[Music]
wait chorong Nile opt-ins are one can
one can Jana judging our new report
economy
puto Kali rambha Mehra
Kotori WA Nicolini puto
Cory rampa Mara cat who you are we’re if
you don’t understand what I’m saying
put up your hand okay so chances are for
most of us in this room you felt some
discomfort some confusion at least and
perhaps even some annoyance that was the
beautiful pigeon della language from the
central desert of Australia and what you
just experienced that discomfort that
confusion is what I first experienced
when I moved to that part of this
country I moved there as a new teacher
to learn how to be a teacher to make a
difference
and a young girl actually came up to me
and said yellow Geelong arundo Yeller I
don’t wanna knee because I didn’t have
the faintest idea what she was saying
but what she said is where are you from
and when are you leaving
but I think what she meant to say
actually is how long you stay are you
staying long enough to connect with me
my language my culture you see languages
our superpower
it is the key engine behind the success
of our entire species it enables us to
communicate to connect to compel as
young children we have an instinct for
languished absorbing the words around us
soaking them up until they become us its
language that formulates who we are and
how we are so what happens how do we
lose that wonder the playful wonder of
language we have as children when we
become adults I think it comes down to
fear of failure of discomfort I’m going
to take you from Central Australia now
to hear Adelaide in the 80s great decade
and I was a young boy growing up here
the first in my family to be born in
this country my mum my beautiful mother
came from a remote village in northern
Greece and my father from the United
Kingdom with Welsh and Irish heritage so
I was growing up here in the suburbs and
normal Adelaide Ian boy but when I was
16 years old my poeple in this photo my
great-grandfather died suddenly and
tragically and at that point in my life
as a young boy as a young man I
reflected and thought have I ever
connected deeply with the man that he
was we used to play a game he used to
say look at La though tini met to honor
muscle
come here Luca what’s your name
and I would say Luca Kozma has shot this
Perry
my fournette and he would be delighted
because my two middle names are his own
and so now that he was gone I realized
that we had interacted but I had no
memory of speaking with him in English
having a conversation of asking him
about the sacrifices that he made to
travel to this country and set up a life
here so that moment changed my life I
threw myself into learning languages
passionately pursuing modern Greek for
my ancestry and Spanish not least of all
to connect with my area I wasn’t going
to make the same mistake again and over
the next 10 years I learned one in Greek
because her English just like my purpose
was so broken that it was always
hilarious to hear them speak it but he
was also hard to connect at a deep level
and I learned an incredible amount from
her her persistence her insights her
perspective but certainly her love so I
traveled around the world from countries
to cities cultures and different
communities until I found myself in
Chile introducing myself as own
Australian or an Australian and what I
didn’t know then is there’s a joke in
the spanish-speaking world that says
Celia nobody knows what the Chileans are
saying why would you go there to learn
Spanish and I failed every single day
publicly humiliating ly by tripping over
words or saying the wrong thing in fact
one of my favorite memories is from a
good friend of mine who was studying
with me a guy called James and we went
to this party we hadn’t been in Chile
very long and he fell over we had been
drinking a lot of pisco which is a type
of brandy in Chile so that might explain
it but everyone laughed and
he stood up and kind of brushed himself
off and said / done a story on Popo
embarazada which we thought meant excuse
me I’m a little bit embarrassed right
but everyone laughed even harder than
they laughed the first time and we kind
of looked at each other and confusion
what he had just said is excuse me
proclaiming it to the room but I’m a
little bit pregnant and so once we
worked that out we also discovered I
think the power of those language
learning moments the power of words
certainly I never made that same mistake
and that’s really the game here but as I
was traveling around the world I was
saying I’m an Australian I’m an Aussie I
also became really conscious that I knew
very little about this amazing city of
Adelaide outside of my suburb and
certainly I didn’t know much about
Australia this was the map I was used to
seeing the quintessential map of
Australia with the different states and
territories
I also discovered that in my travels
education was the key social lever for
change so I came back and studied to be
a teacher and I found myself travelling
15 hours by car away from here in
Adelaide to the central desert in the
far northwest of South Australia to
begin my teaching career on the animal
beach in Jeddah young Queen Tara Lance
I’d also come across this map by that
stage and I started to realize the
incredible diversity that doesn’t just
exist in our communities but exists
amongst first Australian communities so
there I was learning my craft as a
teacher the art and the science of
teaching I was trying to connect with
the community I engaged with every
community activity that was going on
playing football and if you look very
carefully you can probably see where I
fit in the team line
I’m incredibly humbled to speak pidgin
Jetta and young man jela and I was
taught that by sitting down connecting
and having conversations with elders
with the old people in this place an
incredible knowledge that they have I
also realized really for the first time
in my life that I’m an educated white
man living in a society that privileges
those types of people so by learning the
culture and language in that place I
