Mother Tongue, Borrowed Words

How the languages we speak shape who we become

Lerato Dlamini2 episodes1 min of audio45 playsEpisodic

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S1 · E2Aug 23, 20260:4035 plays Preview

Funnier in English, Sadder in Arabic

An Egyptian stand-up comedian who performs in both languages explains why his jokes change personality when he switches, and what his mother thinks of the English ones.

S1 · E1Jul 9, 20260:4510 plays Members

The Grandfather Nobody Can Answer

A Tamil grandfather in Scarborough speaks to grandchildren who understand but cannot reply. Three generations of one family talk, in three languages, about what was lost and what was chosen.

About the show

Lerato Dlamini speaks Sesotho at home, isiZulu with her neighbours, English at work and a mix of all three with her friends, and she has always wanted a show that takes that ordinary multilingual life seriously. Mother Tongue, Borrowed Words is a weekly interview series, about thirty-five minutes long, with people whose identity is tangled up in language: a Welsh teacher raising children in Welsh in Cardiff, a Tamil grandfather in Toronto whose grandchildren cannot answer him, an Egyptian comedian who is funnier in English and sadder in Arabic, a deaf poet from Lagos, a Catalan who switches languages mid-sentence depending on who walks in. Lerato asks the questions linguists forget: which language do you dream in, which one do you pray in, which one did your mother use when she was angry. For bilinguals, for people losing a language, for people learning one, and for anyone who has ever been told their accent was wrong.

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