New Semantics (Volume 2)

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E G A U LANG

ST UD EN T

2 ume l o V

2019

g n i Spr

E N I Z A G MA

featu rin NSL g IAlum Y Insig ni hts

Letter From The Editor Dear Reader, My name is Vanessa Hu, and I am the Editor of New Semantics Language Magazine. This magazine showcases student creative work and expert interviews, highlighting our passion for foreign language and culture. Volume 2, like Volume 1, first released pieces throughout the year online, and culminates in this physical publication. However, we’ve broadened our scope, with our contributors studying 16+ languages altogether, hailing from Kentucky to the United Arab Emirates. New Semantics thus illustrates the multitude of perspectives that exist in our diverse world, joining them in this forum for cross-cultural dialogue.

After the first edition of New Semantics, I was unsure if it had met its end for a number of reasons, from my worry about not finding enough fellow linguaphiles, to time consumed for college plans.

What encouraged me to begin Volume 2 was participating in the U.S. State Department’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth, where I studied Tajik Persian in Tajikistan for six weeks.

And as a NSLI-Y Alumni Representative, I wanted to create a platform for NSLI-Yers to share their unforgettable experiences discovering language abroad. Thus, NSLI-Y Alumni Insights is a special subproject of Volume 2 — read more about NAI and NSLI-Y on page 4.

You have astonished me with how genuinely enthusiastic all of you are about New Semantics — it reminded me of when I visited an English class of Afghan refugees in Tajikistan. Because, they, you, and I extend across boundaries between nations, languages, ethnicities, ages, and passions.

Yet, every single one of us, through that one class or through New Semantics, is united by our belief in the power of language.

I am releasing Volume 2 after the most turbulent period of my life, and I am immensely grateful that together, we could bring this labor of love to fruition. Thank you for supporting New Semantics, and please enjoy this culmination of creative work.

Sincerely,

For an official PDF/physical copy: languagezine.wixsite.com/newsemantics/full-edition For original blog posts: languagezine.wixsite.com/newsemantics/blog 1

Table of Contents Letter From the Editor…………………………………………………………………1

Table of Contents.………………………………………………………………………2 Title Page.….……………………………………………………………………………3

NSLI-Y Alumni Insights………………………………………………………………4 Arabic

November Silence (Dana Slayton*)...…………………………………………………5

Mayan

Adventures in Tulum (Diana Qing).....………………………………………………10

Chinese

Connecting Cultures (Amanda Tresca*)..……………………………………………15

Japanese, Korean

What a Weeb (Shreya Mapadath*)...…………………………………………………19

*Expert Corner*

Infected By Fernweh?! (Interview: Carly Seedall).…………………………………23

Latvian

Snapshots From Latvia (Rachel Kogut)...……………………………………………26

Russian

Remnants of Immersion (Erin Ramsey*)……………………………………………29

Hindi, English (Southern dialecticism)

From Over Yonder (Carson Collins*).………………………………………………33

Tamil

தமிழி

Uzbek, Tajik Persian

Uzbek & Tajik: Siblings from Different Language Families (Rayyan Merchant*)..40

Yucatec Maya, Spanish, Arabic

A Mexican-Moroccan Tapestry: Diachrony, Fideo, and Arabic Loanwords in Itza Yucatec (Penélope Hurtado-Stuart*).…………………………………………………7

Arabic, Mandarin

The Silk Road: Language (Haya Bitar*)..……………………………………………12

Japanese

From the Ashes (Julie Emory*)………………………………………………………17

Spanish, English, French, Turkish

A Journey of Four Languages (Lorena Sandoval-Mejia)..………………………….21

Latin

Perks of Learning a Dead Language (David Kim*)…………………………………24

*Expert Corner*

Nothing But (Word)Net (Interview: Princeton Professor, Dr. Fellbaum)…………28

Georgian

Finding the Words (Anna Stvilia*)...…………………………………………………31

Gujarati

Loving & Fighting: In Gujarati (Aditi Desai).………………………………………35

*Expert Corner*

Proverbs, Poetry, Polyglot (Interview: Mehroj Muhiddinov)...……………………39

Tajik Persian

A Tajik Tasting Menu (Vanessa Hu*)...………………………………………………43

ஒ The Sound of Tamil (Adhithi Sreenivasan)...…………………………38

Acknowledgements, Meet the Editor..………………………………………………46

Cited Sources..…………………………………………………………………………47

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* NSLI-Y Alumni Insights

Student Language Magazine

Volume 2 | Spring 2019 Editor: Vanessa Hu

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1. WHAT IS NSLI-Y?

NSLI-Y, or the National Security Language Initiative for Youth, is a U.S. State Department program that provides high school students with merit-based scholarships to learn critical languages in summer and academic-year overseas immersion programs, and offers virtual programs as well. NSLI-Y has eight languages: Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Russian, Hindi, Turkish, Tajik Persian, and Indonesian.

2. WHAT IS NAI?

As one of the 2019 Virtual Alumni Representatives of the NSLI-Y Alumni Association, editor Vanessa created NSLI-Y Alumni Insights (NAI) as a NSLI-Y Virtual Event and collaboration effort: New Semantics will host creative pieces on language submitted by NSLI-Y alumni in NAI and New Semantics Volume 2.

NAI aims to foster continued passion for languagelearning and cross-cultural dialogue, post NSLI-Y.

ALUMNI CONTRIBUTORS

FINALIST CONTRIBUTORS

* Dana Slayton * PenĂŠlope Hurtado-Stuart * Haya Bitar * Julie Emory * Shreya Mapadath * David Kim * Erin Ramsey * Anna Stvilia * Carson Collins * Rayyan Merchant * Vanessa Hu

* PenĂŠlope Hurtado-Stuart * Amanda Tresca * Lorena Sandoval (for Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange!) * Carson Collins

Check out pieces by 2019-20 Finalists:

Check out pieces by NSLI-Y alumni below:

NSLI-Y Alumni Insights

Alumni pieces are marked with the NSLI-Y logo!

3. WHERE IS NAI?

Find NSLI-Y Alumni Insights on languagezine.wixsite.com/ newsemantics/nai. You will also find NSLI-Y Alumni Insights posted on nsliyinteractive.org after the official publication of New Semantics Volume 2. pictured above: The 2019 NSLI-Y Alumni Representatives

Awesome! Head to nsliyouth.org to find more info on NSLI-Y's offered programs and application process.

The 2019 deadline is October 30.

Head to the Ask NSLI-Y Alumni Facebook Group and nsliyinteractive.org to gain insight into past NSLI-Yers' experiences. Also find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat!

Can you name all the flags shown of all the locations with NSLI-Y sites? Answers are below!

5. I'M AN ALUMNUS!

NSLIY-ers unite! Stay involved and find your regional Alumni Representative through the Facebook NSLI-Y Alumni group. Sign up for the Alumni Association, access the Outreach Toolkit, and find postprogram opportunities on nsliforyouth.org/ alumni. Look out for Alumni Representative applications to be sent out at the end of each year!

South Korea, China, Taiwan, India, Tajikistan, Turkey, Jordan, Morocco, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Indonesia

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4. I WANNA APPLY!

TRIVIA

November Silence by: Dana Slayton

Arabic

Learning a foreign language is less an act of losing things in translation than it is giving them up.

Approaching success – if “success” is even a probable or measurable goal in this pursuit – demands a degree of surrender, an idea which disturbed me greatly at first. I do not like to lose, but by the same token, I need to compete in order to feel like I’m getting anywhere. Failure, in this worldview, became a perpetual defeat. It clung to all the goals I had made into contests, inseparable and purposeless aside from its ability to inspire a more thorough pursuit. In chasing “success,” failure, in fact, lost all of its many meanings aside from those attached to fear. The driving force shifted away from passion and towards the act of the chase itself, and if I had kept running at that same breakneck speed, eventually I would have been absorbed into my footsteps, a mind engaged in the race rather than the journey because it was afraid to slow down. And if there is one thing that challenges me perpetually, it is the edict of life in Morocco that the act of stopping, of stepping back, is the opposite of failure. It demands that I stop looking at the tracks and seeing only the race.

