“The Jungle is Neutral: Newcomer Languages Face New Media”
Nicholas Ostler, President, Foundation for Endangered Languages
Tuesday, May 12
4:00-5:30 pm with reception to follow at
Franke Institute for the Humanities
1100 East 57th Street, JRL S-118
Co-sponsored by the Big Problems program in the College and the Franke Institute for the Humanities
Nicholas Ostler is the author of Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World (2005) and Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin (2008). The first is an unparalleled account of major language expansions through colonization since antiquity, richly grounded historically in dynamics of trade, political domination, and other socio-economic interactions between different populations.