Preserve living language
Safeguard words, idioms, proverbs, metaphors, signs and expressions—including oral traditions and language that has no direct equivalent elsewhere.
A living archive of mind, heart and culture
Every language knows something about how people hurt, heal and carry on.
Moner Kotha preserves the words, stories, images, objects and gestures people use to express mental health and emotional life—without forcing them into one universal definition.
Our vision
A world where every way of expressing the mind and heart is heard, preserved and understood—whatever the language, culture or form it takes.
The project began with field research in Bangladesh and welcomes knowledge from every country, dialect, oral tradition and sign language.
Our aim
Build the world’s most comprehensive living archive of cultural mental health knowledge.
We want to understand what may be shared across human experience and what is shaped by place, history, faith and community.
Organise without flattening
Build a searchable, multilingual dictionary where original context, regional variation and limits of interpretation stay attached to every entry.
Connect through experience
Create empathic peer spaces built around shared interests and experiences rather than diagnoses, rankings or pressure to disclose.
Build a visual archive
Preserve photographs, artworks, drawings, objects, places, rituals and tools of care that hold emotional meaning in different contexts.
Share stories
Hold personal and community accounts of distress, help-seeking, healing and meaning in the language and form chosen by the storyteller.
Understand across contexts
Explore what people share across cultures and what is shaped by language, faith, history, place and community.
Inform respectful practice
Make culturally grounded knowledge useful to communities, clinicians, researchers, educators, journalists and policymakers.
How knowledge is made
People map the routes that systems overlook.
This participatory map follows a journey through family decisions, spiritual care, practical barriers and formal services. The objects are not decoration; each one records something a participant encountered on the way.
Moner Kotha keeps this context attached to the words people use, so a dictionary entry becomes part of a wider account of care, power and everyday life.
Explore the visual archive →Ways to engage
Take part in the form that works for you
You can contribute knowledge, ask a question, join a conversation, document an image or begin privately. Participation does not require a diagnosis or a long written account.
Contribute
Add what your language knows
Share a word, sign, object, image or story. No diagnosis or specialist language is required.
Contribute an expression →Compare
Ask across contexts
Invite people from other places and cultures to describe what an expression or image means where they live.
Ask a question →Connect
Join a peer circle
Meet around creativity, language, nature, belonging or small personal goals—not diagnoses.
Explore circles →Tell
Share a story in your format
Contribute in text, voice or video while keeping consent, provenance and your own words primary.
Open stories →Reflect
Write privately first
Use the digital diary to find your own words before deciding whether anything should be shared.
Open my diary →Language support
Use the optional language companion
Draft a sensitive translation or a neutral question. Suggestions stay labeled and cannot publish themselves.
Inside the dictionary
Expressions stay connected to context
Illustrative entry · editorial
Palabra / Frase
Bengali
South Asia
মন খারাপ
mon kharap
The state when the mind and heart are "bad" or not well — a heaviness, a low mood, a dimming of the inner self.
everyday distress
mood
3 perspectivas
Illustrative entry · editorial
Palabra / Frase
Bengali
South Asia
পাগল
pagol
Often translated as "mad" or "crazy" in English dictionaries, but পাগল carries a whole spectrum of meaning.
stigma
sacred
4 perspectivas
Illustrative entry · editorial
Sentimiento
Spanish
Latin America, Spain
nervios
Literally "nerves" — but nervios is much more than ordinary anxiety.
culture-bound
somatic
2 perspectivas
Stories across contexts
Stories explain what words alone cannot
Narratives help explore where mental health expressions come from, how stigma shapes help-seeking, and what community programmes or therapeutic approaches may need to understand. They suggest questions for co-design and research—not conclusions about a culture.
English
Illustrative editorial story
The word my grandmother used
Growing up in Dhaka, I never heard the word "depression." My grandmother had a whole vocabulary — মন খারাপ for the ordinary, তার ছেঁড়া for crisis, বাতাস লাগা for something that came from outside and unsettled you. It was only when I moved to London and tried to explain to a therapist what I was feeling that I realised how much had been lost in translation...
Explore this story →
Spanish
Illustrative editorial story
Nervios no es sólo ansiedad
Cuando digo que tengo nervios, no hablo de lo mismo que dice el psiquiatra cuando habla de "trastorno de ansiedad generalizada." Los nervios que siento vienen de mi familia, de la pobreza, de no saber si voy a poder pagar la renta. Los nervios son mi respuesta a un mundo que no está bien — no una disfunción de mi cerebro...
Explore this story →
Urdu
Illustrative editorial story
دل کی بات — Words of the heart
میرے والد نے کبھی نہیں کہا "مجھے depression ہے۔" انہوں نے کہا "دل بھاری ہے" — اور یہ کافی تھا۔ جب میں نے انہیں ڈاکٹر کے پاس لے جانے کی کوشش کی تو انہوں نے کہا: "میں پاگل نہیں ہوں۔" لیکن انہوں نے اپنا بھاری دل مجھے کبھی بند نہیں کیا...
Explore this story →From one place, open to every place
Local knowledge belongs in the global conversation.
A tree, shrine, river, prayer, phrase or gesture may carry a precise meaning in one community and something entirely different in another.
The archive holds those differences side by side. It asks what can travel across contexts and what must remain rooted in place.
About Moner Kotha →
Your context matters
Help preserve a way of understanding that should not be lost.
Share only what feels right. You can contribute anonymously, keep a private draft, or simply explore what others have chosen to preserve.