November is a month it is easy to drown in, situated in the cavern between adjustment and longing, of wishing for autumn, real cold, and leaves that change to gold while seeking out the minutiae of the beauty of the world I live in now. It has been an exercise in patience that often eludes me, of chasing after success without stopping to examine anything other than failure, of looking forward and looking back. In its entirety, my time here in Morocco is a search and an examination, a renegotiation of my relationship with the Arabic language. It is the space between endings and new beginnings. This experience has been a chance to step out of the race for a moment, just long enough to realize that maybe it is not the failure just outside my vision that scares me, but the idea of success.

I realized while visiting a small village called Ain Cheggag that success is surrender, is reaching outside yourself because you have exhausted your capacity in pursuit of an empty goal. I thought I was winning a race, but in my running, I forgot my finish line. I had started chasing without a clear idea of the end. I was lost.

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In pursuit of a language, silence taught me. It changed the direction I was running. The finish line and the failure – the very foundations of the race itself – mutated. They became conflated, misshapen entities that delineated the fact that I had been racing the wrong event. In the silences that cannot be described as anything other than awkward – around a table just after finishing a meal with my host family, or while watching television, or right after my sisters finished rapid queries that I cannot yet understand – I began to notice that the concept of silence as space is a very American one, as is our need to fill it.

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I am wont to name the absence of sound because I view that absence as something to be corrected – because it is a stop in my race, an arrest, a signal of a failure to comprehend. Silence has always meant a failure to fill a space, but in this new context, where my words are still clumsy, broken appendages that seek to create a whole self from delicate matter, it has shown me the futility of viewing language as a race. My finish line was faulty because it failed to account for failure as a lesson. In the pursuit of fluency, the necessary breaks in the road are not times spent speaking in English and German, the languages of my upbringing, but the silences. My family was content to speak – and speak they did – in Arabic and Tamazight. But for all the words I heard, nothing impacted me like their contentedness to remain silent.

Meals in the absence of sound beyond the radio and the rooster were commonplace, and never once were we pressured to fill that silence the way we were pressured to consume greater quantities of bread. The silence was a time for thought, for enjoyment of the ambiance in its purest form, the company of others unfettered by language.

When I commented to my host sister about it, she seemed confused at the mere idea that silence needed to be filled. Among family, she assumed, it was normal, good, a centering force. In her viewpoint, I saw the misunderstandings of my own. All the time I spend trying to speak a new language means nothing if I cannot learn, once in a while, how to let the world speak for me, how to close my mouth and listen to the roosters, let others’ words wash over me without grasping at them. In these silences, the race falls away, as does the fear that keeps failure in my periphery. Language, and its consequent culture, gains an existence within the momentary, and the future diminishes in comparison to the magnificence of a present free from races or competition or fear. The silence highlights the beauty in my endeavor, and makes it more human.

About the Writer Dana Slayton is a freshman Near Eastern Studies major at Cornell University and is from Richmond, VA. She started learning Arabic due to a scheduling mishap her freshman year of high school, but the language captivated her immediately, and she fell in love with it. She has since lived and studied in Morocco and visited Egypt chasing after language. Witnesses attest that she is always the life of the party due to her remarkable acumen in making terrible, niche bilingual puns.

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A Mexican-Moroccan Tapestry: Diachrony, Fideo, & Arabic in Itza Yucatec

by: Penélope Hurtado-Stuart

Yucatec Maya, Spanish, Arabic Yucatec Temple (photos by Penélope Hurtado-Stuart)

I was sequestered in a chilly Chicago flat, helping my parents to plan for an upcoming trip to the state of Yucatán in Mexico. I scoured the Internet, leafing through JSTOR for a copy of the Popol Wuj, for a history of Yucatec architecture. From reading about the sport of Pok ta Pok (or Mayan basketball) to studying the intricate funerary sculptures of Jaina island, I read along, immersing myself in the history of the beautiful Mayan State.

It was through this research that I came across the 1995 work A Very Short Itza Maya Vocabulary, compiled by Erik Boot. Due to my inclination towards linguistic research, I eagerly began to scroll through pages of Itza vocabulary, when I came upon two terms in particular that interested me.

aseeteh (S), /sub. -oil asuukar (S), /sub. - sugar

I was taken aback. It was clear to me that these words must have been borrowed from their Spanish counterparts

aceite (N) -oil azúcar (N) -sugar

But they also reflected the structure of the Arabic words,

ُ ‫َزﻳ‬ zayt (N)-oil)/‫ﺖ‬ ْ ‫ﺳ‬ ُ sukkar (N) -sugar)/‫ﻜﺮ‬

This lexicographical similarity was at once intriguing to me. During a summer in Morocco through the NSLI-Y Scholarship (National Security Language Initiative for Youth), I noted a common Spanish influence between the Mexican culture I shared with my family and the new culture I was experiencing. Thismanifested through terms in the Moroccan dialect, Darija, such as “kuzina,” “bata,” and “skwilla,” which were derived during the Spanish Protectorate period in Morocco from the Spanish words “cocina,” “pato,” and “escuela” (denoting “kitchen,” “duck,” and “school,” respectively) — and also culturally manifested in the presence of familiar dishes, from paella to fideo, at the dinner table. And so I researched, to help myself better understand the exact path of vocabulary and ideologies from the Arab world to the Yucatán. This is what I found.

The Yucatec languages, which form the living ergative language family also known as Mayan, are spoken from the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico to Belize. This family is divided into two branches, Mopan-Itza and Yucatec Lancadon, both of which are characterized by their use of ejective consonants /p’/, /t’/, and /k’/, the absence of gender markers or a case system, and the use of contrastive laryngealization (or creaky voice) on long vowels.

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Arch in Vallodolid, Yucatan

Arch in Sale, Morocco

Shortly following the arrival of explorers in the Yucatán in 1517, a massive conquest of the peninsula began. As conquistadors such as Francisco de Montejo II overtook indigenous areas, transforming Mayan cities into colonial towns and constructing new buildings from the bricks of Mayan temples in cities such as Mérida, they began an erasure of local traditions, religions, and attitudes to evangelize and Europeanize the local people. Aside from this, the Spanish understood that in order to control culture, it is essential to control language. As such, colonialists devised a process of social and linguistic homogenization through the alteration of local languages.

The result was a new register of Maya infused with Spanish vocabulary, with a lexicon designed so as to suit Catholic practices such as prayer and confession. This register became known as Yucatec Reducido, from the Spanish word reducir, or “to reduce, reorganize, or convince.” Used to translate copies of the Bible and other works promoted by Spanish imperialists, this language was largely successful in the effort to eradicate Mayan ritual speech and induce Evangelization in the Yucatán. With time, the logosyllabic alphabet once used to record Mayan codices disappeared; the Roman alphabet appeared in its place. The Yucatec -ob suffix, once used to denote plurality, was overtaken by the Spanish -s and -es markers on phrases. But most importantly, thousands of Spanish words were adopted into the language.

Following the Mexican War of Independence in the early 19th century, the Yucatec people began to reclaim their forever-altered language. Yucatec, in its reducido form, became a symbol of resistance, used in cosmological practices and spoken as a celebration of cultural identity. To this day, the language lives on, as do the Spanish loanwords within it. But why do many Spanish words, such as our examples above, appear to have Arabic cognates?

