Speaking in Tongues
Because a Language Is Worth a Thousand Pictures
about
Category: endangered languages
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Friulian is spoken in Friuli, a border region in northeastern Italy, which has long been a crossroads of cultures and conflicts, its Romance heritage disrupted in the sixth century under Germanic influence. Friulians are also an ethnically mixed people with Latin, Germanic, and Slavic heritage, owing to their position as a crossroads of cultures. Distinct…
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I am aware this has been pushed out very late—It’s been a busy few couple of weeks but there’ll be more content shortly! Today we will be covering the Miskito language of coastal Nicaragua and Honduras. Miskito has an elaborate history of autonomy, linguistic contact, and suppression, surviving into the 21st century but in a…
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Today, we will go to the arid deserts of the southern tip of Africa to discuss the Khoekhoe language, straddling the Kalahari Desert through South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. Long grouped together with the San, a people almost as old as time itself, only recently has Khoekhoe been recognized in its own regard, although both…
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This week, we will examine the Jeju language of South Korea. Home to the now ubiquitous K-pop and many cultural exports, as well as one of the most ethnically homogenous societies on Earth, Korea has a little-discussed language spoken on one of its most popular tourist destinations: Jeju Island. Despite its unique geographical position and…
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This week, the first entry of Speaking in Tongues will be the fascinating Crimean Tatar language, spoken by the eponymous group in Crimea. Once the language of the illustrious Crimean Khanate, after centuries of repression and displacement, Crimean Tatar is on the verge of extinction, despite a great literary corpus and ongoing efforts to revive…
Speaking in Tongues 