Arts & Ideas13 Sep 2022

New Thinking: What language did Columbus speak?

Christopher Columbus spoke to lots of people: his family and kin in Genova, merchants in Venice, royalty in Madrid, the crew of his ship, not to mention the people he met on the other side of the Atlantic. Today, we would consider this a case of multilingualism. But is that how Columbus would have seen it? What language did he think he spoke himself? In the same period a pidgin language developed to allow linguistically diverse communities in the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa to carry out trade, diplomacy, and general communication. We look at the latest research on this language, known as lingua franca, and consider what it might tell us about communication amongst the linguistic communities of the same region today. New Generation Thinker John Gallagher is joined by guests Dr Joanna Nolan, Professor Nandini Das, Dr Birgül Yılmaz, and translator David Bellos.

This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find other episodes focusing on language in the playlist New Research on the Free Thinking programme website The impact of being multi-lingual https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08s6mjd Birmingham’s Shakespeare Library https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p084zd37 An Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07h2z4r City Talk: a project to map Manchester accents https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07h30hm

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Dr Joanna Nolan teaches at SOAS, University of London and is the author of The Elusive Case of Lingua Franca: Fact and Fiction

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