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Languages don't just die naturally.

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

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Often, the pressure is political.

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In 1892,

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the US Army general Richard Henry Pratt

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argued that killing indigenous cultures

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was the only alternative
to killing indigenous people.

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"Kill the Indian," he said,
"but save the man."

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And until 1978,
the government did just that,

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removing indigenous children
from their families

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

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and punished for speaking their languages.

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Assimilation was a complement to genocide.

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Seven thousand languages are alive today,

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but few are recognized
by their own governments

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or supported online.

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So for people from the vast
majority of cultures,

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globalization remains
profoundly alienating.

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

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And if nothing changes,

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

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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,

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language reclamation began in the 1800s
when, at a time of rising antisemitism,

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Jewish communities looked
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
for over 1,000 years,

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

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So Jewish activists studied
and taught it to their children,

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raising the first native speakers
in nearly 100 generations.

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

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And at least for me,

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an assimilated English-speaking member
of the Jewish diaspora,

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a pillar of cultural sovereignty.

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Two thousand years later,

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we're still here.

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Now, until recently,

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Hebrew's reawakening was an anomaly.

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Few languages are
as well preserved as ours was,

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and the creation of Israel,

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the first Jewish state
in over 1,000 years,

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provided a space for Hebrew's daily use.

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In other words, most cultures
just weren't given a chance.

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(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
a county in southern England.

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In the 1900s, Cornish activists
fought for their culture.

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The language had been dormant
for over 100 years,

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

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However, this new generation
of Cornish speakers

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was scattered across Cornwall

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and unable to use the language freely.

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By the 1990s, Cornish had reawakened,

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but it wasn't thriving.

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

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and leveraged digital spaces
to speak on a daily basis.

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From there, they organized
weekly or monthly events

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where they could gather
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.

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(Laughter)

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(Laughter)

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And with their language once again intact,

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the people of Cornwall
have secured recognition

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as a Celtic nation alongside
Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

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They stared down centuries
of forced assimilation

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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.

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The Tunica-Biloxi tribe of Louisiana
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."

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It started in the 1980s,

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when Donna Pierite and her family

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started taking trips
to Baton Rouge and New Orleans

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to photocopy old dictionaries
stored away in university archives.

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The goal was to study Tunica

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and teach it to the children
and share it with the community.

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Today, they're leading
a Tunica renaissance.

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

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and according to a 2017 census,

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32 new fluent speakers,

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some of whom,
like Donna's daughter Elisabeth,

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are teaching Tunica to their children.

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These new speakers are creating content,

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Facebook videos and also memes.

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(Laughter)

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(Laughter)

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(Laughter)

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And the more they publish,

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the more they inspire other
Tunica people to get involved.

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Recently, a tribal member living in Texas
wrote Elisabeth on Facebook,

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asking how to say "bless these lands."

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It was for a yard sign,

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so she could show her neighbors
that her culture is alive

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and thriving today.

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Now, Hebrew, Cornish and Tunica

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are just three examples from a groundswell
of language activism on every continent.

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

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or Kenyan sign language
speakers from Nairobi,

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all communities working
to preserve or reclaim a language

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have one thing in common: media,

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so their language
can be shared and taught.

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And as the internet grows,

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expanding media access and creation,

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preserving and reclaiming
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,
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
languages is available online.

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Hebrew in particular --
it came installed on my iPhone,

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it's supported by Google Translate,

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it even has autocorrect.

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And while your language
may not be as widely supported,

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I encourage you to investigate,

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

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Reclaiming your language
and embracing your culture

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

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because as I recently learned
to say in Hebrew,

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"'nḥnw 'dyyn k'n" --

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we're still here.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)