Language II

The future of Indigenous languages
Our new video takes a look at some of the highlights from the National Indigenous Languages Convention.

Swahili The Future of Africa | Goldalyn Tanga | TEDxYouth@BrookhouseSchool
Goldalyn talks about Kiswahili which started in Lamu how it is spreading in Africa. Goldalyn is currently a student at Brookhouse with passion of languages.

What is the Future of the English Language?
If you traveled four hundred years into the future, would you be able to understand your fellow English speakers? Join Ben Bowlin as he explores how the English language is evolving -- and how it may change in the future.

Back to the Future of Endangered Languages
Rapid globalization and technology that brings majority world languages into minority language homes threatens the survival of the estimated 6,000 to 7,000 languages worldwide. Whether in Africa, Australia, the United States or beyond, tiny languages are endangered, with their survival often depending on the last elderly speakers. Europe's endangered Irish language is a great story of a language reviving its prospects, but success stories of languages renewed and reclaimed abound, such as the Wampanoag language, spoken by the tribe reputed to have celebrated the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims. The human spirit craves a connection to ancestors and the past, and heritage languages do just that, while breathing new life into the future.

The Future of Languages - Professor Gunther Kress (Institute of Education, University of London)
To speak of the future implies change and hence a social view of language (-- on the assumption that human brains don't change fast enough for us or anyone to notice). I will start with a sketchy bit of history of (the English) language, namely that of the sentence. I will attempt to link that -- very loosely - to social changes, without any attempt at a serious history. I will then focus on some current conditions and trends -- social, political, cultural, representational, technological - and speculate about their likely effects on language. Given the modest claim implicit in the title, this can be no more than suggestive and perhaps just a little provocative: and if so, that may just be enough.

The Future of Languages | Mukhtar Omar Mukhlis | TEDxYouth@KES
How do we predict the changes that language will undergo? What control do we have over the way we speak? And what can the Klingons of Star Trek tell us about all this? Mukhtar O. Mukhlis delves into the possible answers to these questions and more in a discussion about the drastic changes language has undergone, the drastic changes to come, and how “linguistic fortune-telling” fits in with all that. Mukhtar O. Mukhlis is a 14-year-old KES boy, an author, social media influencer, and passionate linguist. Language has always been a love of his. His appetite for linguistics has grown immeasurably over the years, which in turn has influenced his penchant for constructing his own languages. He is devoted to opening the eyes of other people to the wonders that linguistics can weave, and he believes that if even the most uninterested person looks close enough, they’ll see just how much of a core study linguistics is.

Also see: The future of Language, Culture & Heritage Videophile

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