Language Listening Workshop / Mena Region

This initiative engages young people in the study and preservation of the unique dialects of Chernihiv Polissya, beginning with an intensive practical workshop on ethnographic field documentation at a traditional clay house in the village of Maksaky. Following their training, participants conduct field expeditions across five local villages to converse with elderly residents, capturing specific pronunciations, rare vocabulary, local humor, and linguistic variations between neighboring settlements. The youth also record brief conversations with their own grandparents, later reviewing and analyzing the audio data together. Based on these findings, a new edition of the local board game Menski Dialects is developed, which is subsequently tested at community gatherings by the participants, their families, and the interviewees.

We bring together a group of 15 young people for a one-day gathering in a traditional clay house in Maksaky. Together, we explore how to listen attentively to speech, conduct conversations with older residents, and document local words, expressions, pronunciations, and stories connected to everyday life.

After this introduction, participants visit five villages in the community and spend time talking with older generations. Rather than focusing on formal interviews, the emphasis is on conversations: listening to how people speak, what words they use, how language differs from village to village, and what these linguistic nuances reveal about local history, memory, and identity.

Alongside these visits, young people are encouraged to record short conversations with their grandparents and older relatives, creating a growing collection of voices and expressions that are rarely documented.

The recordings and notes gathered during these encounters are later reviewed and discussed together. We reflect on what is surprising, what is difficult to capture, and what these conversations reveal about the changing linguistic landscape of the region.

The material collected during this process serves as the basis for a new edition of the board game Menski Dialects, designed to celebrate the richness, humour, and distinctiveness of local speech.

The activities conclude with a community gathering where participants, family members, and conversation partners meet, listen to selected recordings, share memories, and play the new game together.

The main participants are young people interested in their region and older residents whose language, memories, and everyday expressions carry a unique knowledge of place.

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