Following the Muslim Conquest of Hispania in 711 C.E. and continuing through the Umayyad, Almoravid, and Almohad periods, the area encompassing Spain and Portugal, then referred to as Al-Andalus, was under Islamic rule. During this period, Islamic and Arab influences not only affected the political climate and religious practices of the Andalusian area, but also all facets of culture. This included everything from academia (e.g. the introduction of algebra to Spain); to architecture, such as the introduction of the arch and interior courtyard; to music, which later informed genres such as flamenco and facilitated the use of solfège in classical music. Chief among these cultural constituents was the adoption of Arabic loanwords into the Spanish vocabulary.

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At the height of Arab influence in medieval Spain, lexicographers have noted the espousal of phrases such as ‫ إن ﺷﺎء ﷲ‬, (ʾin shāʾa llāh) (If god wills) into Spanish as Ojala (I hope). In contrast to the deliberate fabrication of Yucatec Reducido, linguists have argued that these words were borrowed not through the decisions of the upper classes, but rather by everyday workers and shoppers to communicate and facilitate trade. This etymological history is made evident by the presence of the Arabic definite article Al- in most of these words, even when preceded by the Spanish definite articles, el, los, las, and la. As the Arabic definite article is invariable, unlike the gendered, strictly plural or singular articles of Spanish, it is thought that the ‘al’ sound was mistaken for part of the nominal root of many words. In various cases, as with ‘adobe’ (brick) and ‘acebibe’ (raisin), the ‘L’ has been assimilated so as to reflect the presence of ism shamsiyaa, or “sun words”: those in which the L sound in al has been omitted, due to a cacophonic effect when matched with the first letter of a noun. These words extend to some of the more commonly employed within the Spanish language, such as alcohol (alcohol) and almohada (pillow).

Knowing this, our initial examples fit into the historical puzzle. Both oil and sugar are highly utilized in trade, particularly in colonial or post-colonial societies where they were objects of desire. However, neither is integral enough to any early language to be present on a Swadesh list, a list that categorizes the 100 most commonly important words of any language. As such, both words in a language are easily influenced by those in power — by those in direct possession of oil or sugar. If introduced to a lexicon to the literate through writing, they are unlikely to change greatly, as is evident from the shift from the Spanish aceite to the Yucatec aseeteh. But if learned by ear, without being read, a greater shift is to be expected, as with the shift from the Arabic zayt to Spanish aceite.

And so, as I write this from the warmth of an Arabic-style courtyard in the beautiful state of Yucatán, the smells of Mayan cuisine and the rhythms of the local cantina surrounding me, I smile to think of the similarities between the culture I am now experiencing and that which I experienced during my time in Morocco. In both countries, I have been welcomed by the energy and history of the local people, surrounded by music and familiar dishes. In both countries, I have wandered through lively, crowded marketplaces with tarp roofs and bustling sellers and fresh fruits and new leather goods. And in both countries, I have heard the sound of similar words. It reminds me that all cultures are in some way historically connected. No culture exists in a vacuum. And as for me, I am never happier than when exploring each interwoven thread in the tapestry of cultures which encompasses the globe.

About the Writer Attempting to weave a tapestry of cultures and expand her world, Texan home-schooled student Penélope Hurtado-Stuart is fascinated by anthropology, linguistics and foreign languages. She has studied Arabic, Spanish, French, and Japanese through her local community college and through the NSLI-Y program.

Stuart is also a fan of 1970s minimalist opera and is enthusiastic about art, art history, and museum work. She is a NSLI-Y alumna through Arabic Summer 2019, Amideast Rabat, and is an Arabic AY Finalist.

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Adventures in Tulum

by: Diana Qing

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Mayan

Diana is a high school junior attending Monta Vista High School in California.

“What is that? Is it someone’s face?”

“It’s a D. In Mayan.”

“But it looks like an icon, not a letter.”

I smiled. “That’s the uniqueness of the Mayan alphabet and culture.”

I had just returned from my trip to Cancun, Mexico, sporting a new necklace that immediately caught the eye of my friends. What was supposed to be a casual and relaxing summer trip, filled with swimming, sunbathing, and building sand castles on the beach, turned into an exhausting but eyeopening adventure, as I explored and gained insight into the history and culture of the ancient Mayans.

It was Tuesday, June 5, 2018. The bus was loaded with the tired faces of tourists at seven a.m., all hoping to catch an extra hour of sleep on the bus before arriving at our destination and enjoying a

day’s worth of adventure. This desire to sleep was disrupted by our wonderful tour guide Eric, who talked the entire way to Tulum — if it were not for his stories and history lessons on the way there, we would not have understood, appreciated, and fully absorbed the importance and beauty of the spectacular sights we saw that day. From seeing the looming stone structures of the Mayan ruins along with large iguanas, to overlooking the sparkling turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea on a twelve-meter tall cliff, everything I saw, heard, and experienced that day gave me a newfound appreciation for the Mayan people and sparked my curiosity and interest into delving deeper into the Mayan language and culture.

Located eighty miles south of Cancún on the Yucatán Peninsula, Tulum is an enclosed coastal city part of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. In Mayan, Tulum means “wall,” which is fitting because the city is surrounded by walls on three sides (north, south, and west) and the Caribbean Sea on its east. These limestone walls still stand today, and range between three to five meters tall and are about eight meters thick.

The rectangular holes in these walls are the entrances to the city. The

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by Diana Qing

"The Mayans referred to Tulum as Zamá (zam-MAH), or 'dawn' — which is fitting because the city faces the rising sun."

Mayans inhabited Tulum between the thirteenth and fifteenth century, and it is estimated that the seaside city had around 1600 inhabitants. While present-day tourists know the city as Tulum, the Mayans referred to Tulum as Zamá (zam-MAH), which means “dawn” — which is also fitting because the city faces the rising sun.

El Castillo The Mayan ruins in Tulum lie atop twelve-meter tall cliffs. The tallest and most famous structure among the well-preserved ruins is El Castillo (castle in Spanish), which is a 7.5-meter tall temple pyramid constructed using stone that is situated atop a cliff that overlooks the brilliant blue waters of the Caribbean Sea.

by Diana Qing

Eric also pointed out a structure situated to the left of El Castillo, which had a carving of a Mayan baby at the top. He told us that the dark rectangular region represents a door, and the placement of the baby being born over the door symbolizes the baby leaving the darkness and entering the light.

Like this structure, many other buildings among the ruins have engravings and paintings of figures of gods, deities, and people engaging in common daily activities such as women grinding grain on a metate, along with Mayan glyphs.

Despite the physically exhausting day of walking and climbing up steep stairs under the hot summer sun, it was all worth it at the end because I got to learn about the history, culture, and values of the Mayan people, which is a topic not covered in depth in high school. Eric ended our tour by introducing us to a family of Mayan descent that made necklaces from real silver, gold, and obsidian using the same method the ancient Mayans made jewelry, and incorporated letters of the Mayan alphabet in the necklace. Realizing how interested I was in the Mayan culture and wanting to remember everything Eric had taught me that today, I decided to purchase a silver necklace of a sun, which represents the memories I had made in Tulum, and the letter D, the initial of my first name. Furthermore, the uniqueness of the Mayan alphabet of representing letters using small icons and images only further enhanced my interest and desire to explore deeper the rich history, creations and institutions, and beliefs of the Mayan people.

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The Silk Road: Language

by: Haya Bitar

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all photos taken by Haya Bitar

Arabic, Mandarin Chinese

To become completely immersed in the inner workings of linguistics, to gain a genuine love and a profound appreciation for semantics, one must not disregard the cultures that thoroughly influence the foundations of the language itself. I'm a firm believer in realizing an intersectional scope of the world. For this reason, I would like to highlight the thread that ties society and privilege to the comprehension of language. While some might see this as an unorthodox approach to the study of linguistics, I think it is a long and overdue conversation that we must have with ourselves and our neighbors far and wide.

