Word For Word with Sophia Smith Galer

Poet Hollie McNish on falling for French rap, her year abroad in Guadeloupe, and the Guadeloupean Creole she learned from the pupils she taught.

Award-winning poet Hollie McNish wrote her first poem aged seven: mostly rhyming insults about her family. She went on to become the first poet to record an album at Abbey Road Studios, win the Ted Hughes Award for her poetic parenting memoir Nobody Told Me, and write the Sunday Times bestsellers Slug and Lobster.

Hollie and Sophia talk about the school that decided who learned German by which maths set they were in, the “verb scarers” of German grammar, the Cambridge dissertation on a Guadeloupean Creole album that no professor there could check, and why some words work better in her poems’ translations than in the English. And would she be a poet at all if she’d only ever spoken English?

Plus the Word For Word quiz: the word hiding inside “hussy”, and the goat hiding inside “tragedy”.

🎧 BONUS EPISODE: Hollie teaches Sophia five expressions from the languages she speaks.

Sign up on Patreon to listen as well as join Sophia's book club: https://www.patreon.com/SophiaSmithGaler

📚 Sophia’s book, How To Kill A Language: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729

✍️ Find Hollie: holliepoetry.com · Instagram and TikTok: @holliepoetry

🎙️ Listen on every podcast app.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open0:58 Woman's Hour and saying "women"2:10 Hollie's languages, and introducing herself in Creole3:40 The Hollies, and the McNish name5:00 Maths sets and "European awareness"8:50 German, maths and the Enlightenment14:50 First poems, and secret ones in bad French18:00 Memorising your way through exams20:05 German grammar and "verb scarers"21:15 Arabic poetry22:40 Bonus episodes and the book club24:50 Cambridge and a year in Guadeloupe27:25 Guadeloupean Creole31:05 Becoming a poet33:35 Translating the untranslatable39:35 English exits and French toast41:50 The Word For Word quiz47:50 Why swearing helps50:45 Pomegranates, broccoli and pineapples54:38 How To Kill A Language55:43 The globe56:58 Would her poems exist in one language?58:03 Where to find Hollie

Word For Word is a Viralect production created by Sophia Smith Galer.

Executive producer: Seren Jones. Assistant producer: Phoebe Barnett. Videographer: Omar Mehtab. Video editor: Abraham Dein.

Max Klymenko, the creator of Career Ladder, on being in the first class at his school taught entirely in Ukrainian, moving to the UK at 16, and going viral in his third language.

Max has four degrees, a thousand job rejections behind him and what he calls the largest non-animated English-language series in the world. He and Sophia talk about Career Ladder’s origin story (two builders seen from a bus window), why “career ladder” doesn’t translate, Surzhyk, how he ended up saying “wa’er”, the Secret Santa present that taught him about British indirectness, and what Ukrainian identity means in 2026.

Sophia’s book, How To Kill A Language - these links carry an affiliate code, so every purchase helps Sophia make this podcast!: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729

Want the bonus episode, where Max teaches Sophia five expressions? It’s on Patreon from Thursday 5th November, along with the Word For Word Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/c/SophiaSmithGaler. You’ll also be able to watch it here on Spotify if you subscribe to Word For Word on Spotify.

0:00 Ukrainian, English and a bit of Mandarin
1:50 Unc status
2:10 The first class taught in Ukrainian
3:20 Growing up between languages
5:20 Languages at school
7:00 Speaking Ukrainian today
7:50 Surzhyk, and the English words creeping into Ukrainian
10:05 Surzhyk on screen, and Ukrainian MasterChef
11:55 Learning English, and moving to the UK at 16
13:20 Drinking games, Secret Santa and the tin foil
16:50 Why Brits and Ukrainians get on
18:40 “Wa’er”, Ukrainian cockney and a Scouse Barcola
19:58 Why Max’s English turned American
21:05 Max Talks AI, and a law degree
22:50 Sketch comedy, and trying to be serious
25:00 Could another creator do this?
26:50 1,000 rejections: how Career Ladder began
32:55 What’s next, and Zelensky
40:15 Quiz: Snakes and Ladders, “career” and the most translated document
47:40 Do languages help your career?

A Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer.

Assistant producer: Phoebe Barnett

Producer: Helen Meriel Thomas

Videographer: Omar Mehtab

Video editor: Abraham Dein

Executive producer: Seren Jones

Rebecca Kuang (R. F. Kuang) on losing Mandarin as a child in Texas, finding it again in Taipei, and the conversations she never got to have with her grandfather.

The bestselling author of Babel, Yellowface and Katabasis joins Sophia mid-way through her world tour for her new novel, Taipei Story, to open Season 2 of Word For Word. They talk about learning English from Star Wars, Sunday Chinese school, heritage-language shame, intensive immersion, and how you translate grief.

Buy Taipei Story: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008842963
Sophia’s book, How To Kill A Language - these links carry an affiliate code, so every purchase helps Sophia make this podcast!: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729

Want the bonus episode? It’s on Patreon from Thursday 29th October, along with the Word For Word Book Club, which is reading Taipei Story this month: https://www.patreon.com/c/SophiaSmithGaler. You'll also be able to watch it here on Spotify if you subscribe to Word For Word on Spotify.

