Words are powerful, but what happens when they disappear? Of the 350-plus First Nations languages thriving before colonisation,While more than 300 languages are spoken in Australia today – about 20 per cent of Australians are multilingual – many of those introduced post-European settlement have also been lost across generations.Credit:the latest play from St Martins Youth Arts Centre, two rival clans come together to save the world.
Between the cast and crew, there are connections to 30 languages, either spoken daily or ancestrally, including Yorta Yorta, Arabic, Hebrew, Kanien’keha , Gaelic and Mandarin. Kostich was born in Belgrade and speaks Serbian but says: “I’m a little bit devastated that I haven’t been able to hand it on to my children.”. “There is yearning, in the piece, around ghost languages and the inability to make connections,” Kostich says.
actively engages with the linguistic push and pull Lee, Kostich and the young actors experienced. “There’s this wrestle of needing to speak and not knowing how to shape that voice,” Lee says.