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When I was in high school, one of the things my Japanese teacher mentioned to me was the significance in learning a language. Like John McWhorter, she told us about how learning a new language lowers your risk of dementia and how learning a language is a real gateway into learning about the culture that the language belongs to. She said having a second language to always think about and have to process in your mind would help to keep our brains "young." My teacher would also say that a language is the foundation of a culture. I loved that being able to learn about Japanese language also taught me about the values and morals of the Japanese culture. Watching this video reminded me of my high school experience in the language department. I loved learning how to speak Japanese and believe it or not, learning Japanese really helped me to improve my English grammar skills.

In the video, I like that McWhorter, mentioned that access to learning a language is something that is so easy to attain. When I went in for a visitation in the Japanese class, my teacher shared that a good portion of her class was failing because they did not take advantage of the materials around them. I think if younger students realized how easy they have it, they would not take the experience for granted.

Another thing that stood out to me was the fact that so many languages are eventually going to die. I feel to an extent with English becoming the predominant language is stripping people of their identity because language is the base of a culture. It's disappointing to know that people are more willing to learn about a language that "is not there" for the sense of fitting in with the rest of the world. I believe that it is time for native English speakers to step up to the plate and reciprocate what non-native English speakers are doing for them .

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I really enjoyed this Ted talk and how John talked about language.  Where I was raised there was very little diversity and therefore everyone spoke English and nothing else.  Luckily my life has allowed me to move into very different cultures and understand why language is so important.  I moved to El Paso for three years and that was my first introduction as to why language is so important.  El Paso is almost 80% Hispanic so Spanish is spoken as much as English in most parts.  The longer I lived in El Paso the more I picked up a little of the language and the culture that went along with it.  I slowly learned through conversations that many words can’t be directly translated and that some words just have a different feel and meaning.  That always interested me because I always thought there has to be a direct translation for everything.  I now know that’s wrong and every culture has something that’s hard to express unless you know the language.  When I moved to Hawaii it only validated that thought about language.  There’s ways to describe the land and sea here but it doesn’t seem to have the same meaning in English.  The words in different cultures don’t hold the same weight.

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Every Ted Talk video I've watched before this has amazed me. These speakers truly know how to capture the attention of their audience and make their topic touch their soul. I hate to say it, but this Ted Talk fell a little short for me. Don't get me wrong, I think the topic is extremely important. We live in Hawaii, so we are surrounded by other cultures and languages. It doesn't surprise us when someone we meet speaks to us in English then immediately turns around and speaks to their friend in a different language. That is the culture we live in, in Hawaii.
John McWhorter was right in his reasons to learn a new language. People can't truly express themselves well unless speaking in their native language. It is more than just knowing the words to express themselves but knowing how to use those words and feeling comfortable expressing oneself. I work at a restaurant where half our staff speaks another language so everyday I see the difference when they are speaking to me or another local in English, versus their friend or coworker in Japanese, Chinese, or Filipino. It is work to speak English, it is conversation to speak their native language. McWhorter also speaks about how learning multiple languages helps with dementia. It makes sense, you're making your brain work so it stays sharp. I remember making my grandma play Brain Age on the Nintendo DS to try to keep her mind sharp.
While there was a lot of good information in this Ted Talk, I just didn't feel a connection to the topic through what McWhorter was saying. He didn't inspire me to go out and do like how previous Ted Talks have. His play on words was nice and creative but not the easiest to understand.

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I was interested in the idea that language can be a deterrent of dementia. It was also suggested that language can create a better ability to multitask. Perhaps I should learn a language as I struggle to multi-task. Without seeing the evidence of this suggestion my own experience tells me this is true. I cannot speak to whether a language does actually do this but I can relate it directly to how the brain can be shaped through study of mathematics. I found that as I progressed through my college career, starting with remedial math and moving up to trigonometry, that my ability to think quickly and process numbers and simple equations in my head became much easier. I did not practice doing math in my head on the fly but by doing complex math it made the basics become second nature. Perhaps this is the same neurological framework established by learning a language. It makes sense because multi-tasking is inherently a linguistic thought process of doing many things listed in your head.

