0:00:01.524,0:00:03.857
Languages don't just die naturally.

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People abandon mother tongues,[br]because they're forced to.

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Often, the pressure is political.

0:00:11.781,0:00:13.177
In 1892,

0:00:13.201,0:00:15.447
the US Army general Richard Henry Pratt

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argued that killing indigenous cultures

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was the only alternative[br]to killing indigenous people.

0:00:21.863,0:00:24.545
"Kill the Indian," he said,[br]"but save the man."

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And until 1978,[br]the government did just that,

0:00:28.932,0:00:32.187
removing indigenous children[br]from their families

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and forcing them into boarding schools[br]where they were given English names

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and punished for speaking their languages.

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Assimilation was a compliment to genocide.

0:00:44.029,0:00:46.457
Seven thousand languages are alive today,

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but few are recognized[br]by their own governments

0:00:48.957,0:00:50.291
or supported online.

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So for people from the vast[br]majority of cultures,

0:00:53.498,0:00:56.498
globalization remains[br]profoundly alienating.

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It means giving up your language[br]for someone else's.

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And if nothing changes,

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as many as 3,000 languages[br]could disappear in 80 years.

0:01:08.244,0:01:09.844
But things are changing.

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Around the world,

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people are reviving ancestral languages

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and rebuilding their cultures.

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As far as we know,

0:01:18.823,0:01:23.410
language reclamation began in the 1800s[br]when, at a time of rising antisemitism,

0:01:23.434,0:01:26.561
Jewish communities looked[br]to their ancestral language, Hebrew,

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as a means of cultural revival.

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And though it had been dormant[br]for over 1,000 years,

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it was well preserved in books[br]of Jewish religion and philosophy.

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So Jewish activists studied[br]and taught it to their children,

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raising the first native speakers[br]in nearly 100 generations.

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Today, it's the mother tongue[br]of five million Jews.

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And at least for me,

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an assimilated English-speaking member[br]of the Jewish diaspora,

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a pillar of cultural sovereignty.

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Two thousand years later,

0:01:59.641,0:02:00.841
we're still here.

0:02:02.657,0:02:04.069
Now, until recently,

0:02:04.093,0:02:06.580
Hebrew's reawakening was an anomaly.

0:02:06.604,0:02:09.239
Few languages are[br]as well preserved as ours was,

0:02:09.263,0:02:11.017
and the creation of Israel,

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the first Jewish state[br]in over 1,000 years,

0:02:13.699,0:02:16.366
provided a space for Hebrew's daily use.

0:02:17.188,0:02:20.522
In other words, most cultures[br]just weren't given a chance.

0:02:20.546,0:02:22.709
(Video) Good evening, I'm Elizabeth

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and I live in Cornwall.

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That was Cornish,

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the ancestral language of Cornwall,

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which today is technically[br]a county in southern England.

0:02:32.641,0:02:35.984
In the 1900s, Cornish activists[br]fought for their culture.

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The language had been dormant[br]for over 100 years,

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but they used old books and plays[br]to teach it to their children.

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However, this new generation[br]of Cornish speakers

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was scattered across Cornwall

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and unable to use the language freely.

0:02:50.538,0:02:53.887
By the 1990s, Cornish had reawakened,

0:02:53.911,0:02:55.444
but it wasn't thriving.

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Then, in the early 2000s,[br]Cornish speakers found one another online

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and leveraged digital spaces[br]to speak on a daily basis.

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From there, they organized[br]weekly or monthly events

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where they could gather[br]and speak in public.

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Today, some schools teach Cornish.

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There are Cornish language signs,

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ice-cream commercials,

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Wikipedia, and even memes.

0:03:22.252,0:03:24.466
(Laughter)

0:03:25.815,0:03:29.761
(Laughter)

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And with their language once again intact,

0:03:32.544,0:03:34.893
the people of Cornwall[br]have secured recognition

0:03:34.917,0:03:38.448
as a Celtic nation alongside[br]Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

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They stared down centuries[br]of forced assimilation

0:03:41.394,0:03:43.760
and said, "We're not a county in England.

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We're a people in our own right.

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And we're still here."

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And they're not the only ones.

0:03:49.141,0:03:53.878
The Tunica-Biloxi tribe of Louisiana[br]is reviving their ancestral language.

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(Video) My name is Teyanna.

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My friends, they call me "Quiet Storm."

0:03:59.706,0:04:01.706
It started in the 1980s,

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when Donna Pierite and her family

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started taking trips[br]to Baton Rouge and New Orleans

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to photocopy old dictionaries[br]stored away in university archives.

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The goal was to study Tunica

0:04:13.305,0:04:16.662
and teach it to the children[br]and share it with the community.

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Today, they're leading[br]a Tunica renaissance.

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Since 2014, there are nearly 100 speakers[br]in language immersion classes,

0:04:26.411,0:04:28.879
and according to a 2017 census,

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32 new fluent speakers,

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some of whom,[br]like Donna's daughter Elisabeth,

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are teaching Tunica to their children.

0:04:36.300,0:04:38.361
These new speakers are creating content,

0:04:38.385,0:04:40.866
Facebook videos and also memes.

0:04:40.890,0:04:42.724
(Laughter)

0:04:44.180,0:04:45.545
(Laughter)

0:04:46.999,0:04:48.588
(Laughter)

0:04:49.166,0:04:50.436
And the more they publish,

0:04:50.460,0:04:53.237
the more they inspire other[br]Tunica people to get involved.

0:04:53.666,0:04:58.053
Recently, a tribal member living in Texas[br]wrote Elisabeth on Facebook,

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asking how to say "bless these lands."

0:05:01.593,0:05:03.418
It was for a yard sign,

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so she could show her neighbors[br]that her culture is alive

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and thriving today.

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Now, Hebrew, Cornish and Tunica

0:05:10.561,0:05:15.345
are just three examples from a groundswell[br]of language activism on every continent.

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And whether they're Jèrriais speakers[br]from the Channel Isles,

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or Kenyan sign language[br]speakers from Nairobi,

0:05:22.911,0:05:26.220
all communities working[br]to preserve or reclaim a language

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have one thing in common: media,

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so their language[br]can be shared and taught.

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And as the internet grows,

0:05:34.055,0:05:36.274
expanding media access and creation,

0:05:37.586,0:05:40.657
preserving and reclaiming[br]ancestral languages

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is now more possible than ever.

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So what are your ancestral languages?

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Mine are Hebrew, Yiddish,[br]Hungarian and Scottish Gaelic,

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even though I was raised in English.

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And luckily for me, each of these[br]languages is available online.

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Hebrew in particular --[br]it came installed on my iPhone,

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it's supported by Google Translate,

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it even has autocorrect.

0:06:02.024,0:06:04.990
And while your language[br]may not be as widely supported,

0:06:05.014,0:06:06.565
I encourage you to investigate,

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because chances are, someone, somewhere,[br]has started getting it online.

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Reclaiming your language[br]and embracing your culture

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is a powerful way to be yourself[br]in the age of globalization,

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because as I recently learned[br]to say in Hebrew,

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"'nḥnw 'dyyn k'n" --

0:06:26.738,0:06:28.055
we're still here.

0:06:28.524,0:06:29.675
Thank you.

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(Applause)