Growing up in the Middle East exposed me to the West’s modernized imperialism that disguised itself in the music, film and pop culture that set impossible standards for the Arab youth. From Disney Channel to Barbie, I was conditioned to believe that speaking English and succumbing to the Eurocentric ideal of being a White, blueeyed woman is the only way for an ArabAmerican girl to truly be considered 'American’. Consequently, I hated that Arabic was my first language. In school, I would walk around my fourth-grade class telling everyone that I carried an American passport and shamelessly undermined my ability to speak my mother tongue. It was — and still is — a norm among the Arab youth to pretend that they are not bilingual as a form of self-degradation. The better you got at pretending, the easier it became to forget the shame that our White-washed TV shows and the unattainable, eliteadoring, Western standards brought to us — almost as a punishment for being Arab.

Contrary to popular belief, English is taught as a first language in this corner of the globe. Arabic comes in second, and

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French is our third. Thanks to France's illegal colonization of the Levant post World War I, the modern Arabic language consists of thousands of French derivatives: my favorite is '‫'ﺑﻨﻄﻠﻮن‬ (pronounced as bantalon) which translates to pants, derived from the French word 'pantalon'.

From Urdu to Swahili, Arabic has a profound influence on more than forty different languages worldwide. This language has proved its tremendous power to the international community with its capability of withstanding the test of time by outlasting the rise and fall of numerous empires, and with its significant influence on the establishment of the Islamic religion. However, Arabic's intricate cursive alphabet is what seems to appeal to most non-Arabic speakers. When my American friends ask what my Arabic-engraved necklace means, they often confess their desire to learn the language because of how "pretty" the characters look. Arabic literature and its immeasurable impact on several Asian languages, the thousands of dialects within dialects that coexist stunningly, and the fragility that accompanies the pronunciations, are not considered valid reasons to learn the language. In a way, I am thankful for the misconceptions and the stereotypes that I've had to live with abroad because eventually, my frustration began flowering into pride for a language that I was taught to hate by the same people that now desired to learn it.

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“How remarkable it is, to be able to witness how one of the oldest languages in the world transcended borders to coexist in such a fragile balance.”

This sudden epiphany brought a form of healing that could not have come at a better time. My lifechanging move to the United States at the age of seventeen, alone yet driven, opened up a door for self-reflection. In a socio-political climate that preys on the disenfranchised, and in a country where white people dare to challenge grocery shoppers who speak in Arabic as well as proudly harassing African-American children selling bottled water, I had to force myself to give up my privilege of living in a Western-enforced blissful ignorance. What genuinely put things into perspective for me was the NSLI-Y scholarship that I received for the summer of 2018. I was chosen to study Mandarin in Xian, China all the while living with a host family for six weeks. To my complete astonishment, Xian happened to be one of the Muslim-majority cities that existed delicately in a country which boldly established internment camps for the sole purpose of exterminating the Chinese-Muslim community. It hadn't taken me long to draw comparisons between Mandarin and Arabic; the 'Kh' and 'J' phonetic sounds, for example, were extensively used in both languages. Not to mention the comprehensive pronunciations that determine the meaning of a word and the accuracy that is required to precisely dictate the Arabic alphabet and Mandarin's characters. What stunned me the most was the Muslim Quarter that existed in central Xian. In an area that could not have extended farther than four blocks wide, thousands of ethnically Hui and Uyghur Chinese built a tiny metropolis that catered to the public an image of

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the Islamic influence that had engulfed the city for thousands of years.

Verses of the Qur'an in Arabic were plastered on restaurant walls, and Middle Eastern antiquities were on full display. How remarkable it is, to be able to witness how one of the oldest languages in the world transcended borders to coexist in such a fragile balance.

One of my favorite memories from my language-intensive program in China occurred during my last week. I was visiting my host grandmother where I spent the afternoon making dumplings with the women. I was discussing the propaganda that Chinese schoolchildren are exposed to with my host brother when my host grandmother walked in with a stack of journals. She sat next to me and placed about twenty notebooks on her lap, where she opened a page that overflowed with tracings of Arabic letters. You could only imagine how surprised I was to learn that my sixty-four-year-old Chinese host grandmother spent hours of her day studying Arabic so that she could read the Qur'an. She asked if I could recite the religious text with her to compare our pronunciations. Just like that, the whole family gathered in the living room to listen to my reading of the Qur'an in Mandarin, while my host grandmother read her passage in Arabic, and together we corrected one another's diction.

This encounter made me appreciate what I had taken for granted all my life: my ability to speak Arabic. The same language that I was taught to loathe was the language that countless Americans could only wish to learn because of its beauty, and the language that the Chinese-Muslim community strove to learn because of its religious value. For this first time in my life, I was proud of my identity as a bilingual, first-generation Syrian-American.

About the Writer My name is Haya and I'm a first generation Syrian-American immigrant. I spent the first 8 years of my life in Saudi Arabia, then I moved to the UAE. For my senior year of high school I graduated in the U.S. Arabic was my mother tongue. I began to learn English in first grade and am now bilingual. I was also taught French as a third language since Arabic is comprised of words and phrases that are derived from French (Turkish, Armenian, and Farsi also have quite the influence on Arabic). I had the incredible opportunity of studying in Xian, China for the summer of 2018 where I spent six weeks taking part in a language-intensive course in Mandarin, in addition to Chinese history and culture. I love to learn and travel!

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Chuseok Dinner; Hotteok; Making Kimbap (Amanda Tresca)

Connecting Cultures

by: Amanda Tresca

Korean

I grew up between the neon lights of Las Vegas and the quaint buildings of Alhambra, California.

A thirty-minute drive from my grandma's house took you to Olvera Street or to Little Bangladesh.

And yes, while it was also a thirty-minute drive to Disneyland, some of my fondest childhood memories were exploring those little towns with my family. My grandmother and family members taught me the importance of loving the world outside of the neon lights and quaint buildings, fostering my love for languages. My high school unfortunately only offered two languages. I enrolled in French, but my brain constantly reminded me of a language I loved to hear and see whenever I went to California — the Korean language and culture fascinated me, and I could not let that go. If my school did not offer Korean, I knew I had to start teaching myself.

I started learning Korean around June of 2017. I started with learning the Korean alphabet system (called Hangul/한글), then moved on to listening to podcasts and taking notes. A few days into learning, I spoke with a native Korean speaker to help with my pronunciation, and she suggested I listen to K-pop and watch K-dramas. What a genius idea! Listening to K-pop and watching Kdramas integrated entertainment into learning. I even had the pleasure of finding my favorite band in the midst of all this new material. I loved everything I was being introduced to, and I was excited to wake up every day during the summer to learn more. I knew more Korean by the end of that summer than all the French I learned the previous year at school.

At our school’s Arts and Culture Festival, my math teacher stopped me as I walked by to ask if my family would like to host a foreign exchange student. To our surprise, the coordinator matched us with a student from none other than South Korea. I was excited and curious to see how this new opportunity would be. Hosting a foreign exchange student is really an exchange: it’s an exchange of culture and ideas, beneficial for both parties.

When the student first arrived, I kept any knowledge about Korea I had to myself because I was aware of how much I did not know. In fact, it was six weeks before I said something in Korean. I wanted to work on my pronunciation and he wanted to extend his English vocabulary, so we made an agreement. Each day I taught him a new word (thank you, AP English), while I was given a sentence to say out loud. A lot of times I was given a poem, so I enjoyed learning artistic words and expressions that textbooks leave out.

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When I was little, I was upset that my parents would not buy me an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas.

