Connecting Through Language Under COVID-19 Lockdown
hi there today I can do a little
slightly different type of video you
know we're all not all but a lot of
people myself included are in isolation
locked down or encouraged to not guard
unless we have to and particularly if
you're my age group and it's a little
bit discouraging and depressing to see
the news about the number of people who
are being hospitalized and the problems
at the hospitals and the number of
people who are dying and the impact on
our economies and so forth but what I
want to talk about today is
connectedness solidarity so recognizing
that people are a lot of people are now
sort of isolated we started our live
streams a link where we encourage people
to come and participate in a live stream
we encourage you link users and to come
and participate and share their
experiences I've been doing a lot of
interviews with other youtubers in
different languages you'll see more and
more of those but today I thought I
would do more of a conventional video
and talk about you know here we are in
isolation but ultimately we are
connected all right the world has always
been connected now sometimes you you
hear people say nah well you know this
is gonna change how we operate certainly
we've seen countries close their borders
there's talk about countries wanting to
become more self-sufficient in in their
economies and stuff and I don't think
that's going to last very long I think
ultimately we will get back to
interconnected world with some
modification I think for a while people
may travel less but then again after the
Spanish flu of 1918 1919 people started
travelling again and in those days
travel essentially meant getting on a
boat and we've seen how boats large
boats cruising ships can be major
incubators for various forms of
influenza like the kovat influenza and
yet still people started traveling again
so you know the perspective will change
as we start to come out of it and
hopefully with more and more people
wearing masks so that we don't spread
as much with more testing to find out
who has had it who hasn't both they sort
of diagnostic testing and the the
antibody testing there'll be new
technology there will be some treatment
right now there seem to be very
dependent on these ventilators that
don't have a very high success rate once
the person is in really bad shape
and I think there will be better
treatments testing treatment tracking
they have to get better at following
people you know who are perhaps
identified with a cluster and everyone
they were in contact with them all of
these things how we treat them in
hospitals are testing ability our
tracking ability our ability to slow
down transmission we're learning more
and more and so we will get we've only
get better at these things so to me it's
just a matter of slowly the present
lockdown will start to get removed so
the key thing is what we're gonna do now
so to me it's a great opportunity to
work on your language skills you're not
surprised to have you say that because
we are connected you know and and like
in my Persian I'm reading about the
history of Iran and obviously the
Persians were connected to the Turks and
Byzantine Empire and you know Italian
merchants from Genoa and and even you
know the Vikings around that time and I
mean the world has always been
interconnected and all explorers from
Indonesia who traveled to Madagascar I
mean the world has always been connected
and this connection is has been
accelerating and will continue to
accelerate and and I think what we're
adding now is sort of this virtual level
of connection which is also accelerating
and probably what one of them will be
one of the sort of lasting impacts of
everybody now forced to you know connect
virtually work virtually and so forth so
yeah learn languages all of this
interconnection and I should add
solidarity because we're only gonna get
through this thing if we all work
together you know the development of
testing first of all the experience of
different countries and how they you
know some had been hit worse than others
but there's experience there that's all
being shared the testing of
potential therapeutic you know
treatments or drugs all of that is being
shared there testing all of those I
can't remember the names I mean there's
this high hydro core quinine or
something hi I can't remember and then
there's some other former Ebola dragon
there's like five or six of these and
there are tests going on everywhere in
every province in Canada in different
states in the u.s. in Germany China you
name it everywhere and everything that
people are and this race to find a
vaccine and who finds faster and better
ways of testing this is all being done
in every corner of the world people are
sharing that information so this the
Solidarity the recognition that we're in
the same boat together that's gonna get
us out of this so I don't think once we
come out of it that we will revert back
to sort of self-sufficient economies
there will be increasing interchange so
learn languages and because we can't
expect that this international
solidarity connected this exchange is
always gonna just happen in English
English speakers in fact miss out
because they miss out on the fun unless
they are as I have so many of you who
are listening to me and who are English
speakers you're into learning languages
and you realize just how much of a
reward we get from learning them and
then having learned them and so
increasingly I think that that we're
gonna see increasing interconnectedness
not necessarily as much you know flying
off somewhere at the drop of a hat and
which isn't necessarily a bad thing
either and so I think one of the things
that we can sort of devote ourselves to
in this period of you know grim news
followed by grim news is to come up come
out of this with something a
breakthrough in one or more languages so
that's certainly my approach I'm working
on my Arabic and Persian it's a long
road without a doubt
but I was reviewing some of my
conversation reports with my link tutors
and it's amazing how much I've learned
even though I you know very often you
don't feel like you're learning anything
but in the end you are and I'm in no
great hurry Persian has been around for a
long time the air Arabic language has
been around for a long time any other
language like Turkish that I want to
learn later on it's also been around for
a long time it's not going anywhere
however long I take to learn it is just
fine with me and maybe then after that
I'll learn some other language and
explore different parts of the world
because we are all connected and that's
kind of what I wanted to say today thank
you for listening bye for now
