MIT Societo por Esperanto

Home What is Esperanto? Mailing Lists Events Links Contact Us

Lecture Series on Language Diversity and Language Rights in celebration of UN Year of Languages 2008 Announcement list Upcoming events: The Linguists Film screening and discussion with K. David Harrison Thursday, April 24 7:00pm - 8:30pm Room 26-100 Join us for a screening of The Linguists, a documentary which tells the story of Dr. Gregory Anderson (director of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages) and Dr. K. David Harrison (a linguist at Swarthmore College) and their quest to document the world's vanishing ancestral languages -- like Chulym in Siberia and Sora in India. Dr. Harrison will be present to discuss the film, his work, and the problem of dying languages. Dr Harrison is also author of the book When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. This event is free and open to the public. Co-sponsored by: MIT Societo por Esperanto, LSC, MIT Amnesty International, MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, GSC Funding Board. Past events: Outwitting History: Saving Yiddish Culture The National Yiddish Book Center's Story Tuesday, April 15 6:00pm - 7:30pm Room 4-153 Join us for a screening of the documentary "A Bridge of Books" followed by a discussion with Lou Cove. Lou Cove is Vice President of the National Yiddish Book Center, one of the largest Jewish cultural organizations in the U.S. Based in Amherst, MA, the Book Center is a vibrant, non-profit organization working to rescue Yiddish and other modern Jewish books and celebrate the culture they contain. It is currently home to more than one million Yiddish books, as well as the Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library. This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by Societo por Esperanto (MIT's Esperanto club), MIT Hillel and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. "English-Only Science in a Multilingual World?" Costs, Benefits, and Options A discussion with José Antonio Vergara Friday, February 15th 5pm - 6:30pm Room 4-231 José Antonio Vergara is a doctor specializing in public health epidemiology. He lives in southern Chile, in Puerto Montt, where he works in a regional office of the Ministry of Health. He is speaking on this topic at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Over the past 80 years, there has been a steady increase in the proportion of scientific publications written in English, and a corresponding decrease in the use of all other languages for global scientific communication. At first sight, this appears to offer significant gains in efficiency. There are, however, drawbacks to this system that may be significantly affecting both the development of global science and its social impact. Issues of concern include the poor correlation between ability in a second language and scientific ability; the disproportionate burden of language training and technology borne by non-English-speaking countries; and a widening gap between the language of science and the languages of public discourse, government policy, and community life. How can the actual impact of these issues be assessed, on the basis of empirical data? What are the ethical dimensions of language choice for working scientists? Does research on language technology or other communication systems point to the emergence of alternatives? Are there implications for language policy at the national or international levels? These issues were discussed at the recent AAAS meeting in Boston with panelists from North and South American and Europe. Vergara can report on the proposed research agenda resulting from that meeting. Last updated 13 Apr 2008 by ede [at] mit [dot] edu