Sarah Babiker: Irish and Arabic are two languages a world apart - connected by the sun

Journalist and historian Sarah Babiker discusses an essential commonality between two ancient linguistic traditions

Sarah Babiker: "I spent five months conversing with scholars, teachers, friends, family, neighbours and artists, trying to understand why Arabic and Irish refers to darker skin tones as blue."

I’ll never forget the time we were reading an Irish text in class that suddenly mentioned, “ daoine gorma.” Blue people. 

We all looked at each other, wondering who these blue people were. When our teacher explained, I realised that she meant me.