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Before watching this TED Talk, I always viewed language as being something intimate to an individual. For me, language serves as the connection to history, culture, ancestors, posterity, and many other variables that make us an individual. So watching this video gave me a lot to think about. McWhorter struck a chord in me when he spoke about the ease of learning a new language in today's world, where it is expected that all people carry around little computers in their pockets all day. This makes finding a language of your choice and learning that language from a reliable resource are completely doable tasks. In spite of this, most of my free time goes to other activities (usually still on my phone, though). Realizing this made me think that, should I put in the effort on my own, learning a new language should not be as difficult as it seemed. The thought of learning a new language seemed to be a huge wall to overcome, but that is only because when first thinking about it, you're too close to see the big picture. No one can learn a new language in a day, and no one is expecting you to. The only thing stopping us from learning is ourselves.

Like McWhorter said, learning a language is a direct ticket into a new culture and people. To be the best kinds of teachers we can be, having worldly experiences and bringing them to the classroom is ideal. Having culturally diverse students means the classroom itself should be culturally diverse, and there is no better way to do that than bringing culture to the classroom.

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There have been a few moments in my life in which my eyes have opened up and understanding has dawned upon me. One of those moments involved the understanding of the words culture and language. Many people associate language with the way someone speaks from a certain place in the world and culture is associated with the cuisine or lifestyles, but up until recently, I have never associated language directly with culture. My realization was the fact that without language you can’t have culture. I know this idea is kind of abstract, but taking to account some of the ideas mentioned in the TedTalk video, my ideology is only further reinforced. When the speaker mentioned how speaking a language that is native to that area is a very immersive and rewarding experience, I couldn’t help but agree. Being able to speak Hawaiian in Hawaiʻi has always been a goal for me. I want to become fluent because Hawaiian is the language of this land, this ʻāina. It connects me to the ground, the sky, the ocean, and most importantly my ancestors. Without the Hawaiian language, the connection would be severed. The word land has such a different connotation and association when used in description of the place we tread, live, and work on. While the word ʻāina literally means land, it also comes with the association of life and nourishment. It has a sacred connotation around it, a kaona that is kept below the surface meaning. The language of a culture is the heart of that culture. If the heart dies, so does the body.

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One thing that stood out to me was that dementia was likely to set in if you learn a second language.  I thought this was interesting because I always thought of learning a second language as a way to function socially in the world.  I didn’t consider the fact that it could benefit our personal cognitive skills.  I agree that learning another language has many benefits.  When I went to Japan, my homestay family mom wanted me to speak English to her children because they needed to learn English in school.  I found this so intriguing.  When I was going to high school, only two years of foreign language was required.  We didn’t really need to master the language; we just needed the credits.  In Japan, they were learning English from first grade all the way through high school.  Because English is such a thriving language, all students in Japan have to learn it.  This made me think of how uneducated we were as English speaking students.    These Japanese students were so hungry and eager to learn English, we barely spoke any Japanese in the house.  In China, the college students spoke English so well, and not one of us from Hawaii knew any words in Chinese.  I felt like we were so ignorant to not be required to master a language, when students in China and Japan are learning English throughout their education.  This video made me feel like learning another language will do no harm, only good.  I think learning a language should be implemented earlier in our education system rather than in high school or older.

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After watching John McWhorters video on Ted Talk, 4 Reasons to Learn a Language, I agree with what he is saying. Although English is the only language I speak I believe that it would be great to learn another language. It was interesting for me to find out that Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world. However I did notice that a lot of countries around the world have schools that teach in English. I think that it’s great for other countries to teach English since it’s becoming a universal language. If people that speak English don’t start to learn other languages then English will be the only spoken language in the world. That makes me feel a little discouraged because people will lose their sense of culture and where they came from if that were to actually happen. I am Japanese and Filipino but I can only speak English, I know and understand very few basic Japanese and Filipino words. If people stop speaking Japanese and Filipino around me I will soon forget these few basic words. I would probably then start to feel like I lost my personal connection to my culture and identity. This video made me feel like I want to start learning other languages. I’ve always been fascinated by other languages, I love the sound of people talking in a different language. Even if I don’t understand what people are saying I think it’s very fun to listen to and hear. McWhorter is right, there are so many simple ways to learn a language with the technology we have nowadays, so why not learn a language for myself.

