Show notes
When we try to represent languages on a map, it's common to assign each language a zone or a point which represents some idea of where it's used or where it comes from. But in reality, people move around, and many cities are host to hundreds of languages that don't show up on official records. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about urban multilingualism!
Highlighted moments
One of them is Seke, which is spoken by 700 people originally from five villages in Nepal, 100 of which have lived in this one apartment building in Brooklyn for a while now.
“And who we think of as an expat versus who we think of as a migrant definitely has this power dynamic of the level of wealth, the level of whiteness of these different groups as we're talking about them.”
“Sometimes groups of migrants will unite around maybe the national language from where they've come from or a larger lingua franca because they're somewhere new, which might make that diversity less visible.”
Transcript
Transcript not available for this episode yet.
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