felt I could get as close as I could to
understanding what it means to be a
minority and to understand the
privileged position that I have in a
society like this so why learn a
language one thing I discovered by
living in the middle of Australia is
that all of us at some point might have
said where are we this is the middle of
nowhere put your hands up if you’ve ever
said where am i right now where are we
this is the middle of nowhere I used to
say that all the time but what I’ve
realized through working across cultures
across languages is that the middle of
nowhere for one person might just be the
middle of everything for another so why
learn a language this is my beautiful
paternal grandmother Mary Hilton Perry
she’s a wonderful matriarch of our
family she’s also one of the fifty
million people worldwide that has
dementia and it’s a terrible disease in
fact one in three of us in our 80s
developed this disease the first reason
you should learn another language is
because it makes your brain healthier we
now know that by speaking multiple
languages you can delay the onset of
dementia by five years at least we also
know that multilingual speakers they can
increase the density
of the prefrontal cortex of the brain
the executive function region this is
how we solve problems how we focus how
we distinguish between tasks second
learning another language makes you a
better learner and communicator not
least of all because you have to fail
consistently publicly just like my
pregnant friend and that failure getting
comfortable with that discomfort really
is the key to all learning and in a
world a modern age where we have
artificial intelligence and exponential
technology is disrupting our society
it’s critical to be life wired and
lifelong learners and a better
communicator because by stepping into
another language you can look back at
your own and understand the power of the
words that we use that is a critical
insight for connection and finally
thirdly it also enables us to understand
each other
Nelson Mandela once said if you speak to
a man in a language he understands it
goes to his head but if you speak to him
in his language it goes to his heart
what I’ve realized by learning languages
as an adult is that I can connect it is
the way that we can empathize and take
perspective we’ve become more passionate
and compassionate we can step into the
shoes of another human being a fellow
global citizen if there’s anything our
world needs today it’s deeper richer
connection so by learning another
language you will have a healthier brain
you will be a better learner and
communicator and you’ll also be able to
connect to take perspective to
understand what it means to be somebody
else
and that level of connection is exactly
what we need in the world today so as a
20 year old as an adult I spoke one
language English now I’m incredibly
lucky to speak five so my question my
question is not why I learn a language
it’s why haven’t you thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
wait chorong Nile opt-ins are one can
one can Jana judging our new report
economy
puto Kali rambha Mehra
Kotori WA Nicolini puto
Cory rampa Mara cat who you are we’re if
you don’t understand what I’m saying
put up your hand okay so chances are for
most of us in this room you felt some
discomfort some confusion at least and
perhaps even some annoyance that was the
beautiful pigeon della language from the
central desert of Australia and what you
just experienced that discomfort that
confusion is what I first experienced
when I moved to that part of this
country I moved there as a new teacher
to learn how to be a teacher to make a
difference
and a young girl actually came up to me
and said yellow Geelong arundo Yeller I
don’t wanna knee because I didn’t have
the faintest idea what she was saying
but what she said is where are you from
and when are you leaving
but I think what she meant to say
actually is how long you stay are you
staying long enough to connect with me
my language my culture you see languages
our superpower
it is the key engine behind the success
of our entire species it enables us to
communicate to connect to compel as
young children we have an instinct for
languished absorbing the words around us
soaking them up until they become us its
language that formulates who we are and
how we are so what happens how do we
lose that wonder the playful wonder of
language we have as children when we
become adults I think it comes down to
fear of failure of discomfort I’m going
to take you from Central Australia now
to hear Adelaide in the 80s great decade
and I was a young boy growing up here
the first in my family to be born in
this country my mum my beautiful mother
came from a remote village in northern
Greece and my father from the United
Kingdom with Welsh and Irish heritage so
I was growing up here in the suburbs and
normal Adelaide Ian boy but when I was
16 years old my poeple in this photo my
great-grandfather died suddenly and
tragically and at that point in my life
as a young boy as a young man I
reflected and thought have I ever
connected deeply with the man that he
was we used to play a game he used to
say look at La though tini met to honor
muscle
come here Luca what’s your name
and I would say Luca Kozma has shot this
Perry
my fournette and he would be delighted
because my two middle names are his own
and so now that he was gone I realized
that we had interacted but I had no
memory of speaking with him in English
having a conversation of asking him
about the sacrifices that he made to
travel to this country and set up a life
here so that moment changed my life I
threw myself into learning languages
passionately pursuing modern Greek for
my ancestry and Spanish not least of all
to connect with my area I wasn’t going
to make the same mistake again and over
the next 10 years I learned one in Greek
because her English just like my purpose
was so broken that it was always
hilarious to hear them speak it but he
was also hard to connect at a deep level
and I learned an incredible amount from
