No matter where you go in the world, you will find people using language. Humans use language to communicate with each other, express themselves and relate to their environment. Both the languages of a community and the beliefs that people have about these languages tell us a lot about the community’s values. As a researcher who studies language, here are some of the questions I ask in my research: What languages do people speak? Which sorts of people speak which languages, and why? What beliefs do people have about different ways of speaking, and what do these beliefs show us?
My research takes place in the Patagonia region of Argentina. Today, the main language spoken here is Spanish. Spanish is the official language of Argentina, first brought by Spanish colonizers in the 1500s. However, there are many other languages spoken in Argentina. The earliest settlers in Patagonia spoke Welsh, and other early immigrants spoke English and German. More recently, immigrants from Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia have brought languages such as Portuguese and Quechua.
