Greater Manchester is a very diverse place, where many languages are spoken. That diversity extends to Greater Manchester’s Muslims and Jews, who have a very wide range of languages as either their first or second language.

Yaron Matras served as Professor of Linguistics at the University of Manchester until 2020 and is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester and Honorary Professor at the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics. As the link to his Manchester University page shows, he is an expert on language and society.

After briefly covering the wide diversity of languages spoken in Greater Manchester generally, he will focus on the languages of GM’s Muslims and Jews.

Professor Matras’s talk will be followed by five-minute contributions from the Jewish and Muslim speakers listed below about their personal linguistic journey through life:

• Safiya Florence Ascoli-Ball (First language French)
• Alexander Samely (First language German)
• Tahara Amin (First language Punjabi)
• TBC

This event will be held on Zoom. It is free to attend but you must book via the Zoom link below.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZElf-2qqz4pHtKvTHpC19TxyQgppa9bRsVB

As with all our Zoom events, it will be recorded, but we only publish the official speakers on our website.