However, that changed as they instead encouraged me to bake in a real kitchen. As I grew up, I loved being in the kitchen and appreciated my parents for their decision. I’ve had my fair share of Korean BBQ and food, but I had never cooked anything Korean myself. Neither had my Korean exchange student really, so this was a learning experience for the both of us. A call to his grandparents and a trip to the Korean Market later, we attempted to make songpyeon (송편), a rice cake with various, usually sweet fillings mostly eaten around the holidays. We tried our best, but they certainly were not what his grandparents could make. What matters though, was that it was fun and different than anything I have ever baked. We made the infamous kimbap 김밥, a seaweed-wrapped roll of rice, vegetables, and meat.

This dish was substantially better, and we were impressed with our skills. Another favorite of mine is when we made hotteok (호떡), which is like a pancake with a sweet brown sugar and nut filling. And we made it (dramatic pause) without the mix! It was enjoyable to make, eat, and take pictures of it with a little Korean flag his parents sent. Cooking is a huge hobby of mine, and I was amazed how many new spice combinations, flavors, and dishes I was shown.

"My whole life, I have been told to love the differences around me and seek to understand them."

The songpyeon (송편) we made, was actually for a celebration. I was stoked to be invited to celebrate the Korean Autumn Festival Chuseok (추석) with a friend of mine, who is also from Korea. I honestly did not know what to expect, or even what the holiday was about, but I took this opportunity to find out. The night we went to her house, I was informed about the holiday’s meaning and was pleased to be celebrating with friends and family. Of course, we did not celebrate the exact way I heard they did back home, but we were all together appreciating the holiday regardless.

I am forever amazed by how much I have learned and how much there is still left to learn out there. I hope to know more languages in the future, but the Korean language and culture will always have a special place in my heart. My whole life, I have been told to love the differences around me and seek to understand them. Around the world, we may speak different languages, cook with different spices, or celebrate different holidays, but we all have the ability to grasp those differences and grow from them.

We all share the ability to connect our cultures.

About the Writer Amanda is a high school junior attending Arbor View High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is President of her school's National Honor Society and is Historian of Key Club. In her free time, she enjoys art, learning languages, and cooking. She will be studying in Seoul, South Korea in Summer 2019 under NSLI-Y.

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From the Ashes by: Julie Emory

Japanese

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taken by Julie Emory

Reflecting on my study abroad in Japan, I credit the thin paperback that inspired me to pursue Japanese Studies. At the young age of thirteen, I became engrossed in John Hersey’s Hiroshima. I felt a connection—even if it was only a shared humanity—to the people retold in Hersey’s account.

I wanted to know them and, as preposterous as it may sound, I wanted to ensure no one had to endure that suffering again. But, despite my reading in English, I soon realized my lack of Japanese was a handicap that I had to overcome to understand others.

At the age of twenty, I stood feet away from the epicenter I had only heard of through my reading.

I spoke with a hibakusha (survivor of the nuclear bomb) while struggling to hold back tears. My Japanese (albeit not perfect) was sufficient to carry a conversation at this point. As a thirteen-yearold child, I never imagined my years of self-study would culminate to a first-hand experience a few feet away from one of humanity’s worst atrocities.

During my brief excursion to Hiroshima, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. To my bewilderment, tourists and residents alike were enjoying picnics within view of the epicenter. At first, I scoffed at them in disgust. To me, merriment on the soil where thousands of people died instantaneously was blasphemous. Yet, as I reflect on the stark contrast between the cherry blossoms and the atomic bomb dome, I consider that Saturday afternoon in Hiroshima.

The scene of families and friends gathered beneath the cherry blossoms in juxtaposition to the desolate atomic bomb dome represented the broader progression of Japan as a country. Seventythree years ago, Japan was a barrack state where the kempeitai (military police) arrested anyone with the slightest inclination against the leadership of Japan. Now, people from around the world 17

can freely congregate in the Peace Memorial Park. Advocates of Article 9 (the clause of Japan’s constitution that prohibits engaging in armed conflict) open a dialogue about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s proposed revisions. People from around the globe can collaborate to solve conflict. Today’s Hiroshima is the antithesis of the Hiroshima in World War II. Almost a year removed from that day in Hiroshima, I continue to think about how that experience affected my trajectory as an aspiring Foreign Service Officer. The snapshot of Hiroshima was more than a picture of Japan. The image of Hiroshima that day was a depiction of humanity’s ability to rise from the ashes of war to enter an era of cooperation and conflict mitigation. Our capacity to connect transcends the limits of written and oral communication. Visitors from Taiwan, Germany, China, and the United States enjoy the company of one another irrespective of their governments’ disputes.

I seek to preserve that image in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park as I further my foreign language study. Yes, I will admit my effort learning Japanese helped me better comprehend the scars left seventy-three years ago. However, the message I received in Hiroshima was not communicated by language. It was communicated through a mutual humanity.

About the Writer Julie is from Norfolk, VA and attends Coastal Carolina University as an undergraduate senior. “I began selfstudying Japanese (and other East Asian languages) since high school. My efforts have afforded me various opportunities to study abroad through NSLI-Y (Korean in Jeonju, Summer 2015) and Bridging Japan. Upon receiving my BA in History and National Security, I will pursue a graduate degree in International Affairs.”

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What a Weeb by: Shreya Mapadath Japanese, Korean

A middle school anime phase is so common, it almost seems universal. My friends and I followed the same trend, the novelty of the bizarre characters and surreal storylines gripping our attention—for a short time. For my friends, it was another phase to enter and exit quickly.

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For me, not so much.

That phase—beginning in middle school and spilling over into high school—was the catalyst for my linguistic endeavors and what led me to where I am now: intermediate proficiency in Japanese and Korean. To give you a bit more unsolicited context, my interest in anime was first piqued by a series called Naruto, which might be best summed up as a coming of age story about ninjas. I then fell down the proverbial rabbit hole and found myself binging countless hours of anime and reading loads of translated manga.

It wasn’t long before I became exposed to the term weeb, a slang word referring to people obsessed with Japan to a cringe-worthy extent. The word has taken several forms over the years—beginning as wapanese, evolving into weeaboo, and eventually shortened to weeb—but the critical connotation has always been the same, and it’s used liberally to describe anyone with even the slightest interest in Japan.

It seems that at that point in my life, I was unfazed by the negative stereotype of weebs and disregarded it almost entirely. In the seventh grade, I began studying Japanese with the simpleminded goal of comprehending the pop culture I consumed in its most raw form—without the aid of subtitles or translation. And so, I began teaching myself through a mish-mash of online resources, ranging from self-study textbooks and language exchange forums to podcasts and the anime that I already watched in excess. I had the luxury of time and was able to completely throw myself into the language—falling in love with its sound and syntax, and its maddeningly complex yet beautiful writing system.

My enthusiasm for the language would extend beyond Japanese pop culture as I found myself more interested simply in the act of studying it. By the time I entered high school, I was able to skip my way to Japanese IV, and I’ve most recently passed the N2, the second highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

But even since becoming more serious about language-learning than in my middle school days, I’ve continued to feel a lingering unease in explaining my hobby to others. The longer I continued to study Japanese, the more I began to cringe at my cause for beginning it, and it wasn’t because of a newfound hatred for anime or anything like that. Rather, I was afraid of seeming obsessive to some and one-dimensional to others who might think pop culture was a dumb motivation to pursue a language.

I think every language-learner is barraged with a line of questions each time someone learns of 19

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their multilingualism. What made you start studying (insert language)? How do you study (insert language)? Why do you like (insert language)?

Time after time, I found myself unable to respond confidently to these questions and began to downplay my interest in pop culture around people I didn’t know well.

