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In this episode, a conversation with language writer Julie Sedivy. Her memoir, Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love is a kind of natural history of language, told through some of Julie’s most meaningful linguistic encounters: at home, in school, in love and in death.

Check out Julie's website for more of her writing. And listen to this Subtitle episode about her efforts to reclaim her native Czech, most of which she forgot after moving to Canada as a child.

Music in this episode by Par, Medité, Brightarm Orchestra, Laura Platt, Ookean, and Trabant 33. The photo shows Julie Sedivy and her daughter in the Czech Republic.

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As 20-year-old Olga Janáčková lay dying from typhoid fever, her father wrote down everything she said. Later, he transformed those words—and gasps—into music. The grieving father, Czech composer Leoš Janáček, called the ultra-short musical pieces "speech melodies." In this episode, language writer Michael Erard invites cellist Petronella Torin to play Olga's speech melodies. NYU's Michael Beckerman describes the controversy surrounding them.

This is among countless ways that loved ones have memorialized the final words of the dying. Michael Erard tells the stories of many of them in his new book, Bye Bye I Love You.

Music in this episode by Magnus Ludvigsson, Medité, Dream Cave, Nylonia, Alexandra Woodward, Cobby Costa, August Wilhelmsson, David Celeste, Martin Landstrom, Gavin Luke, Rand Also, Airae, Alan Ellis, Jules Gaia, Trabant 33, and Leoš Janáček. More about cellist Petronella Torin here.

The photo (via Wikimedia Commons) shows Olga Janáčková, daughter of the Czech composer Leoš Janáček, not long before her death from typhoid fever.

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Some Icelanders are becoming unsettled by this existential question: Will their language still be spoken in the future? Comedian and former Reykjavik mayor Jón Gnarr is convinced that this uniquely archaic-yet-modern language will one day die out. He says his children express themselves beautifully in English but speak limited Icelandic. Give it a couple more generations, and who knows? For Gnarr and many others, speaking Icelandic is an essential part of being Icelandic. Without the language, Iceland's patriotic anthem "Land, Nation and Tongue" would lose its meaning. Among Iceland's multitude of avid book-readers though, the language is showing few signs of disappearing. For now at least, Icelandic authors are committed to writing in their mother tongue.

This is part two of our reporting on Icelandic. Listen to the first part, Icelandic, the language that recycles everything.

In addition to Jón Gnarr, we hear from novelists Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir and Sverrir Norland, as well as literary translator Larissa Kyzer, linguist Ari Páll Kristinsson, and Ethiopian-born restaurant owner Azeb Kahssay.

Music in this episode by Luella Gren, Hysics, Medité, Farrell Wooten, J.S. Bach/Eric Jacobsen, Jon Björk, and Trabant 33. The photo is of a poster in Reykjavik celebrating the Icelandic language.

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Many place names in the United States are borrowed from Native American words. It's often hard to trace the roots. Over time, the original names were often transformed beyond recognition, victims of mangled pronunciation. Suzanne Hogan is our guide to the origins of Missouri, a name rooted in the Chiwere language. Chiwere has been imperiled for generations but kept alive by the Otoe-Missouria Tribe, and by one tribe member in particular: Truman Washington Dailey, a pioneer of North American language revitalization.

Suzanne Hogan is the host of the podcast, A People's History of Kansas City. Read more about this episode here, and more about the Otoe-Missouria Tribe here. A People's History of Kansas City is supported by the Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri.

Music in this episode courtesy of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe. Other music by Gunnar Johnsen, Blue Dot Sessions, Medité, and Trabant 33. The photo shows a delegation of the Otoe-Missouria tribe in 1881. (Credit: John K. Hillers / Gilman Collection, Metropolitan Museum Of Art.) 

