Speakers

I will talk about being a second generation heritage speaker of one of Italy's most unique regional languages. My own dialect is spoken by no more than 10,000 people, and my sub-dialect by no more than 1000!  What is the Arberesh language? Is it really a dialect of Albanian or can we assert that it is its own independent non-standardised language?

Benny Lewis has been travelling the world for around 24 years, using the theme of language learning to allow him to travel much deeper than typical digital nomads. Rather than popping into tourist-filled cities and then leaving, he has spent years in individual countries, going as deep as to visit every single state of Brazil and spending months in the Amazon all through Portuguese, going way beyond Bali and appreciating Borneo, Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi of Indonesia through Indonesian, or by covering 2,000km by bus or train in both Mexico and China, also using the local languages.

In this talk, Benny will outline the practical ways he makes this work, from how he went about selling a house's worth of junk to allow him to be truly minimalist and have all his possessions in the world weigh 23kg, how he manages to live this lifestyle while making sure it costs *less* than settled life ever did, and most importantly, how his language learning strategy is tightly integrated into his unique travel style and how languages completely transform his travel experience compared to the many monolingual digital nomads he meets.

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In this 20-minute presentation, I will share a personal and professional experiment: learning Modern Greek using only ChatGPT as my guide. As a language teacher, I am deeply familiar with how students acquire a new language—step by step, with structured input, guided practice, and clear progression. This project was an attempt to recreate that process without a textbook, a classroom, or a teacher—starting from zero in a language I had never studied before.

Using my teaching experience as a foundation, I designed a learning path similar to the one I use with my own students. I prompted ChatGPT to generate materials, explanations, and exercises, focusing on essential grammar, core vocabulary, and meaningful practice. The challenge was not just to learn Greek, but to test whether a coherent and effective learning system could emerge purely through interaction—through asking precise questions and giving clear instructions.

In this talk, I will present the structure I followed, the types of prompts that worked best, and the results I achieved. Most importantly, I will reflect on the limitations and unexpected advantages of this method. Can artificial intelligence replace traditional language learning tools—or even the teacher? And what does this mean for the future of language education?

Quando si parla di Italia, l’immaginario collettivo si orienta quasi automaticamente verso luoghi iconici: borghi pittoreschi, centri storici, paesaggi da cartolina, musei e opere d’arte. Tuttavia, la lingua non vive soltanto in questi spazi celebrati, ma si costruisce e si trasforma soprattutto nei luoghi quotidiani, spesso marginali, dove le persone si incontrano davvero.

Questa proposta nasce da un luogo concreto: un bar aperto 24 ore su 24 in una via di Bologna, gestito da una famiglia cinese. Un ambiente apparentemente anonimo, che potrebbe trovarsi in qualsiasi città europea, ma che diventa un osservatorio privilegiato sulla lingua italiana contemporanea.

Attraverso questo esempio, esplorerò un approccio didattico che utilizza gli “spazi invisibili” come strumenti di apprendimento linguistico e culturale. In questi luoghi emergono varietà linguistiche, registri informali, influenze interculturali e forme di comunicazione spontanea che raramente trovano spazio nei manuali.

Il bar diventa così una “tana linguistica”: un ambiente accogliente e autentico, dove la lingua si manifesta come pratica sociale viva, fatta di interazioni, abitudini e micro-narrazioni quotidiane.

La presentazione mostrerà come integrare questi contesti nell’insegnamento dell’italiano a studenti stranieri, proponendo attività basate sull’osservazione, sull’ascolto e sulla rielaborazione personale.

Questa prospettiva invita a ripensare il rapporto tra lingua e luogo, spostando l’attenzione dai simboli ufficiali agli spazi reali in cui la lingua prende forma, si mescola e si trasforma.

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Ethnologue recently reclassified Chavacano from an educational to an endangered language on its Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), a shift that signals a dramatic decline in how the language is being passed down between generations in the Philippines. But what does this reclassification actually mean — and how did the world's most widely spoken Spanish-based creole get here?

This paper traces Chavacano's trajectory through the overlapping pressures of educational policy, globalization, and evolving language attitudes in a postcolonial setting. At the center of this story is the growing dominance of English as the primary medium of instruction, which has steadily pushed Chavacano out of the schools and institutions it once shared with Filipino and Spanish. Drawing on community voices and qualitative data, this study explores how these forces converge to put a uniquely hybrid language at risk.

