August 3, 2022

Lost in translation

Elena co-reported, wrote, and produced the first story in this episode with Isabella Bloom. It was edited by Leah Donnella and produced by Kumari Devarajan and Leah Donnella.

Today on the show, we're bringing you the stories of two families grappling with how to communicate across languages. In the first story, a young man sorts through how to talk to his parents about gender in Chinese, where the words for "he" and "she" sound exactly the same. Then, we follow a family who was advised to stop speaking their heritage language, Japanese, based on some unsound advice and outdated research.

For more information on the linguistics of gender and pronouns in Chinese, check out the Gender in Language Project.