TEDxNTU 2025: Dr Ritu Jain on Preserving Languages to Preserve the Human Connection

At TEDxNTU 2025 - themed "RE: Human", eminent thought leaders across NTU shared their thoughts on what makes us human. Held on 18 October 2025 at Nanyang Auditorium, the theme spotlighted topics such as how innovation can strengthen empathy, resilience, and shared progress. 

SoH Senior Lecturer and Assistant Chair for Careers and Attachment, Dr Ritu Jain, reflected on how the loss of dialects in Singapore can erode emotional connection and cultural identity. Titled “Losing Our Languages, Losing Our Emotions”, her talk reminded audiences that as technology evolves, preserving linguistic and cultural diversity is important, as they are what make us human.

Ritu Jain’s talk struck a chord with all segments of the audience – young and mature, alike. Her central focus was: What happens when languages of home begin to fade?

Opening with an invitation for the audience to recall a cherished endearment, Ritu highlighted how certain words and expressions carry emotional weight and embody memory, identity, and belonging.

The talk explored three interwoven themes: how language encodes culture, how power reshapes language use, and how individuals negotiate these pressures in daily life. Ritu used local humour and idioms to illustrate the link between language and cultural context. She then traced Singapore’s linguistic landscape from its pre-1965 multilingual roots to the deliberate policy decisions that established English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil as official languages.

Ritu noted that English, once introduced as a neutral bridge, has grown into a global ticket to economic opportunity. This market-driven dominance has quietly displaced heritage languages across communities, severing intergenerational connections.

Her message was not about rejecting English, but about recognising what gets lost when it becomes the only language we value. As she concluded, language loss is not loud or sudden — it is gradual, unfolding through everyday choices. Preserving linguistic diversity, Ritu argued, is ultimately about preserving ways of seeing and being in the world.

The next time you speak,” she urged, “don’t just speak to be understood. Speak to remember. Speak to keep something alive.”

TEDxNTU is an independently organized TED-like event under direct license from TED. Hosted at the Nanyang Technological University, this is the biggest TEDx event in Singapore attracting over 1600 attendees annually.