Language is a Bridge, Not a Barrier | Daniel Erker | TEDxMiddlebury

Dr. Daniel Erker speaks about his linguistic research in Spanish-speaking communities in the United States. He shows us how the "Hispanic challenge" -- that idea put forth by some scholars that Spanish-speaking communities in the US refuse to learn English -- is not real, and that language is something that links all Americans together. Daniel Erker is an assistant professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Boston University. He teaches courses on language change, Spanish in the United States, the biological evolution of language, the linguistic structure of Spanish, and language and identity. Erker earned an M.A. in linguistics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a Ph.D. in linguistics at New York University. He is currently the director the Spanish in Boston Project, a federally-funded research initiative that investigates the sociolinguistic behavior of Spanish-speaking Bostonians. Erker has published research in several leading linguistic journals, and his work has been featured in the Boston Globe and on NPR. He has investigated a broad range of phenomena, ranging from microlinguistic variation in speech sounds to macrolinguistic trends such as the intergenerational maintenance of immigrant languages. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx