The Tasmanian Language Cafe

The Tasmanian Language Cafe is a set of interviews about the diverse languages that are spoken in Tasmania, Australia. The purpose of the project is to explore the importance of language in maintaining culture and identity, both for immigrants to Australia and for indigenous Tasmanians.

The idea was developed and realised by Sonia Parra following on from her work organising the Hobart Language Day which has been running since 2015 in Hobart, Tasmania.

This is the first part of an audio tour of the languages we brought with us to Tasmania: this is how the world's languages sound in Tasmania: a journey through of some of the languages that are heard in Tasmania thanks to migrants. Our planet holds a treasure: 7.000 languages are spoken in the world. Some of them, such as Hindi, have a billion speakers. Arabic, English or Spanish have hundreds million speakers, while others, such Yoruba or Swahili have around 40 million. Some others do not exceed a hundred.

This linguistic journey begins in South Asia and the Middle East, where Bangla and the Arabic languages come from. During this trip we will have stops in different places all around the world such as Nigeria, Tasmania itself, Paraguay, Georgia and many other countries, some of whose citizens moved to Tasmania and brought with them their mother tongue. Here we speak 170 different languages. All these sounds will be played here.