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In this episode, we're handing over the reins to the podcast series, Home, Interrupted, produced by Feet in 2 Worlds. The series explores how the climate crisis affects immigrants across the U.S., and how immigrant communities are finding new ways to deal with a warming planet. In this episode, reporter Allison Salerno tells the stories of migrant farmworkers in Florida who face increasingly hazardous conditions. State lawmakers have blocked legislation to protect them, so farmworkers are now seeking help from outside groups who are donating ice packs, cooling bandanas, water with electrolytes and other things to help keep them alive.

More on this episode here, and on the Home, Interrupted series here. The photo of Elena Contreras and her mother Mirella Contreras, a former migrant farmworker who now is an organizer for the Farmworker Association of Florida, is by Allison Salerno.

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Icelanders are protective of their language. When a new piece of tech or a new disease emerges, people debate what to call these things in Icelandic. New words must sound and look Icelandic, otherwise they may not survive. The country's Knitting Words Committee is one of dozens of community panels charged with proposing new words. Typically, they repurpose old words that have fallen out of use. Who doesn't want to revive a word or phrase from Iceland's sagas? In this episode, we take you to Iceland to discover how, seemingly, an entire nation has coalesced around the maxim, "We have a very good old word for that." 

Music in this episode by Taomito, Silver Maple, pär, Medité, Nathan Welch, and Trabant 33. Photo of Hulda Hákonardóttir and Guðrún Hannele Henttinen of Iceland's Knitting Words Committee by Patrick Cox.

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In recent decades, Americans' perception of bilingualism has been transformed. As recently as the 1990s, the prevailing belief was that if a child grew up bilingual, they would be at a linguistic and cognitive disadvantage. Today, many Americans believe the opposite, that speaking more than one language carries advantages. But the hundreds of studies of the bilingual brain don't all draw the same conclusions. In this episode, we sample some recent research whose findings are helping to paint a more nuanced picture of how bilingual speakers function differently from monolinguals.

Music in this episode by Walt Adams, Blue Dot Sessions, Medité, Podington Bear and Trabant 33. Photo of a bilingual street sign in Sydney's Chinatown by Jordanopia/Wikimedia Commons.

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How did Basque survive Spain's military dictatorship under Francisco Franco when speaking, writing and reading it were illegal? With more than six dialects, how did its speakers agree on a standard way of writing the language? And how has Basque thrived in the decades since Franco died? Nina Porzucki tells the story of Europe's most mysterious language and its tenacious speakers— a story that includes immigration to the American West, decades of exile in South America, translations of Shakespeare's plays and an epic struggle over the letter H.

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Josef Falkensköld, and Trabant 33.Photo of participants in a relay ‘marathon’ in support of the Basque language by Tintxarri via Wikimedia Commons. Info about Nina Porzucki here.

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Netflix's lavish new adaptation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem is the latest 'translation' of one of this century's best, and best-selling, sci-fi novels. In this episode, we track the role of translation—on screen and on the page—in the global rise of Chinese sci-fi. Our guide is reporter and sci-fi aficionada Lydia Emmanouilidou who talks with several people involved in the Chinese literary scene, notably The Three-Body Problem's English translator Ken Liu.

More about Lydia Emmanouilidou here. Music in this episode by Ambre Jaune, Medité, Pearce Roswell and Trabant 33.

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The French language is replete with words borrowed from English, like 'weekend' and 'podcasting.' But French speakers' use of 'black' is in a category of its own: this one short syllable tells the story of France's racial and colonial legacies and how they stack up against U.S. history, from slavery to Black Lives Matter. Both countries are idealistic, rooted in 18th-century revolutions and grand principles. But while many in the US value racial and ethnic difference, France sees itself as a color-blind society that rejects the race-based policies of its past. So, using the French word noir is almost un-French—prompting many Black French citizens to embrace 'black.'  Reporting this episode is former Paris resident, Emma Jacobs.

More about Emma Jacobs here and here. Music by Martin Klem, Medité, Trabant 33, Podington Bear and Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Lea Dasenka. 

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