Inspired by the poem ‘On Ç’ by Hiromi Itō, a woman looks at the matrilineal inheritance of linguistic tones in her family, mourning the parts of languages that become extinct through semantic evolution.

Steffie Yee is a mixed media animator and illustrator based in Sydney.

“What appeals to me about the poem ‘On Ç’ is Hiromi Itō’s sensibility in describing how the evolution of language and culture has impacted her. It seems that her experience with ‘forgotten’ dialects is very common among the Asian community and it is something that I can relate to on a personal level and have expressed through ‘The Lost Sound’.”