Word For Word with Sophia Smith Galer
The languages that shaped Roy Bualuan
Published: 14 April 2026 at 07:00 Europe/London
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Episode notes
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.
