Ahilan Ratnamohan is a language enthusiast who is always in the process of learning at least two languages at the same time. Although Dutch surrounds him, he has long left that language behind. During his first years in Belgium, he collected a list of 840 Dutch words that he didn’t (yet) know—words he came across in books, articles, and brochures circulating around the arts sector. The list incubated for a long time in the back of Ahilan’s head, until one day in 2020 when he felt the urge to throw himself back into the Dutch language.
Together with Ahilan Ratmohan, we developed Pidgin X, a project investigating whether you can be homesick for a language, together with dozens of residents in Leeuwarden, Groningen, and Zwolle.