Dr Nicholas Ostler (chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages and author of The Last Lingua Franca and Empires of the Word) on the need for languages, particularly English, to adapt to change. Can English be challenged as the world's lingua franca?

Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Dr Nicholas Ostler (chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages and author of The Last Lingua Franca and Empires of the Word) on the need for languages, particularly English, to adapt to change. Can English be challenged as the world's lingua franca? Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Languages: Sluggish Responders to Global Change

Tweets, texts, blogs and chat sites. New communication platforms are affecting our relationship with the written word, both in dominant world languages and endangered and minority languages. Is language standardisation necessary to establish literacy, or do we endanger languages by reducing them to writing? 

Join Australian and international authors, anthropologists and linguists to explore the impact of globalisation on languages and on the future of written, spoken and signed communication. 

Recorded at Written, Spoken, Signed: Linguistic Diversity in a Globalised World conference, presented by the Centre for Research on Language Diversity, La Trobe University.

Education

Tweets, texts, blogs and chat sites. New communication platforms are affecting our relationship with the written word, both in dominant world languages and endangered and minority languages. Is language standardisation necessary to establish literacy, or do we endanger languages by reducing them to writing? Join Australian and international authors, anthropologists and linguists to explore the impact of globalisation on languages and on the future of written, spoken and signed communication. Recorded at Written, Spoken, Signed: Linguistic Diversity in a Globalised World conference, presented by the Centre for Research on Language Diversity, La Trobe University.

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Languages: Sluggish Responders to Global Change

Languages: Sluggish Responders to Global Change