her her persistence her insights her
perspective but certainly her love so I
traveled around the world from countries
to cities cultures and different
communities until I found myself in
Chile introducing myself as own
Australian or an Australian and what I
didn’t know then is there’s a joke in
the spanish-speaking world that says
Celia nobody knows what the Chileans are
saying why would you go there to learn
Spanish and I failed every single day
publicly humiliating ly by tripping over
words or saying the wrong thing in fact
one of my favorite memories is from a
good friend of mine who was studying
with me a guy called James and we went
to this party we hadn’t been in Chile
very long and he fell over we had been
drinking a lot of pisco which is a type
of brandy in Chile so that might explain
it but everyone laughed and
he stood up and kind of brushed himself
off and said / done a story on Popo
embarazada which we thought meant excuse
me I’m a little bit embarrassed right
but everyone laughed even harder than
they laughed the first time and we kind
of looked at each other and confusion
what he had just said is excuse me
proclaiming it to the room but I’m a
little bit pregnant and so once we
worked that out we also discovered I
think the power of those language
learning moments the power of words
certainly I never made that same mistake
and that’s really the game here but as I
was traveling around the world I was
saying I’m an Australian I’m an Aussie I
also became really conscious that I knew
very little about this amazing city of
Adelaide outside of my suburb and
certainly I didn’t know much about
Australia this was the map I was used to
seeing the quintessential map of
Australia with the different states and
territories
I also discovered that in my travels
education was the key social lever for
change so I came back and studied to be
a teacher and I found myself travelling
15 hours by car away from here in
Adelaide to the central desert in the
far northwest of South Australia to
begin my teaching career on the animal
beach in Jeddah young Queen Tara Lance
I’d also come across this map by that
stage and I started to realize the
incredible diversity that doesn’t just
exist in our communities but exists
amongst first Australian communities so
there I was learning my craft as a
teacher the art and the science of
teaching I was trying to connect with
the community I engaged with every
community activity that was going on
playing football and if you look very
carefully you can probably see where I
fit in the team line
I’m incredibly humbled to speak pidgin
Jetta and young man jela and I was
taught that by sitting down connecting
and having conversations with elders
with the old people in this place an
incredible knowledge that they have I
also realized really for the first time
in my life that I’m an educated white
man living in a society that privileges
those types of people so by learning the
culture and language in that place I
felt I could get as close as I could to
understanding what it means to be a
minority and to understand the
privileged position that I have in a
society like this so why learn a
language one thing I discovered by
living in the middle of Australia is
that all of us at some point might have
said where are we this is the middle of
nowhere put your hands up if you’ve ever
said where am i right now where are we
this is the middle of nowhere I used to
say that all the time but what I’ve
realized through working across cultures
across languages is that the middle of
nowhere for one person might just be the
middle of everything for another so why
learn a language this is my beautiful
paternal grandmother Mary Hilton Perry
she’s a wonderful matriarch of our
family she’s also one of the fifty
million people worldwide that has
dementia and it’s a terrible disease in
fact one in three of us in our 80s
developed this disease the first reason
you should learn another language is
because it makes your brain healthier we
now know that by speaking multiple
languages you can delay the onset of
dementia by five years at least we also
know that multilingual speakers they can
increase the density
of the prefrontal cortex of the brain
the executive function region this is
how we solve problems how we focus how
we distinguish between tasks second
learning another language makes you a
better learner and communicator not
least of all because you have to fail
consistently publicly just like my
pregnant friend and that failure getting
comfortable with that discomfort really
is the key to all learning and in a
world a modern age where we have
artificial intelligence and exponential
technology is disrupting our society
it’s critical to be life wired and
lifelong learners and a better
communicator because by stepping into
another language you can look back at
your own and understand the power of the
words that we use that is a critical
insight for connection and finally
thirdly it also enables us to understand
each other
Nelson Mandela once said if you speak to
a man in a language he understands it
goes to his head but if you speak to him
in his language it goes to his heart
what I’ve realized by learning languages
as an adult is that I can connect it is
the way that we can empathize and take
perspective we’ve become more passionate
and compassionate we can step into the
shoes of another human being a fellow
global citizen if there’s anything our
world needs today it’s deeper richer
connection so by learning another
language you will have a healthier brain
you will be a better learner and
communicator and you’ll also be able to
connect to take perspective to
understand what it means to be somebody
else
and that level of connection is exactly
what we need in the world today so as a
20 year old as an adult I spoke one
language English now I’m incredibly
lucky to speak five so my question my
question is not why I learn a language
it’s why haven’t you thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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