Speaking in Tongues (language meetups)

‘Take away my language,
and you also take away access to the stories that my forebears created,
in the cadences that created them.
Educate me in a language lacking the rhythms of home,
and I am likely to speak as a segmented self,
to sound surgically snipped and etherized in the official world…’
Gaiutra Bahadur

Patchwork Archivists will soon be coordinating regular language practice meetups. This is for and with people from South Asian diasporas trying to learn and/or maintain languages related to their families, communities, histories and ancestors.

Here’s how it will work…

We will host fortnightly events where people can group according to what language they would like to practice/learn and decide themselves how they would like to do this.

At the end of each session we will leave some time for people to share thoughts and reflect on connections between languages. To help with this, we can think about themes/topics for all of the groups to focus on occasionally.

(Please note: this format is open for amendment so please share feedback/suggestions if you’d like to).

Get in touch..

DATES ARE YET TO BE CONFIRMED and at the moment, we are gauging interest. If this sounds like something you want to do, we would be grateful if you could email info@patchwork-archivists.org and let us know what languages you would like to practice and/or learn.

If you’d like to, we would also love to hear more from people about why practising and/or learning this language(s) is important for you, what’s worked before or what difficulties you’ve had, how such meet ups might be useful and whether there are certain topics you’d like to focus on.

Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1654538151271464/.

Please note: the event is for people of South Asian diasporas.