Crucially, Chavacano's situation is not isolated — it unfolds against the long shadow of the Spanish Pacific and centuries of colonial language hierarchies that continue to shape how speakers value, use, and identify with their languages today. By situating this EGIDS downgrade within that broader historical arc, this paper asks: what do endangerment, identity, and the possibility of revitalization look like when a language carries the weight of empire in every word?

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In a world polarized between "soulless" AI efficiency and the slow pace of traditional methods, Luca Lampariello and David Allen Martin II propose a powerful middle ground: The Hybrid Model. This strategy argues that the future of fluency belongs to those who use technology to amplify—not replace—human connection. The presentation outlines a high-efficiency framework built on three critical pillars: Acquisition (Input Mastery): Learn how to use AI to create your own high-interest content, transforming passive consumption into active, high-efficiency learning.

We are not one version of ourselves. We are many—shaped, shifted, and sometimes rewritten by the languages we use. This talk explores identity through the lens of multilingual expression, drawing from the experience of @radioziamaddi as a creative and polyglot artist navigating different linguistic worlds.

Each language carries a different rhythm of thought, a different emotional temperature, and even a different version of personality. Speaking becomes less about translation and more about transformation: who do we become when we switch codes, when we perform ourselves in another language?
What happens when you use languages as the core of your Artistic process, as the main ingredient for your Performance?

Through storytelling and examples, this talk will explore how languages do not simply describe reality—they multiply it. Examples, imitations, laughs and songs in several languages and Italian accents will create a powerful yet complete performance.

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- What are the scientific foundations behind the use of music to learn and teach languages?
- What research and evidence exists to support music as a tool for language education?
- How can we use this information to inform our language learning and teaching?

In this presentation, I cross-examine a wide range of scientific studies and sources which document the various ways in which music positively contributes to language learning and pedagogy. Based on a synthesis of these resources and my own personal experience learning and teaching various languages, I will suggest some approaches and implementations of musical language pedagogy for all kinds of language learners and educators.

The second part of this presentation will include a practical example for the audience to participate in, giving them the ability to actively put into practice the techniques discussed in the introduction. Together, we will listen to a song in a notoriously “difficult” language and hone our listening skills, using the musical medium and its benefits as a tool for personal linguistic growth.

With this presentation, I hope to convey to all participants the immense utility and power of using musical activities to enrich and bring joy to our language learning and teaching. I believe that with my experience researching and putting these techniques into practice, I can make a very compelling case for the expanded use of music in language pedagogy.

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Most language learners pick methods the way people pick diets: by anecdote, intuition, and whoever went viral on YouTube. Meanwhile, decades of research in linguistics and cognitive science have converged on a set of principles that reliably accelerate learning, while simultaneously demonstrating that much of what is popular is ineffective.

This talk distills that evidence into a practical framework built on three pillars. First, the linguistic pillar: how regular, principled patterns in phonology, morphology, and frequency distributions should shape what you study and how. Second, the memory pillar: why desirable difficulty, retrieval practice, and spaced repetition outperform casual reading and listening, highlighting, and “immersion without effort,” and how to structure your approach to study accordingly. Third, the technology pillar: how large language models, used intelligently, can be one more useful tool among many, that mines texts, extracts and organizes content, builds decks for spaced repetition calibrated to your level, and transforms passive input into active recall material at a speed completely unimaginable five years ago.

I'll share concrete workflows, sample prompts, common pitfalls (LLM hallucinations; SRS deck bloat), and honest evaluations of what has worked in my own learning and what has not. You'll leave with a defensible, practical, evidence-based system you can adapt to any language, at any level, starting tomorrow.

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This paper examines the Cornish community perspective on participation in the Horizon Europe Revive project, situating the revitalisation of the Cornish language (Kernewek) within broader discussions of indigenous endangered languages. Although Cornish is a revived Celtic language, its contemporary resurgence is closely tied to questions of cultural identity, indigeneity, and linguistic sovereignty in Cornwall.

Focusing on community experiences of engagement with Revive, the paper explores how speakers, learners, and activists interpret involvement in a large-scale, transnational research initiative. It considers the extent to which such frameworks recognise and support indigenous perspectives on language ownership, authority, and knowledge production. Particular attention is paid to tensions between institutional research agendas and community-led priorities, including concerns around representation, authenticity, and the long-term sustainability of revitalisation efforts.