The year I entered high school, I began teaching myself Korean as well in a similar chain of pop culture-related events. If I hadn’t been apprehensive about explaining my initial reason for studying languages before, I sure was now. I braced myself to be met with a new label: koreaboo.

Anime and manga? Korean dramas and K-pop? I felt like the very interests that had led me to my passion had the depth of a kiddie pool, and it became difficult to talk about them uninhibitedly. I am someone whose love for the Korean language led her to study abroad in South Korea to look beyond the surface level, and someone who constantly makes an effort to connect in real life with speakers of Korean and Japanese. And despite all of that, I still had an irrational fear that someone would call me out for fetishizing East Asian culture or having a shallow understanding of it.

Only recently have I begun to re-examine the embarrassment I’ve felt in explaining to people how I began my linguistic journey, and I’ve concluded that it isn’t justified. An interest in a country’s pop culture by no means equates to fetishization and can easily be a healthy form of cultural appreciation.

Every time I hesitated to tell people why I learned languages, it was because I was searching for a valid reason that would satisfy people’s curiosity.

But there is no such thing as a valid reason.

This may all be an isolated concern in the mind of an overdramatic teenager with a wariness towards labels. But on the off chance that someone like me has questioned the validity of their motivation to learn a language, I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter. Tongue-twisters with my host parents, a friendship with the bilingual local hotdog shop owner, and long-lasting, meaningful relationships. It took precious moments like these in my journey to fluency and quite a bit of time to realize it, but it truly doesn’t matter.

At the end of the day, any reason is acceptable, so long as you are genuine in your interest and respect for the culture. I may never fully escape the titles of weeb and koreaboo, but I love languages a little too much to let that matter.

About the Writer Hi there! My name's Shreya, and I've been teaching myself Korean and Japanese for a few years now. I hope to speak a lot more languages in the future, but the next ones on my list are French and Hindi. Shreya is a junior currently attending Plano West Senior High School in Plano, Texas. She is a NSLI-Y Korean Summer 2018 Alumna (Seoul) and also is the 2019 Southwest Region Alumni Representative for the NSLI-Y Alumni Association.

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A Journey of Four Languages by: Lorena Sandoval-Mejia

Spanish, English, French, Turkish

Federico Fellini’s quote, “A different language is a different vision of life,” represents what I have experienced by learning four languages in my life. I speak Spanish at home, English at school, I read French on my phone, and Turkish when I have class. My first language is Spanish because I grew up in Metepec, Mexico. The interesting thing about Spanish is its multiple dialects. Growing up in a Mexican family and with a Venezuelan aunt, I often heard my aunt saying words like “naguará” to express surprise, or “batatas” referring to my calves. Since my aunt has spent several years in Mexico, her accent has faded, but her family keep saying that we “sing when we talk,” while to us, they are the ones “singing”! This year, I will be visiting Barcelona, and I am excited to learn the Spaniards’ slang words and blend in as a local.

My second language is English. From kindergarten through middle school, I attended a bilingual school. This exposed me from a very young age to communicate in both Spanish and English, and switch between languages every day. My school also incorporated American traditions: we celebrated Thanksgiving and Easter and had Spelling Bees. Since I was born in the U.S, a common misconception was that I knew everything about English, but the truth is I only truly practiced it during the summers when I visited the U.S.. As a matter of fact, I initially struggled a lot with English because I lacked practice.

As I got older, my English classes were harder and incorporated more grammar. Therefore, my uncle, an English teacher, gave me the opportunity to teach English to our community every Saturday. This experience was fulfilling because I was helping kids expand their opportunities and polishing my English. To this day, I teach English to immigrant adults, and my knowledge of learning English in a class allows me to teach them because like them, English was once new to me. When I moved to the U.S in 2015, it was my real-life test where I had to apply the English I had acquired. The most vivid memory I have is being scared to speak because I was afraid of messing up. However, I realized being a foreigner was interesting, people judged me not only by my appearance but by my accent. Many people asked me “Where are you from?” and they also answered “You sound British.” Until this day, I still have a slight accent, and even though I often want to get rid of it, it now lives in me and makes me stand out from the crowd. Now, I volunteer for TED as an English-Spanish (and vice-versa) translator. Subtitling fascinates me: I learn so much from translating one TEDTalk because I love using both languages at the same time, it expands my vocabulary, and it allows me to practice not forgetting words in both languages. As a bilingual person who uses the languages interchangeably, forgetting words in the opposite language is quite common, but that feeling is spectacular because to me, it means that I have mastered both languages.

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My third language experience came in 2015 when I had to choose a language to learn in high school: German, French, Spanish, or Sign Language, but French was the one that interested me. I was fascinated by the accent and the similarities it had with Spanish. My second year learning French was when I discovered my passion for languages. My French teacher, Mme. Ryder, spoke French all the time unlike my past teacher, which drove me crazy because I barely understood. However, as time progressed, I participated more because I could finally form sentences and opinions about complex topics. I even started relating Spanish to French to remember vocabulary words, grammar rules. Now I can understand French orally and reading wise, and I often practice pronunciation because my phone is in French, so I can learn everyday terms.

In high school, I met a phenomenal person who excels at five languages: Shraddha inspires me to keep learning languages because her ability to pick up languages is impressive -- she knows English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic and she’s working on Turkish. She sometimes even speaks better Spanish than me! Over the summer, she told me her new addition to her language list: Turkish, and I decided to follow her path. Learning Turkish the past four months has been another exciting journey full of çay (tea) and repeatedly asking “what?”. However, it has been rewarding to learn a different culture and try new food. The only things I knew about Turkey before were the Hagia Sophia, mosques, Islam, and that Istanbul is in two different continents, but as my 3-hour class started in September, I started learning about how my teachers pray five times a day and must eat meat that is lawful (halal).

My favorite part was realizing that I had always lived with the mindset that only Romance languages were related, but Turkish reminded me that some Spanish I use daily is from Arabic. On my first day of Turkish, we learned the colors and red is “kırmızı,” and I was able to connect it to the Spanish word “carmín,” a type of red. I also connected “mor” to “morado,” which is purple.

When we learned the alphabet, I couldn't understand why they had a g with a breve (ğ), a silent letter that makes the sound longer. Later on, I was telling my mom about this bizarre letter, and I immediately realized that in Spanish we also have a silent letter that many foreigners often pronounce -- the letter “h” in Spanish and the “ğ” in Turkish.

Currently, I have set a life goal of learning at least ten languages. It’s ambitious, but that will allow me to continue learning about the world I live in. As I started my last year in high school and began applying to college, I realized that indeed what I want to do is study abroad. Therefore, I applied to two exchange programs that prioritize cultural and language immersion. For NSLI-Y, I applied to learn Russian, and for CBYX I could learn German. When I was little, I would have never imagined even taking a gap year to learn a language. I can’t wait to see where life takes me, and what language will be added to my list!

About the Writer Hello! My name is Lorena Sandoval. My native language is Spanish because I grew up in Mexico, and I learned English ever since I was little.

French is my third language and I have been learning it at school for about 4 years, while Turkish came into my life by mid-2018, but it isn't less important. Lorena is a high school senior attending Meridian World

School in Round Rock, Texas.

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Infected by Fernweh?!

Interview with Carly Seedall

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Carly was my Resident Director when I studied Persian in Tajikistan under NSLI-Y. She was my pivotal source of support, from buying me sweets to encouraging my language study. Her pursuits across the globe inspire me to continue my passion for language and global awareness. Carly is a Portland native and earned her Bachelor’s in International Relations at Franklin University in Switzerland. Now, she is a Language Copy Editor in Göttingen, Germany.

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1. Tell us how you first studied abroad in Germany!

