lingua bones

[languagebones]

This is a screen shot from my phone when I was traveling with my family in Tharparkar District, Sindh, Pakistan this past December. The pink line is the national border between Sindh, Pakistan (top half of image) and Gujarat, India. The entire region is a thick border - linguistically, religiously, geographically. As we travelled east from Karachi, local dialects started to sound closer to Gujarati than Urdu. A few of the dialects we heard along our route were Sindhi, Marwari, and Dhatki. As languages changed, the desert extended into the Karoonjhar mountains in the distance. The population changed from majority Muslim to majority Hindu in the major city of Mithi and villages dotted with historic Hindu temples.

[languagebones]

uncovering language

This is a blog about language. I’m going to be collecting quotes, images, drawings, audio, photos, and anything else related to the division, amalgamation, and blending of South Asian languages - specifically Urdu and Gujarati. I was inspired to keep this blog as a collection of stories, tidbits, and findings about processing language within my own family of Urdu-Gujarati-English speakers. There will probably be a lot of personal anecdotes & photos exploring these themes  here.

I’m excited to see where this goes!