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I find it shocking to think that 6,000 languages will disappear from spoken utterance by the end of the century. Though that might only be a prediction, the loss of a language is part of a phenomenon referred to by Ngugi wa Thiong’o as a cultural bomb. This is the idea that a more dominant language, such as English, colonized culture to the point where native languages are lost. McWhorter explains that the two overarching reasons to learn another language are personal pleasure and health. One idea is that learning a language is a ticket into being able to participate in the culture of others. If one desires an authentic cultural experience, it is inevitable that the acquisition of that culture’s language is imperative. Most words can be translated from other languages into English, but one cannot translate connotation, sensitivities, meaning, social or political satire, and other more complex linguistic devices from other languages into English. In Language Arts studies, we often read translations of novels, poems, sacred scripture, and other texts into English. One day, I would like the experience of being able to read a novel in French. McWhorter also offers the incentive of being able to resist the effects of dementia by learning a second language. I will never forget the time when the police found my grandmother walking down the street. She did not know who she was or where she was. That disease is a frightening plague on the human brain, and multi-linguistic competence can curve the effects.

https://www.humanities.uci.edu/critical/pdf/Wellek_Readings_Ngugi_Quest_for_Relevance.pdf

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As someone from the Philippines who immigrated to Hawaii at the age of 10, this TED talk resonated with me. Now at the age of 20, this video made me realize how I take my ability to know two languages and a dialect for granted. First of all, I always knew that it was somewhat useful to know two main languages; Ilokano and English, as well as a dialect; tagalog. I thought that knowing them would give me an advantage in communicating with other Filipino speakers. However, I used to be ashamed of my accent because many students during elementary and middle school in Hawaii would make fun of my “filipino accent”. I do not have the accent anymore and I believe that the emphasis of using English, a growing universal language, catalyzed how I got rid of my accent. Looking back, I should not have been ashamed of knowing 2 main languages just because of my accent. I believe that knowing more than one language is beneficial and this video supports that statement.

The video made a point to how languages are deeply embedded in culture. This is an idea that I uphold because in my family, we have a saying that “if you forget your language, you forget your culture”. Therefore, my family makes an effort to speak our native language from time to time. I think many immigrant families hold on to their native language and use it to connect with their culture as well. This is evident from the presence of bilingual students in the diverse body of student population in U.S schools.

I like how the speaker makes the point that learning a language is fun. Many languages have different rules in their subject-verb placement and sounds. The way he brought it up in a poetic way when he described the “oozing” of vowels in the Cambodian language made me want to hear it for myself through Youtube. To me, this is what makes language beautiful because they vary in how they are spoken and sounded out. With that said, I agree that it would be beneficial and convenient to learn a different language in this era. After all, there is a market of language learning services and applications available in the United States. It would be a great feat for a teacher because it helps with cultural competency since it allows the teacher to see the different worldviews languages can bring.

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After listening to the TedTalk video, one of the biggest takeaways I had was when the John McWhorter said there has never been a better time to teach ourselves a language other than English. For me, I thought of how far our society has come. I think before we had access to the Internet, people would learn different languages through research, or being around people who were bi-lingual. It brought back memories of when I was growing up and I wanted to learn how to speak Ilocano. I used the conversations spoken at home between my parents to learn key words, and soon moved on to connecting these key words into phrases. Repetition definitely helped me out a lot. I also got the idea that language helps welcome different points of views. When the talk about tables being viewed as feminine in French and Spanish, while in English, it could totally mean something completely different. It helps us view the world differently and gives a peak into a languages culture.

Overall, this video really made me feel like I’m not doing enough with my learning. I personally appreciate and envy those who are bilingual. I think it’s such an awesome trait to have. It adds an extra “edge” to people’s personality. With the resources I have in front of me, I can easily learn a second language on my own. And it made me think that maybe people don’t learn other languages because a part of themselves just aren’t willing to expand their thoughts on different perspectives that are out there; even when it’s as easy as clicking the Google search button.

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There were so many things I liked about this Ted Talk. I am currently in the process of learning a new language and the speakers four reasons to learn a new one, I have found to be true. Language is the key to really participating in any culture. As John Mcwhorter said, learning a language won’t change your world view but it can give you glimpses into the culture that would be hard to understand coming from an English speaker’s perspective. For example, I am learning Mandarin Chinese and their perspective on how time is perceived is different. They stand in the present and look to the past. Therefore, to talk about the future is grammatically portrayed as behind them.  I liked that he talked about how fun learning language can be too. I enjoy “geeking out” about poetry and vocabulary in English, so it is just as much fun getting to learn concepts and words in other languages that don’t directly translate into English.

