Israeli Academic on the Survival of Maori and Pasifika languages

World-renowned linguist Professor Bernard Spolsky will be keynote speaker at an upcoming symposium ‘Building a multilingual society: creating habitats for language survival’, focusing on the survival of Māori and Pasifika languages.

The symposium, to be held at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand,  includes a panel discussion with leading Victoria University of Wellington academics as well as Dr Colin Tukuitonga, CEO Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, and will consider how to ensure the survival of Māori and Pasifika languages and build a multilingual society.

Professor Spolsky’s extensive research over the last 40 years includes research on language policy, sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, language testing and its history, and language attitudes and identity. He was born in Wellington in 1932 and is now an emeritus professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University.