23 - 29 June 2025 - Broad Chalke, Salisbury
Included
The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha Ellis grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, but her mother tongue is dying out. The realisation that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s ‘living in the days of the aubergines’ or ‘chopping onions on my heart’ opens the floodgates. An urgent need to find out more becomes an expansive investigation into how to keep hold of her culture – and when to let it go. Meanwhile linguist and writer Lorna Gibb has travelled the world exploring the histories of languages under threat or already extinct, as well as those in resurgence, offering us a glimpse into what they teach us about our planet, about medicine, about indigenous culture and tradition, even the history of all mankind. This is a fascinating discussion on what we lose and keep as languages become increasingly homogenous, and why linguistic diversity matters for us all.
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