Said & Done

Wynnie Lamour-Quansah is a lecturer of Haitian Creole at NYU, the founder and managing director of the Haitian Creole Language Institute of New York, and the co-founder of Jaden Timoun, a Haitian Creole language immersion program for children. Wynnie talks about her own experience with growing up and speaking Haitian Creole. She discusses the origins and revolutionary history of the language, its status today in Haiti, and the relationship between language, politics, and power.

Haitian Creole Language Institute of New York: https://haitiancreoleinstitute.com/ Jaden Timoun: https://jadentimoun.com/ Haitian Creole at NYU: https://as.nyu.edu/research-centers/clacs/languages/haitian-creole.html

Nelleke Van Deusen-Scholl, a sociolinguist and former director of the Yale Center for Language Study, speaks about heritage language learning, a topic on which she has published extensively. She then discusses other ways in which language learning has a transformative effect on people's lives, from migrant farm workers in florida, to university students, to any person who decides that they want to study a new language. The power of language learning is also the topic of her blog, Discover the World through Language, available at https://discovertheworldthroughlanguage.org/

Reyes Llopis-García is a Senior Lecturer in Spanish in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia, a cognitive linguist, and a teacher trainer. In this conversation, we talk about cognitive linguistics and some ways in which concepts from this field of study can be applied in the language classroom. We also discuss a book that she recently published, Applied Cognitive Linguistics and L2 Instruction in the Cambridge Elements series.

You can find more information about the book here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/applied-cognitive-linguistics-and-l2-instruction/B6BB969DF51D65418CCDCDFEF0C9C754

In this conversation, we refer to several diagrams from her book. To see these diagrams, you can view the video version of this episode on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu80J0CTDdc

Angelika Kraemer is the Director of the Cornell Language Resource Center. In this conversation, she shares her journey to becoming a scholar and language professional. She then discusses some solutions to the ongoing challenge of promoting and communicating about languages. We also talk about her podcast, Speaking of Language, from the Cornell Language Resource Center.

Subscribe to "Speaking of Language" here: https://lrc.cornell.edu/podcast

The website of the JNCL-NCLIS (Join National Committee for Languages and the National Council for Languages and International Studies), mentioned in this episode: https://www.languagepolicy.org

Wesley Doucette is a Ph.D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center in the French Doctoral Program. In this conversation, Wesley talks about his long-standing interest in studying both French and Turkish. He discusses what it was like to learn Turkish at Columbia through an inter-institutional partnership called the Inter-University Doctoral Consortium. He shares his views on the benefits of studying a less commonly taught language, what was easy and what was difficult about learning Turkish, and his experiences with learning Ottoman Turkish at Columbia in addition to Modern Turkish.

Turkish at Columbia: https://mesaas.columbia.edu/language-programs/turkish/

Ottoman Turkish at Columbia: https://www.lrc.columbia.edu/language/turkish-ottoman/

Professor David Malinowski of San Jose State University discusses the topic of the linguistic landscape, which refers to the "symbolic construction of the public space." He defines and introduces the topic, shares examples of linguistic landscapes, and discusses the kinds of relationships that two or more languages appearing (or not appearing) simultaneously in public can have with one another.

Materials for those interested in learning more about LL

Handout for language instructors/learners looking for a framework to get started with the linguistic landscape: (link)

A more detailed essay introduction to the topic: (link)

The two books that Dave mentions in the episode:

• Dubreil, S., Malinowski, D., & Maxim, H. H. (Eds.). (2023). Spatializing Language Studies: Pedagogical Approaches in the Linguistic Landscape (Vol. 62). Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-39578-9
• Malinowski, D., Maxim, H. H., & Dubreil, S. (Eds.). (2020). Language teaching in the linguistic landscape: Mobilizing pedagogy in public space. Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-55761-4

Additional resources on LL:

• Backhaus, P. (2007). Linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo. Multilingual Matters.
• Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Hasan Amara, M., & Trumper-Hecht, N. (2006). Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space: The Case of Israel. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 7–30.
• Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. B. K. (2003). Discourses in place: Language in the material world. Routledge.
• Solmaz, O., & Przymus, S. (Eds.). (2021). Linguistic landscapes in English Language Teaching: A pedagogical guidebook. http://llineltproject.com/

Fransha Dace hails from the South Side Chicago neighborhood of South Shore, and is currently a Ph.D candidate at the School of the Environment at Yale University.

In this conversation, she talks about the relationship between climate and language, and how she has used her knowledge of Swahili to study the effects of climate change in Tanzania. She discusses her climate research, which pairs Dar es Salaam and Chicago, and examines how climate change affects the residents of these cities. She then speaks about what it means to be a researcher, who gets to conduct research, and how she hopes that universities can change to become more inclusive and welcoming to future researchers.

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.