Said & Done

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

Ayomide Tikare, a graduating senior at Barnard College, talks about learning Yoruba over the past four years. She discusses her background as a Yoruba heritage speaker, her language-learning process, and her love of Yoruba-language films and music.

Mentioned in this episode:

O Le Ku - 1997 film by Tunde Kelani Tunde Kelani, Nigerian film director Kunle Afolayan, Nigerian film director Maami - 2011 film by Tunde Kelani October 1 - 2014 film directed by Kunle Afolayan Ayinla - 2021 film directed by Tunde Kelani Tope Alabi - Nigerian gospel singer Fuji - popular Yoruba musical genre Oriki - Yoruba praise poetry

Dr. Dwijen Bhattacharya discusses the history and origin of the Bengali language, a related language called Sylheti, and some of the reasons why a language learner in the US might want to study Bengali.

In his second appearance on Said & Done, Yuri Shevchuk recounts a journey to Ukraine that he undertook in August 2022, and describes what he encountered in a country at war. He then speaks more generally about Russia's war in Ukraine, about what surprised him and what didn't surprise him about it, and about the evolving role of the Ukrainian language in this war.