Despite not speaking German, at age 16, I applied for the Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange, a scholarship where young Americans spend a year living with a family in Germany. I attended a German high school in a small village near the border to Switzerland. People in my village weren’t keen on English, and since I didn’t have any formal language instruction, this was very challenging. At the end, I felt I could do anything! I made lifelong friends, learned about a culture much different from my own, and was eager to do it all again in another place!

"Learning less-popular languages like Tajiki is like gaining access to a secret box of treasure."

2. How did you come to study Tajiki? While spending a semester in Kyrgyzstan as an undergraduate, I traveled to Tajikistan and experienced Navruz, one of the biggest Persian holidays, and was enchanted by the hospitality, mountains, and culture. During a refugee counseling internship in Germany, I met Afghan, Iranian refugees who inspired me to learn Persian.

And, I spoke a little Russian and knew Cyrillic, so I applied to learn the Tajiki dialect of Persian for a semester program hosted by American Councils in Dushanbe, and the rest is history! Becoming proficient in Tajiki was easier than German, since

one has to get used to the process of learning languages. In addition, I was “forced” to speak Tajiki, since very few locals speak English (many Germans learn English). For grammar, Persian is easier, but the vocab and pronunciation (with Arabic and Turkic words) were harder.

3. Favorite word and food in...

Tajiki: “milt-milt” (“wink” or “twinkle"); “fatir,” a flaky, dense bread that tastes like a croissant and is perfect for dipping in soup!

German: “fernweh,” (onging to travel); “spätzle,” egg-based noodles that can be topped with melted cheese and fill your tummy in the wintertime.

4. An “aha” language moment? The opportunity to translate (between German and English) for asylum seekers and refugees going through trauma therapy (since many spoke fluent English but little German) during my internship. To be able to help people from Syria, Iraq, Malawi, and beyond through language was a gift and an important learning experience.

5. 10-second language-study pitch? No matter which language you choose, it will certainly make you a more knowledgeable, and empathetic person. Learning less-popular languages like Tajiki is like gaining access to a secret box of treasure, it will allow you rare opportunities and grant you the privilege of knowing one of the most interesting and undiscovered corners of the world.

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Perks of Learning a Dead Language by: David Kim

Crucio!

Expelliarmus!

Latin

"I torture" "I drive away" "weapon"

Ever since my Latin 1 class sophomore year, my teacher had us recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Latin and an excerpt from Virgil’s epic poem, Aeneid, every day. Initially, I thought this was an odd routine. Why did my teacher want us to do the same two things at the start of class? What is she trying to teach? I would not learn the answer until I began my Latin 3 class senior year.

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To understand the answer, I have to take you back to when I started learning Latin sophomore year. As a language enthusiast, I began to take Latin because of the unique grammatical structure, such as the noun case system: it requires students to be familiar with crucial grammatical terms such as subject-predicate, indirect and direct object. As a result, Latin gave me a better understanding of English grammar. To be honest, before taking Latin, I had a very limited idea as to what these words meant. Still, I enjoyed every minute of learning to new ways of expressing ideas in words. It amazed me that you can say the same thing using totally different grammar.

Now if people ask me what an indirect object is, I can give a definite reply, thanks to Latin!

However, I want to stress that Latin also allowed me to gain better understanding of grammar in other languages, which is useful for a language learner like me. Since Latin influenced the modernday Romance languages, there are countless grammatical similarities, such as the subjunctive. The subjunctive is notorious for causing confusion to Spanish and French learners. With the help of Latin, I was able to quickly grasp the subjunctive and apply it to daily conversations. We also see the influence of the Latin conjugation system, which made it easier when I was learning tricky Spanish and French verb conjugations. So, Latin provides me with a grammatical foundation that enhances my understanding of English, Spanish, and French.

In addition, Latin has tremendously improved my English vocabulary. Thanks to Latin, I can understand words such as omnipotent which means “able to do anything” (from Latin omni meaning “all,” potent meaning “they can”) or credulous meaning “too easy to believe certain things” (from Latin credere meaning “to believe”). Also, did you know that many Harry Potter spells are in Latin? For example, the spell expelliarmus comes from the Latin expello (I drive away) and arma (weapon). The spell crucio means “I torture” in Latin. Furthermore, I am constantly exposed to new Latin words that strike great resemblance with its Romance counterparts, such as dicere (Spanish: decir, French: dire, English: to tell) and sumus (Spanish: somos, French: sommes, English: we are).

As beneficial as Latin is to my linguistic understanding, the Roman world and its ancient culture also proves to be quite essential to understanding modern Western society, and I always believe that language should be accompanied with cultural understanding. Traces of Roman society can still be found within our modern society, even though we may not realize. For instance, there are tons of legal phrases that derive from Latin terms, such as habeas corpus (Latin for “that you have the body”). Even the U.S. motto is Latin (e pluribus unum), which means “out of many, one!”

Moreover, there are many references to Roman history and culture such as the phrase alea iacta est (“the die is cast,” referring to Julius Caesar’s decision to take his army across the Rubicon River in northern Italy, leading to discontent against him). There even is Roman mythology, numerals, and 24

My fellow Latin Honor Society officers, with my Latin teacher This was at my school's World Language Induction Ceremony in Fall 2018. I read a poem by Virgil in Latin to the school.

My Summa Cum Laude Certificate for the National Latin Exam Level 1 (Spring 2018).

Behind are notes I self-studied. I only got two questions wrong!

My adorable Latin class. This year, our teacher sprained her ankle so she missed a week of school.

We all made handmade cards and a collage on the board saying te amamus (“we love you” in Latin).

taken by David Kim

so much more. The Romans contributed so much to our understanding of the world and deserved to be remembered through their language.

I am stating all of this with hindsight. I am stating all of this with almost three years of Latin under my belt, so my thoughts about Latin have drastically changed. I still remember sitting in the class, wondering when I would ever use Latin, and others pointed out that Latin was a dead language and no one spoke it anymore. People wondered why I was devoting my precious time to memorize countless noun and verbs endings — just to understand a language maybe one person in this world can understand (the Pope).

However, I gained so much from learning Latin, and I am so thankful for this experience. I learned that language learning can not only be applied to modern languages but also ancient ones too, such as Ancient Greek or Sumerian. I would not trade anything in the world for this experience, and Latin affirmed my passion for language learning. To me, it did not matter that I was learning a 2000-year-old language. I definitely gained knowledge from learning Latin, as I mentioned with my grammar and vocabulary. People who say that Latin is useless base their argument solely on the fact that there are no speakers of the language. But, the cultural importance of Latin makes it extremely worthwhile to study.

After I realized this, my answer as to why my teacher kept ordering us to say the Pledge and an excerpt from Aeneid was revealed. She wanted to stress the vast importance of Roman influence in the modern day era. She already knew that people would attempt to claim that Latin is irrelevant in modern times. However, by reciting the Pledge and Aeneid every day, she drove home the fact that studying Latin is a very noble task, and for that, I am eternally grateful. I thank everyone who helped me during my Latin language journey: my teacher, classmates, fellow Latin learners across the world. Or how the Romans would say it: gratias tibi ago (thank you).

About the Writer David is a high school senior at Central Bucks High School East in at Furlong, PA. He is a 2018 Seoul Korea Summer Alumnus, as well as a 2019-2020 Korean Academic Year Finalist. David has been an avid language learner and cultural explorer. He can speak (in order of fluency) English, Korean, Spanish, Japanese, French, Latin, and Italian. He always loves a good challenge and is always adding languages to his "languages to learn list." He also loves Chick-fil-A and hanging out with friends.

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by: Rachel Kogut

Snapshots From Latvia

Latvian

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Latvia and Estonia over the summer of 2018 with my family. Having grown up in Latvia, my grandparents speak fondly of their memories and have inspired me to honor my heritage through photography.

