Rumer Godden’s 1955 novel An Episode of Sparrows (Bookshop|Amazon) centers on Lovejoy, a girl on a small street in post-war London who sets out to plant a garden. Her small setbacks and victories, seen largely through children’s eyes...
The vast majority of young students at Oxford Spires Academy in England are refugees and economic migrants. According to teacher Kate Clanchy, this mixture of cultures and languages creates something magical, including some remarkable poetry in...
Auntie and uncle are often used beyond the family tree as respectful terms for older adults who are close to the family but not blood relatives. Listeners reported this pattern in Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon, South Africa, India, the Philippines...
“There’s a gazelle on the lawn,” meaning you have schmutz on your face, is a fun way to tip someone off to wipe their chin. The expression actually comes to us from Arabic, where the expression “there’s a gazelle in the...
Are we a nosy species? A listener married to a woman from Bangladesh explains how a Bengali term that translates as “nose-going” reflects the naturally inquisitive style of Bangladeshi culture. In many languages, the nose figures...
The Bangladeshi idiom translated as oiling your mustache in anticipation of the jackfruit tree bearing fruit roughly matches English don’t count your chickens before they hatch. The image depends on cultural context: jackfruit is juicy, a mustache...