Said & Done

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 regio...

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 - 20...

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. 

Professor Carol Rounds, lecturer of Hungarian at Columbia University, speaks about some of the unique and challenging ways in which Hungarian is structured, and why it is so interesting to linguists. She discusses how this agglutinative language creates meaning and allows for play in ways that are surprising to speakers of English, as a consequence of its morphological and syntactic complexity.

Professor Millicent Marcus of Yale University speaks about her life and work as a scholar of Italian literature. We focus in particular on her witnessing of and participation in two world-historical events: the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the 1966 flood of the River Arno in Florence. She describes her experiences as one of the "Angeli del fango," the young people who helped t...

Chris Kaiser thanks the listeners and guests of the Said & Done podcast and announces a new schedule for 2023.    

Professor Jay Ramesh of Columbia University discusses his knowledge of and experiences in three languages of India: Sanskrit, Tamil, and Malayalam. He describes the myths and stories associated with Hindu temples, and in particular a certain kind of text called a Sthala Purana, some of which are written first in Sanskrit and then later given a unique kind of translation into Tamil.  

Ross Perlin, professor at Columbia in the Linguistics program and co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, discusses how large cities are often home to endangered languages from around the world. He talks about the challenges of preserving and revitalizing languages with few speakers, and gives the examples of Seke, a language of Nepal, and Lunaape (also called Lenape or Delaware), a Nativ...

Yudis Nugraha, instructor of Indonesian at Columbia University, talks about growing up speaking both Indonesian and Balinese. He discusses the relationship between language, tourism, culture and religion in Bali, focusing in on the unique religion of Balinese Hinduism. Approximately 90% of people living in Bali identify as belonging to this religion, whose origins trace back to traders and priests...

Felice Beneduce discusses growing up in an Italian family in Providence, Rhode Island and speaking standard Italian at home. He talks about how his love for the Italian language has figured prominently throughout his life, from his time serving in the Italian army, to living in northern Italy, to studying Italian literature, and now to passing this knowledge on to his students and his family as a...

As the war in Ukraine passes its six-month mark, we look back on our conversation with Yuri Shevchuk from March 2022. This episode highlights two moments from that interview in which Yuri discusses Ukrainian speakers' strategic use of language in recent decades, as well as in the ongoing invasion.

In this conversation, Simon talks about growing up speaking both Polish and English, as well as learning several other languages along the way. We then explore different facets of the experience of bilingualism, in particular how certain situations cause him to choose one language over the other, and how trying to use the other language when it's not the right situation for it can sometimes cause...

Dr. Luana Ferreira is a linguist, educator, and host of the podcast Bocona: All Things Dominican. In this conversation, she talks about growing up in the Dominican community in New York, as well as in the Dominican Republic. She discusses some of the characteristics of the Dominican variety of Spanish, and shares how her podcast is seeking to amplify, uplift, center, and empower Dominican voices. ...

Chris Kaiser talks about how discovering a box of letters in his grandmother's house as a child inspired him to undertake a lifelong journey of language learning.  This episode is also available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zIyVO0vjGc

In part II of our conversation, Agi discusses the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish women writers, and the motif of the Dybbuk in 20th and 21st century literature.  Yiddish at Columbia: https://germanic.columbia.edu/programs/yiddish Isaac Bashevis Singer Nobel Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpCzuvNmnOA Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers https://shop.yiddishbookcenter.or...

Agi Legutko, Instructor of Yiddish at Columbia University, speaks about her journey to uncover her Jewish roots, the Yiddish language past and present, and her work on the Mapping Yiddish New York project, which maps the use of the Yiddish language in New York City.  Yiddish at Columbia: https://germanic.columbia.edu/programs/yiddish Mapping Yiddish New York: https://jewishstudiescolumbia.com/myny...

Professor Joowon Suh discusses the rise of Korean cultural products on the global stage such as K-dramas, K-Pop, films, television shows, and food. We talk about how cross-linguistic rhyming works in K-pop, the popularity of the boy band BTS, archetypes in the movie Parasite, and her experience of visiting South Korea after living in the US for many years.

Odi Gonzalez, a professor at NYU, specializes in Andean culture and the Quechua language, in addition to being a writer and poet. In this conversation, he discusses growing up in Peru speaking both Spanish and Quechua. He shows how Quechua, which is more properly called Runa Simi, is a precise language because it is largely a spoken language rather than a written one. He illustrates this precision...

Professor Wijnie de Groot, instructor of Dutch at Columbia University, speaks about how the Dutch 17th century, and the powerful reach of the Dutch East India company, have had an enduring yet often unrecognized influence on our modern, interconnected world. She discusses her class on reading documents from this time, which is a skill that few possess, despite the existence of an expansive archive...

In Part II of this conversation, Richard goes into about the specifics of becoming a shaman. He describes the epistemology of the Benuaq people, that is, their way of knowing things about the world. He also discusses the pressures that this traditional worldview faces as Indonesia begins to move its capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan, just a hundred miles downriver from where the Benuaq live.

Richard Payne, professor of Anthropology at CUNY Queens College, speaks about how a chance encounter led him to spend two years living in a small village in Indonesia called Engkuni Pasek, which is on the island of Borneo.  In part one of this conversation, Richard shares his journey to and initial observations in this village, and how he learned to speak the local language, which is called Benuaq...

Prof. Anggi Suharja, instructor of Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) at Columbia, discusses growing up speaking Indonesian as a native language, as well as speaking two local languages. She discusses how local languages of Indonesia serve as a resource for constructing neologisms in Indonesia. She also discusses her identity as a member of the Sundanese ethnic group, which is primarily located in West...

Heli Sirviö, instructor of Finnish and Swedish discusses growing up speaking both languages. She talks about how the Finnish people see themselves with respect to their neighbors and the rest of the world. Then, she gets into the Kalevala, which is the Finnish national epic. She discusses the world of the Kalevala, and how JRR Tolkien was inspired by this epic poem when he wrote the Lord of the Ri...