salve Reader,

What a week! Languages are very much like Schrödinger's cat: scroll through social media and one minute they are a useless subject superseded by AI, the next they are all people want to talk about.

A couple of days ago, I wrote on social media (see below) about the relationship between Welsh and Latin (both are Indo-European languages), and since then, I've been dealing with a barrage of irate comments.

People get very angry when they think their linguistic beliefs are being questioned. This is because languages matter to us and they shape our identity.

That's where linguistic awareness is so important. Understanding how languages work, change over time and interact with each other is not a matter of random opinion: linguistics has its own field of study and research, beyond political opinion or artistic appreciation.

Catalan, my mother tongue, sometimes gets a bit of a battering by those unfamiliar with the language. I often get asked:

• Is it a dialect of Spanish?
• What? You studied in Catalan at university?
• Is it a mixture of Spanish and French? (My favourite one)

It is quite good to be a linguist so that I can confidently spread the knowledge of minoritised languages and be loud about the beauty of linguistic diversity.

Perhaps you wonder why I am saying all this. Partly, I am lingering on this because I have spent almost a week now telling people that Welsh and Latin are, in fact, related, and no, Welsh has not been spoken in Wales since the beginning of time! Partly, I am sharing this because today is International Mother Language Day and I just want to shout it from the rooftops:

Languages matter!

Help preserve linguistic diversity!

Learn a language, love a language!

Now, I would love to hear how many languages you speak. Do not be shy! I bet at least half of you speak more than one! Do reply to email and let me know.

And before I go, in case this post has made you curious, here you have the offending post as well as a link to the book I wrote in my mother tongue, which has the English too, so there is no excuse not to celebrate dragons with a Catalan story!