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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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Allusionist 183. Timucua

October 9, 2023 The Allusionist

When Spanish missionaries arrived in what is now called Florida, there were 100,000-200,000 Timucua people in the region. Just two centuries later, there were fewer than 100. Soon, with all the people who spoke it dead, the Timucua language died out, too, preserved only in a few Spanish-Timucua religious texts.

In the 21st century, linguistic anthropologist Aaron Broadwell and historian Alejandra Dubcovsky have been decoding and translating these texts to understand the Timucua language and the people who were writing it down.

Allusionist 100. The Hundredth

May 27, 2019 The Allusionist

To mark the 100th episode of the Allusionist, here’s a celebratory parade of language-related facts.

Allusionist 78. Survival: Oot in the Open

May 25, 2018 The Allusionist

You are born and raised in a household speaking a language. Then you start going to school, and that language is banned. If you speak it, you'll be punished physically or psychologically. Across your country, there are people like you who associate their first language with shame, or not even being a language at all.

This is the predicament of the Scots language.

Scots language campaigners Ishbel McFarlane and Michael Dempster recount how Scots was sent into the shadows, and how it is at long last returning to public.

Allusionist 42+43. Survival: The Key rerun

May 4, 2018 The Allusionist

To accompany the current Allusionist miniseries Survival, about minority languages facing suppression and extinction, we're revisiting this double bill of The Key episodes about why languages die and how they can be resuscitated.

The Rosetta Stone and its modern equivalent the Rosetta Disk preserve writing systems to be read by future generations. But how do those generations decipher text that wasn't written with the expectation of requiring decipherment?

Features mild scenes of linguistic apocalypse.

Allusionist 77. Survival: Second Home

April 20, 2018 The Allusionist

There are two main places in the world where the Welsh language is spoken: Wales, and the Chubut Province in Patagonia. How did this ancient language take root in rural Argentina, 12,000 miles away from its home base?