. 

The goal is to develop educational materials for Dâw, Hupd’äh, and Nadëb Indigenous peoples (Naduhup family; Middle and Upper Rio Negro; Brazilian Amazon). In order to achieve this, first of all, the fieldwork data collected during a collaborative project among anthropologists and linguists (2017-2020)…

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo offers Dutch language courses for Egyptian adults on a regular basis. These courses aim to provide students with language skills in Dutch, which they can use in everyday life. Therefore you will spend most of your time practicing the language in order to…

The fourth volume of Ex Novo has the pleasure to host Heleen van Londen, Marjo J. Schlaman, and Andrea Travaglia as guest editors of the special issue titled The Natural and The Cultural. Integrating Approaches in Landscape Heritage Management. This timely collection of peer-reviewed papers and short…

Publishing about your research is a key aspect of your career as a researcher; the majority of research publications are written in English. When applying for research funding, too, it is very important to ensure that your application is written in clear, accessible English. Maria Sherwood-Smith, Academic…

What can languages spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands today tell us about the histories of its various population groups?

The research group Politics, Culture and National Identities 1789-present investigates a wide range of national political cultures in Europe and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of only analyzing high politics (the acts of governments and political parties), the research group focuses…

The form and content of the course are determined by your answers on the intake form and, if necessary, an intake interview.

A linguistic prehistory of the Tarim Basin in Northwest China

Man is nature's mind-reading champion: we are better able than any other living beings to empathise with others. This comes in part from our story-telling culture, according to Max van Duijn. PhD defence 20 April.

At LUCL, researchers have established the Leiden Hands!Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies.

A synchronic description of the endangered Slovene dialect spoken in the Gailtal valley in Carinthia, Austria.

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This thesis presents a thorough survey of the central aspects of the phonology of Shaoxing Chinese from a synchronic perspective and on the basis of recent theoretical phonological developments, with the secondary goal of casting some light on current issues in Modern Chinese (Mandarin).

This research aims to address the connection between Sufism and modern Arabic Literature (specifically, Palestinian literature).

A study concerning the collective memory in the region of the Bene lo Ya/ Ene lo I'ya, Sierra Norte, Oaxaca.

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Interested in our GTGC programme? Read more here in other languages.

This study presents a full descriptive account of the grammar of Mualang, covering the major features of phonology and morphosyntax as well as issues related to pragmatics.

The goal of the MODOMA-project is to create a computer model of language acquisition.

This thesis presents a detailed description of the phonology, the tone system and the grammar of Liko, a Bantu language spoken by about 70,000 people in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It provides numerous examples.

On October 31st, Paul Noorlander succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Paul on this great result.

Over the past decades the role of writing in the development of human civilizations has been the subject of much discussion. The adoption and development of literate skills has been linked to many developments in human history, be they cultural, social or even cognitive.

Tonal bilinguals of two closely related Chinese dialects are amazing people. They handle two tonal systems in their mind; their two vocabularies are from closely related dialects, and they write translation equivalents with common Chinese characters. Their unique language situation makes their mind…

This research profile area brings together descriptive, historical and theoretical linguistics, as well as psycho- and neurolinguistics.

This is a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed 'Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics (DuJAL)’, which focuses on promoting Dutch and Belgian work in applied linguistics among an international audience, but also welcomes contributions from other countries.

In this project we study the properties of statistical- and rule-learning mechanisms in relation to the acquisition and evolution of language. We ask to what extent these mechanisms are unique to humans - or to human language - by comparing the acquisition of vocal structure in two species: humans (infants)…