This video made me feel encouraged in my learning journey as well. I remember growing up fascinated with languages with only a few others sharing my passion. I guess in America we get so used to everyone speaking our language that we don’t get to experience the beauty of learning another’s. I think this also is part of why Americans get a bad reputation overseas because we have grown to expect English where ever we go. This behavior is ethnocentric and inappropriate in the ever-connected world we find ourselves in. Therefore, I am relieved to find that there are many others who are of the opinion that learning a new language is not only beneficial but mind-blowing fun as well.

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The biggest takeaway from the video is the idea that foreign languages are still important to learn, even in an increasingly globalized world where English is becoming the "universal" language. While more people are learning to speak English, it is not the best idea to go a foreign, non-English speaking country and expect the locals to be able to communicate with you. Perhaps the part of the video that resonated with me the most was the second reason (in which if a person wants to be part of the culture, they have to be able to control the language used there). It is essentially one of the most important motivating factors to learn a language, particularly if a person is intending on living in a society that speaks a different language. Application-wise, it affects English speakers living in foreign countries that predominately speak a different language, as well as foreign speakers living in English-speaking America. In both cases, people have to learn the language in order to function in that society. Not only does it impact all people, but it also has a profound impact in society. Here in America, we teach students from foreign countries to learn how to speak English. We require those who apply to become a naturalized citizen to be able to read, speak, and write in English. Everywhere a person goes, they most likely have to communicate using English, otherwise people would have difficulty trying to communicate with a person. Watching this video was pretty interesting, as it brought up points that I had never really considered before (e.g. Language channels thoughts). While the way the video explained each reason made it sound like "well duh that's common sense," some of the reasons were things I never really thought about prior to watching the video.

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I always love Ted talks because they're so informative and easy to follow! This video made me realize why it's important to keep learning languages. He made some good points that makes people question "okay, but why should we learn new languages if eventually everyone will be speaking the common language that is English? And why should we if there's all these translating apps?" he makes his four points plain and simple. My favorite point is if you want to become one with a culture, the best way to do that is learn a language! I have a couple of coworkers going to Japan in March and they've been brushing up on their Japanese. I think it's great because they seem more in tune with Japan's culture. I also wish I learned Spanish from my grandparents on my dads side  because it would have helped me stay connected with the way they speak and feel more closer perhaps. Language learning also reminds me of not only being in tune with a culture, but keeping a culture alive. Kind of like for us in Hawaii. A lot of people believe that keeping the Hawaiian language alive is one of the best ways to keep Hawaii's culture alive. If we all just gave up in learning new languages and just speaking English, our would wouldn't be as interesting anymore.

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After watching the Four Reasons to Learn A Language video, I loved how he describes learning new languages. I personally love poetry and imagery language because it paints visual pictures of inanimate objects, making them come to life. It really shows the passion someone has for something. As he was explaining the different conjugations in Arabic, he described the similarities in all of them as the center constant “standing like pillars” and the vowels “dancing around them”. In describing learning the language of Cambodia, he describes that he would “get to roll around his mouth 30 different vowels, scooching and oozing around like bees in a hive". Hearing him talk about it in this view makes me intrigued to want to learn these languages. Its very true that English is seen as the dominant language of the world, but its equally important we know to some extent the language of our CLD students because it is, as he put it, our “ticket to being able to participate in the culture and understand the people who speak them”.

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While watching the Ted talk on four reason to learn a language, I was surprised by a couple of things.  The first one being that language can change a person’s view of the world.  I did know that language was culturally based and that words were created based on what a person heard or saw in their native home.  This actually gives the speaker a view of the world and an opinion that would follow.  The point that the speaker made about how French and Spanish speakers saw tables.  For an English speaker, a table could be animated into a certain sex depending on the size of the table.  Large tables would be low sounding males while thing curvy tables would maybe be feminine.  For the French or Spanish speaker, they would for table is feminine and would be viewed as a woman all of the time.  Animal sounds are one a few examples as many countries would hear different sounds and change how they saw the animal.  This is how students will be who are culturally diverse learners.  They may have grown up in a far away country learning the native tongue or born on a bad neighborhood where they would learn words that have different meanings.  I agree that we should all learn a language, not just foreign languages but accents and slang that students may have when representing their thoughts.  This will make the lessons more accommodating and inclusive for the students to know that their thoughts are included in the classroom and we aren’t going keep them outside of the class.