M a r c h 2 0 2 1 • M a r i e m o n t , O h i o • V o l u m e X L V, N o . 6
Celebrate National Foreign Language Week: Bilingual Neighbors in Mariemont By Rex Bevis March 7 – 13, 2021 is National Foreign Language Week. The Mariemont Town Crier staff decided to look around the Village for neighbors who speak two or even three languages. Maybe not surprising to you readers, but there are quite a few of our neighbors who have bilingual fluency. And I had the pleasure of interviewing several of them for this article. Jera Srikalasin, a native of Bangkok, Thailand, has been in the United States since she was 23 years old. Jera and her American husband, Aaron, reside on Homewood Road with their two children. Active in the Mariemont community, Jera is executive secretary of the Mariemont Preservation Foundation and a piano teacher. Growing up in Thailand, Jera of course speaks Thai. She also lived for a while in the Philippines and still retains a bit of conversational Tagalog. Fun fact about Jera: She was a foreign exchange student and lived in Shawinigan, Quebec, Canada for a year during high school. “I still miss Thai food, which is more spicy, and there is a special Thai dessert that I love,” Jera tells me. She enjoys visits to the local Mango Tree restaurant. Stan Bahler, a resident of Crystal Springs Road, grew up in Indiana, and was first introduced to the German language at his college alma mater, DePauw University. Studying German for a couple of years may have whet his appetite for later in life, but he did not return to a serious study until much later. In 1990, Stan and his wife, Bobbie, hosted a pair of young choir members from what was then East Germany. These two travelers knew very little English so Stan began to develop an interest in
Above: Katerina and Vladimir Shesakova At right, top: James and Paola Biro At right, bottom: Stan Bahler conversational German in order to communicate with them. A few years later, the Bahlers hosted an East German family; the parents had no English language fluency but the son had some English ability so Stan once again had an opportunity to work on his German. While employed by Procter and Gamble, Stan traveled to Frankfort, West Germany, and also to East Germany, becoming more interested in developing conversational German language skills. In 1999, Stan decided to dive in, working with a German language teacher here in Cincinnati. He met up with a fellow Cincinnatian and the two of them began a weekly session in which they speak only German for a couple of hours. They have continued to do this even now, many years later. Stan also participated in a German language immersion course in 2007 at the Goethe Institute
in Bremen, Germany. Fun fact about Stan: As a high school student, Stan was a foreign exchange student for one year in Norway. Kaie Kroncke and her American husband, Charles, are residents of Settle Road, and have lived in Mariemont for 16 years. The Kronckes have two daughters, one at Mariemont High School and one at the Junior High. Kaie grew up in her hometown of Kuressaare on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia. Kaie has fluency in Estonian, Russian, and German. Although one might expect the Estonian Cont'd on page 5