Marzanna Antoniak is an ESOL teacher and former Community Connector in Govanhill. Here she reflects on teaching English in the community as well as chatting to community organisations about how they overcome language barriers in their work.

“With an intimate knowledge of groups, activities and resources available locally, community link workers play a crucial role in mapping local support systems – keeping individuals and GP practices up to speed with the services available.” - Lottie Hanwell on link workers, writing for our language issue.

– Musimy zdać sobie sprawę, jak wielki wpływ na zdrowie psychiczne oraz fizyczne mogą mieć nasza sytuacja osobista i społeczna – mówi Leanne. This is the translated version of an article on community link workers, which first appeared in our language issue.

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“Plants seem to have a language of their own, with which they communicate to us their medicinal properties. In turn, humans have developed various ways of transmitting plant lore, knowledge and medicinal uses of herbs and other plants.” - Beti Scott, Movement in Thyme.

Govanhill is an area where you can walk down the street and hear a different language every step. In fact, one study recorded 88 different languages spoken on Victoria Road after sampling 200 people from one street. But what’s it like to grow up in a multilingual household? Some locals shared their experiences for our language issue.

Last year the people of Govanhill got the chatbot they didn’t know they needed; a sharp-tongued weegie one. We got comedian Bruce Morton to test it out before the now defunct website was taken down. 

Elusive local group The Anymen published yet another Govanhill-themed cryptic crossword in Language issue. Over the past month, some locals have been sending in their completed crosswords while many more are still scratching their heads with where to start. Take a look at the answers below along with an explainer of each clue.

In this month of Roma News and Views, Rahela writes about the importance of language preservation and how Romanes, the language spoken by Roma people is being learned by people from Roma and non-Roma backgrounds.

In this month of Roma News and Views, Rahela writes about the importance of language preservation and how Romanes, the language spoken by Roma people is being learned by people from Roma and non-Roma backgrounds.