Bengali and Sylheti, with Dwijen Bhattacharya

To celebrate the newly-released book, "Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York," we revisit a conversation with author Ross Perlin from 2022. Ross is a Columbia professor, linguist, and co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance. In this conversation, he previews several of the fascinating topics which later appear in Language City, such New York's linguistic hyperdiversity and the importance of language preservation, as well as the stories of speakers of endangered languages like Seke and Lenape.

Learn more about Language City here: https://groveatlantic.com/book/language-city/

Learn more about the Endangered Language Alliance Here: https://www.elalliance.org/

Learn more about the Languages of New York City map: https://languagemap.nyc/

Claire-Marie Brisson is a Preceptor in French at Harvard University. In this conversation, she talks about growing up in Michigan in close contact with multiple languages, including French, English, Spanish, German, and Arabic. She discusses her activities as a French language advocate and educator, including a course that she teaches at Harvard titled "Discovering French in North America." This class follows waterways in the US and Canada to explore the history of the French language, minority French literature, and environmental issues. 

Watch this conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/J9vlx47f-O0

The North American Francophone Podcast: https://www.thefrancophone.com/

Liam Liesanggoro teaches Indonesian at Columbia University as the Fulbright Foreign Language TA for the 2023-2024 academic year. In this conversation, he speaks about the fascinating connection between language and sports. Liam discusses how language is used in playing badminton and basketball, both in Indonesia and in the US. He also talks about how playing sports can be a good way for a person studying or living abroad to engage with others, acquire new linguistic forms, and become part of a community. 

Timi Odunjo is a senior at Columbia University majoring in Drama and Theatre Arts. In this conversation, he speaks about studying the Yoruba language at Columbia and the cinematic traditions that have inspired him to become a filmmaker. He also discusses his first film, a documentary titled Ballet U.

Richard R. speaks about his journey to and within Tibetan Buddhism, and the central role that the Tibetan language has played in his religious practice and in his life over the past several decades.layed in his religious practice and in his life over the past several decades.

Skye Shannon Savage, a Ph.D. candidate in Columbia's Department of Germanic Languages, discusses a project that involved teaching some Yiddish in a German language class, in order to highlight the relationship between the two languages. Skye situates this experiment of linguistic cross-pollination within the broader context of metalinguistic knowledge, which is rarely taught explicitly in the foreign language classroom.

Simon Zuberek returns to Said & Done to discuss the rise in interest in artificial intelligence, and how it relates to language teaching and learning. We discuss how large language model chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard work, and how they might and might not be helpful to a language learner today.

Nandi Sipengane, instructor of isiZulu at Yale University, talks about speaking many different languages at home and at school growing up in South Africa. She describes some of the unique features of isiZulu,  including the famous click consonants. She also discusses how South Africans think about and understand their complex national, cultural, and linguistic identities.

Watch this conversation on Youtube: https://youtu.be/t5jOXjLx_TY

Angelina Craig-Florez of Columbia University, Ann Warner-Ault of the College of New Jersey, and Mike Jones of Swarthmore College are three members of the board of NEALLT, the Northeastern Association for Language Learning Technology.  In this conversation, we talk about the paths that they took to becoming language professionals, the role of technology in language teaching, and how a smaller regional organization like NEALLT can be a big help to graduate students and early-career language professionals as they try out new ideas and build their professional networks. Here’s my conversation with Angie, Ann, and Mike. 

www.neallt.org

https://youtu.be/q09EGrxBx7I

#language #languages #languagelearning #languageteaching 

What challenges do learners face in year 10, year 15, year 20 of studying a foreign language? Chris and Simon talk about their recent victories and ongoing challenges as higher-proficiency learners of English, German, and Italian.

This episode was recorded as a livestream on Youtube. You can watch the video version of this conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi7lW9yvnpo