0:00 Intro1:22 The languages that made Rebecca Kuang2:11 Learning English from Star Wars3:16 Introducing herself in Mandarin4:10 What her Chinese name means6:31 Chinese school on Sundays9:33 Heritage language shame12:44 Why Taipei? Mandarin, Taiwan and 194915:06 A fluent ear, but no grammar19:25 Inside an intensive immersion programme26:50 Her grandfather, and the novel that came after28:59 Japanese, kanji and Tokyo31:41 Accents, mimicry and being the outsider33:58 "Please restrain your grief": condolences in Mandarin37:04 How to write grief39:56 Why language learning is a daily humiliation42:37 Bonus episodes and the Book Club44:20 Language quiz: Babel, Yellowface and "blurb"49:54 The magic globe

A Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer.

Assistant producer: Phoebe Barnett

Producer: Helen Meriel Thomas

Videographer: Omar Mehtab

Video editor: Abraham Dein

Executive producer: Seren Jones

With Mandarin language support from Alice Mo.

It's been almost 6 months since we finished Season 1. So - will you get a Season 2? How will you get it? Find out by giving this a listen!

Join a language nerd book club and support Word For Word with a Patreon subscription here: https://patreon.com/SophiaSmithGaler?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

Buy Sophia's critically acclaimed book How To Kill A Language: Power, Resistance and the Race to Save Our Words here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729

Roy Bualuan - better known online as human1011 - grew up in Indiana with Lebanese Arabic, French and English in his life.

He studied physics at Notre Dame, picked up Modern Standard Arabic as a language requirement, and emerged from that first class with a surprise: the Arabic he'd grown up with and the Arabic he was now being taught were almost entirely different languages.

In this episode, Roy and Sophia get into the sociolinguistic patchwork of Lebanon - where French, English, and Arabic code-switch in the same sentence - as well as his linguistics explainers and OF COURSE the dragon language that he made up. Because why not?

Follow Roy under "human1011" all over the internet!

If you want to buy my book, How To Kill A Language, that's here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729

This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer. This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab, edited by Abraham Dein and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer. Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you've got an iPhone, search "Sophiana app" in the App Store and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD.

Zing Tseng - journalist, author, and co-host of BBC's Good Bad Billionaire - grew up navigating Mandarin classes in Singapore, a Cantonese-speaking home, and the glorious linguistic chaos of Singlish.

In this episode, she and Sophia trace the languages that shaped her: from a teacher who told her "foreigners speak better Chinese than you do," to discovering, decades later, on a trip to her ancestral village in Xiamen, that she was far more fluent than she'd ever believed.

They get into why Singlish is a Creole (and why that matters), the colonial logic behind Singapore's "Speak Good English" campaigns, what billionaires and language learning have in common, and why ordering a coffee in textbook-perfect sentences will get you nowhere fast.

If you want to buy my book, How To Kill A Language, that's here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729

If you want to buy Zing’s amazing book Forgotten Women, that’s here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9781914240690

This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer. This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab, edited by Abraham Dein and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer.

Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you've got an iPhone, search "Sophiana app" in the App Store and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD.

Dictionary Corner's secret weapon isn't English - it's German!In this episode of Word For Word, lexicographer, broadcaster and word detective Susie Dent joins Sophia Smith Galer at Casa Italiana in Clerkenwell to talk about the languages that made her - and made her one of the most trusted voices on the English language in Britain.Come for the etymology of "muscle" (hint: squeak squeak) — and stay for the revelation that diarrhoea and the River Rhine share the same root.Susie reflects on growing up defending her love of German to a grandmother who lived through the war, how a rainy afternoon at Oxford University Press and a dusty etymological dictionary changed the course of her career, and why she said no to Countdown - more than once. Susie's mystery thriller Guilty By Definition was an absolute blinder of a book, and I highly recommend you read it - buy it here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9781804183977If you want to buy my book, How To Kill A Language, that's here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer. This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab, edited by Abraham Dein and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer. Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you've got an iPhone, search "Sophiana app" in the App Store and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD.

Speaking Iraqi Arabic opened doors in the field - while her Hull accent raised eyebrows in the newsroom.

In this episode of Word For Word, multi-Emmy award-winning journalist Hind Hassan joins Sophia Smith Galer to talk about how her languages have shaped her life and work.

Hind reflects on growing up as an Iraqi in Hull and shares how speaking Iraqi dialect transformed her reporting on the ground - unlocking trust, intimacy, and access - while her Hull accent exposed the class biases embedded in British media.

The conversation moves through Arabic diglossia, the differences between dialect and modern standard Arabic, and the unexpected ways language can both connect and isolate. Hind also opens up about code-switching, losing parts of her accent, and the emotional tension between sounding “professional” and sounding like yourself.

Come for poetic Iraqi motherisms - and stay for the chip spice.

Follow Hind on Instagram here to stay up to date with her new reports and documentaries: https://www.instagram.com/hanood7sn/

You can order my book How To Kill A Language here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729

This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer.
This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer.

Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you’ve got an iPhone, search “Sophiana app” in the App Store and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD.

Chapters

01:10 — What’s in a name? Arabic naming traditions

06:05 — Two languages, two worlds

12:16 — Learning standard Arabic

18:34 — Growing up Iraqi in Hull

20:05 — Hull dialect & chip spice

28:00 — Accent bias in journalism

33:13 — Language as connection in reporting

Sathnam Sanghera can remember pretending to speak English on his first day at school, lest he give away that he could only speak Punjabi. Today, he’s the prolific writer behind numerous works including Empireland, Empireworld, The Boy With The Top Knot and Marriage Material.

In this episode of Word For Word, journalist Sophia Smith Galer speaks with the author and broadcaster about how language, empire, and migration intertwine. Sathnam reflects on growing up between Punjabi and English in Wolverhampton, and realising later in life how deeply empire shaped the language he writes in.

They discuss the strange afterlives of languages in diaspora communities, why immigrant families often preserve “time capsule” versions of their mother tongues, and how Punjabi words have quietly entered everyday English. The conversation also explores the contradictions of empire: how English could be both a tool of domination and a global bridge between cultures.

Sathnam’s forthcoming book on George Michael - Tonight The Music Seems So Loud - can be bought here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9781035063871

You can order my book How To Kill A Language here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729

This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer.
This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer.

Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you’ve got an iPhone, download the Sophiana app and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD.

Chapters

00:00 – Growing up between Punjabi and English

05:30 – Diaspora languages and “time capsule” Punjabi

12:30 – Empire, English and borrowed words

25:00 – Accents, shame and linguistic identity

41:30 – Writing across cultures and curiosity

56:00 – Sophia’s language nerd quiz

01:02:00 – Why multilingualism enriches society

Many know BBC News presenter Maryam Moshiri for her ability to steer BBC news programmes through light and shade, helping us understand the world through its darkest moments as well as find a bit of relief and humour. But did you know she's also trilingual?

In this episode of Word for Word, journalist Sophia Smith Galer talks to Maryam Moshiri about the languages that shaped her life - from speaking Farsi at home as the child of Iranian immigrants to becoming fluent in Italian after falling in love with Rome and its culture.Maryam shares how growing up bilingual influenced the way she sees the world, why she once felt embarrassed hearing her parents speak Farsi in public - something that changed as she got older. She also reflects on studying Italian at university, living in Rome, and shows us how 'news voice' isn't just about tone, but about breathing.

You can order my book How To Kill A Language here: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/how-to-kill-a-language-power-resistance-and-the-race-to-save-our-words-sophia-smith-galer/bc2b75402744da38?ean=9780008723729&next=t

Or Amazon: https://amzn.to/4shmq0e

This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer. This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer. Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you’ve got an iPhone, download Sophiana and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD at https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/sophiana-script-video-maker/id6742998989

00:00 — Growing up between languages

04:39 — Farsi, English, and becoming bilingual

12:38 — Falling in love with Italy and learning Italian

25:03 — Do languages actually help in journalism?

27:08 — How language shapes identity and personality

54:21 — Why learning languages still matters today

Len Pennie doesn’t feel entirely at home in English or in Scots. So she writes in both. In this episode of Word For Word, poet and broadcaster Len Pennie joins journalist Sophia Smith Galer to explore what it means to live between languages. From growing up immersed in Scots without stigma, to discovering the shame and suppression surrounding, Len reflects on how a language can be celebrated on stage yet punished in the classroom and wider society.They open up on the politics - and inaccuracy - of calling Scots a “dialect,” the sanitising of Robert Burns, and why Len refuses to include a glossary in her books. The conversation moves through bilingual identity, monolingual privilege, and the complicated question of who “has the right” to claim a language. Len also shares how learning Spanish became both a refuge and a reminder of trauma, as well as how different languages can unlock entirely different versions of ourselves. Follow Len on social media at @misspunnypennie and find her poetry collections in my Bookshop link, along with other books on language and identity that I have loved reading: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/how-to-kill-a-language-and-friends?&new-list-page=true You can order my book How To Kill A Language in the same spot, as well as from Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-kill-a-language/sophia-smith-galer/9780008723729 Or Amazon: https://amzn.to/4shmq0e This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer. This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer. Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you’ve got an iPhone, download Sophiana and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD at https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/sophiana-script-video-maker/id6742998989.00:00 – Living between languages08:18 – What’s Scots?15:00 – Sanitising Burns & who gets to use Scots20:48 – Falling in love with Spanish, and language trauma28:00 – Monolingualism, privilege and language hierarchies39:30 – Feeling like different people with different languages 48:10 – Sophia’s language nerd quiz01:00:50 – The future of Scots: “Government-Subsidised Grannies”

Word For Word is a podcast about storytellers and the languages that made them.

There'll be new interviews every week, hosted by award-winning journalist, author and content creator, Sophia Smith Galer.

Season 1 starts very soon!!!

Credits

• This is a Viralect original production, filmed by Omar Mehtab.
• Seren Jones is our executive producer.
• Sophia Smith Galer is the founder of Viralect and creator of Word For Word.