Language Books
The Canadian Language Museum has a small library of books related to our exhibits.
Book of the Month
The important resource text Kigelia: a Typeface for Africa explains this typeface family — the first of its kind — that contains the most prominent writing systems in Africa, including Arabic, N’ko, and Tifinagh, among others. Designed by Mark Jamra and Neil Patel with in-depth research and consultation with script and language experts, this typeface was created with mobile devices in mind. Typefaces like these are crucial to multilingual access to digital spaces.
Featured Book for Children
The CLM has several children’s books, which provide an introduction for language beginners young and old.
Gina Valle’s project collects the winning and finalist submissions from the 2014 Multilingual Kid Lit Award, which is sponsored by the Rainbow Caterpillar bookstore. Supporting UNESCO’s recognition of the importance of a mother language in children’s self-esteem and in the maintenance of culture and language, this book brings together “everyone, grandparents, French immersion students, multilingual parents and children, curious readers big and small.” Founder of Diversity Matters, which provides diversity workshops and training, Valle is committed to a Canada that lives comfortably with many languages and cultures in our everyday life.
A Dictionary of English in Multicultural Toronto
In addition to developing the exhibit, Toronto Voices: Language and Identity at The Spot, under the supervision of the Canadian Language Museum, York students Melissa Douglas and Shiyan Liang created a dictionary of Toronto English with contributions from friends, family, the Glendon Linguistics Club, and the youths at The Spot.
The dictionary offers examples of usage in various parts of popular culture, including QR codes which link to some of the songs and videos. There is a playlist available on YouTube.
Come visit us at the Museum and offer your contribution to our collection of Toronto’s favourite words!
Learn more about Glendon Hall
The CLM is located in the East Wing of historic Glendon Hall.
As part of two capstone courses in Public History at York University, AP/HIST 4840 and GL/HIST 4310, students Amena Mirza, Jan Szulc, and Nera-Lei Vasilko created a brochure on the history of Glendon Hall under the supervision of the Canadian Language Museum.
