A Linguistic Diversity Collective (LEL) activity for International Mother Language Day led by Professor Eva Schultze-Berndt.

This online activity will actively involve speakers of different ages and proficiencies of languages spoken in Manchester – the intended audience are teachers and students at supplementary schools, those attending community centres, and anybody interested in exploring their own language / heritage language from a cross-linguistic perspective.

Every language has expressions of time and space, but the same spatial arrangement might be described in very different ways across languages – or even within a single language, sometimes leading to miscommunication (“Do you mean left from your perspective, or at the left of the house??”). Regarding time, it is noteworthy that we often speak about time in spatial terms (“We are getting closer to the holidays”).

This topic will be explored with a brief presentation using examples from different languages. Participants can then explore the spatial and temporal expressions in their languages in breakout rooms (a room per language) using interactive games and pictures of different arrangements, with one linguist facilitator per breakout room and the event will last approximately 60-90 minutes.