Drawing on qualitative insights from community stakeholders, the paper argues that while Revive provides important opportunities for visibility, resource-sharing, and cross-cultural exchange among endangered language communities, its effectiveness depends on genuinely collaborative and ethically grounded partnerships. The Cornish case highlights the need to move beyond extractive research models towards approaches that centre indigenous agency and lived linguistic experience.

By positioning Cornish within the wider landscape of indigenous language revitalisation, the paper contributes to ongoing debates about decolonising research practices and ensuring that endangered language initiatives are shaped by, and accountable to, the communities they aim to serve.

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When learners first arrive in Italy, they often discover something their textbooks never warned them about: Italians don't all sound the same. Far from it. A Milanese, a Roman, a Neapolitan, and a Sicilian can all speak perfectly correct Italian and still sound utterly different. This presentation is a guided journey through the regional accents of Italy. We'll explore the key phonetic features that allow listeners to identify where a speaker comes from.

We'll also tackle a question that fascinates and divides Italians themselves: does a "neutral" Italian accent actually exist? Who speaks it? And why is it so rare in real life? Finally, we'll look at how Italy's regional languages — often called "dialetti," though they really are full-fledged languages — influence the way Italian is pronounced in each part of the country.

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Sophia Smith Galer discusses her work How To Kill A Language, her book charting the phenomenon of linguicide. In this discussion Sophia will explore 10 different ways she found languages were disappearing today, who was disappearing them, and solutions that different communities around the world are presenting to revive and reclaim language. In this talk she’ll especially focus on Italian and “dialetti” as migrant languages in London, as well as her family’s variety of Emilian spoken in the mountains of Piacenza.

In recent years, proposals have emerged advocating for the removal of classical languages, notably Latin and Ancient Greek, from Flemish secondary education curricula. These proposals often argue that instructional time should instead be allocated to subjects perceived as more directly applicable, particularly within the domains of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Alternative perspectives, however, recommend either increasing the instructional emphasis on modern languages—especially English—or introducing additional languages such as Turkish, Arabic, Russian, or Chinese.

This presentation seeks to systematically examine the principal arguments underlying these differing positions, with particular attention to the proposal of incorporating entirely new languages into the curriculum. Proponents of classical language education frequently emphasize their purported “general formative” value, particularly with respect to its contribution to cognitive development and intellectual training. Accordingly, this study investigates whether the instruction of new, non-Western or non-Indo-European languages might offer comparable formative benefits, alongside their more immediate practical utility.

Drawing on illustrative examples from the languages under consideration, this analysis aims to evaluate the extent to which such educational outcomes can be achieved. The findings suggest that a nuanced and context-dependent conclusion is warranted.

Cos’è un dialetto? Dipende dalla lente con cui lo osserviamo. Ciò che è certo è che la risposta a questa domanda non è cosa da poco se consideriamo che dalla fine degli anni ’80 a oggi l’uso prevalente delle lingue locali in Italia è passato dal 32% al 9,6%.

Il filtro che più ci interessa, allora, non può che essere quello della sociolinguistica, secondo cui un dialetto non è altro che una lingua subordinata a un’altra per ragioni sociopolitiche. In altre parole, il siciliano non avrebbe nulla da invidiare all’italiano, il romagnolo niente che non abbia il norvegese. Eppure il condizionale è d’obbligo, perché le cose, di fatto, sono ben diverse.

In nome di questa crescente consapevolezza, i “dialetti” italiani si stanno ribellando, insorgendo contro l’unica designazione che li rende tali. I social media (ma non solo) sono il palcoscenico preferenziale sul quale creatrici e creatori di contenuti si impegnano per restituire al veneto, al napoletano, al ligure la dignità di cui sono stati privati.

Portiamo sul palco della Polyglot Conference la realtà scomoda dei (non) dialetti italiani, raccontando in particolare la seguitissima esperienza del faentino Fabrizio Caveja, divulgatore dietro la pagina Rumagnulesta: una tra le voci più forti che lottano a suon di parole per riportare le nostre lingue locali al loro antico splendore… o almeno per contribuire alla loro sopravvivenza.