Here are some snapshots from this beautiful country!

Photo 1: Jurmala is a popular coastal destination and resort town close to Riga, the capital of Latvia. Many of its restaurants feature quaint interiors and Art Nouveaustyle architecture.

Photo 2: We took a day trip to Estonia to visit Pärnu, another coastal resort city. The ocean is cold in the summer but the pictures are always great!

Photo 3: Talsi is a small town in Latvia filled with colorful houses and cafes, and its lake is very picturesque!

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The vast city of Riga is most famous for its medieval Old Town section. While often overlooked, the Art Nouveau district also boasts beautiful architecture!

Tea is a very popular beverage in Latvia. In this photo, my family and I are enjoying some tea from at an Uzbek restaurant in Riga. Eastern Europe (including Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and much of western Asia were part of the USSR before it collapsed.

(Talsi) Many Latvians are cat people.

When it’s nice out, there are plenty of friendly cats roaming the streets!

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Nothing But (Word)Net: Interview with Princeton Professor, Dr. Christiane Fellbaum EDITOR'S NOTE:

A native of Brunswick, Germany, Dr. Christiane Fellbaum is a senior research scholar in the Computer Science Department of Princeton University. She is co-developer and current Director of the WordNet project, and co-Founder and co-President of the Global WordNet Association. Her research interests include natural language processing (NLP), the analysis and synthesis of natural human language by computers.

I met Dr. Fellbaum through the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad, which she runs at Princeton University for middle and high schoolers. Without her efforts, I never would have discovered my passion for language, so I am immensely grateful.

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similar words. And what about Slavic verbs, which have two forms, depending on “aspect” (if an action is completed or not)? Right now, I’m working with some deaf colleagues linking WordNet to SignSchool, a database of videos with American Sign Language signs. It’s very challenging!

3. What would you say to encourage a teen to study linguistics? What do you think the future holds for linguistics? We all have language and most of us never realize all the amazing things we do with it.

Everyone should take a linguistics course to understand their own linguistic behavior. As to the future: I hope that linguistics and computer science will move more closely together. Much of language is patterned and regular, but there is so much that humans process effortlessly that machines cannot do well (yet)— such as deception detection.

1. Tell us about WordNet, an expansive tool for NLP scholars! WordNet is a model of how humans store and access words and the knowledge about fry one's the concepts the words represent in their minds: a brain model of the mental lexicon inspired by current theories in AI. One day I went to a conference where I found out—to my great surprise—that lose one's many computational linguists were using WordNet lend an (we had made it available for download but never head ear checked the number of downloads). Only then did we realize its potential for NLP. A second surprise was people building WordNets in many other 4. Fun Facts! Languages studied & favorite idioms: languages. And that led to the interconnection of Growing up in Europe, I had to study three foreign many new wordnets. languages (English, French, Russian). I added Spanish, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Japanese later.

2. How is it working as co-founder of the Global When I go on a trip, I try to learn a bit of the WordNet Association? It’s great fun to learn from language, so I dipped into Korean, Turkish, Persian, my international colleagues about their lexicons and Portuguese. My favorite idioms are those that do challenges they face building a wordnet. For not have a plausible meaning (plausible: “throw in example: how to encode classifiers/counters, like in the towel, pull strings”). So, implausible idioms I Chinese and Japanese? How to deal with languages love include: “fry your brains, lend an ear, lose like Hebrew and Arabic that have roots, which one’s head." Just imagining these makes me chuckle. aren’t words, but are important to link semantically I get an urge to draw them.

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by: Erin Ramsey

Remnants of Immersion

Russian

Immersion is a strange experience. Since returning from my NSLI-Y program in August, I’ve lost some of my Russian, focused instead on my senior year of high school. However, my continued communication with my Russian host family and friends has led me to reflect on what does remain of my Russian immersion. Memories and friends, of course, but also linguistic fragments. Even now, months after my return, I still find Russian words and phrases popping into my head unprompted. I realized recently why that is: each word is so much more than vocabulary. Certain words have entire stories attached to them, and those memories make the words unforgettable. For this reason, I feel that my Russian story is best told through the words that stick with me, even after all this time. Семнадцать seventeen is how old I was when I began my Russian adventure.

Not quite an adult, but no longer a child, I first began to see myself as independent as I established myself in a new country. Seventeen was also my number in our group roll call, and therefore one of the first-ever Russian words I learned. We only got our roll call completely correct once or twice: most of the time, someone would be late, or distracted, or just overtired, and forget their number.

Nevertheless, the process of identifying myself as part of our group created a wonderful sense of belonging, even from our first moments together. Баня banya. There isn't a true equivalent to this Russian tradition in English, but the closest approximation of a banya is a sauna. I experienced banya at my hosts’ grandparents’ house in a tiny village outside of Kirov, and it was transformative.

Even now, I can feel the air inside the small wooden room, dense with scented steam.

Birch branches, soaked in hot oils, exfoliate your skin as the impossibly humid air opens your pores. There is something about this traditional method of bathing that is indescribably healing and restorative, and I can understand why some Russians choose to go to the banya every week.

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Маладец well done! is the word I chose as my favorite when asked during our final presentations in Kirov, and it still holds a special place in my heart.

Adjusting to Russian-style learning was not easy. I remember numerous allnighters spent trying to memorize poems or vocabulary just to get by during the next day’s classes. That's what made hearing маладец from our teachers so satisfying — because I knew I'd earned it. Доброе утро good morning holds a special place in my heart because it represents both my life in the hostel and in my host family.

Mornings in the hostel started early with morning exercises, and with energetic volunteers racing around to make sure we weren't late. In the beginning, we were all so embarrassed to participate in the coordinated dancing involved in the morning exercises, and we tried everything to participate as little as possible. However, by the end, I remember singing along to the songs as we walked to breakfast and practicing the dances with our Russian peers.

Mornings in my host family started with coffee, prepared by my little host brother, who was enamored with the coffee machine. My favorite part of the day was when my host mom, who is really more like an older sister to me, would drive me to school, and we would sing along to our favorite music the whole way, from Ed Sheeran to Queen. Мороженое ice cream is the best treat in all of Kirov. The factory there produces some of the most delicious ice cream I've ever had, and the city even has a museum dedicated to it. The reason I really love it, though, is because I remember sitting on a park bench with an ice cream cone in hand, playing charades with my dear Russian friends to learn vocabulary. I still have a video of that day, and I love watching it just to see our joyous laughter, and to remember that amazing ice cream. Любить to love is one of the first verbs I learned, and still the most important.

At first, it was basic grammar practice: Я люблю читать, I love to read. Then, я вас любил, I loved you — the first line of the Pushkin poem we all memorized.

But my favorite use of “to love” is я люблю тебя, I love you. It perfectly sums

up the bonds I made with so many of the people I met during NSLI-Y. I love you, in this foreign tongue and in this strange new country. I love the community we built together. To my fellow Kirov 2018 alums: я вас очень люблю навсегда.

About the Writer Erin Ramsey s a senior at duPont Manual High School in Louisville, KY. She began studying Russian in 2018 prior to participating in the 2018 NSLI-Y Russian summer program. She plans on continuing her studies of Russian at Bryn Mawr College, where she will be attending in the fall. She has been studying French for 4 years and Spanish for 6 years.

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Finding the Words by: Anna Stvilia

When I first moved to America, I walked into elementary school with, at most, a handful of English words under my belt. Enjoyable ESL classes and tote bags full of books quickly shortened the gap between me and my American classmates until, eventually, I spoke and read the language as well as any of them.

At the time, the last thing on my mind was the idea of forgetting my first language. I had spent six years of my live living and breathing Georgian – I didn’t realise that I might give up part of that connection in exchange for success within my new educational environment.

Georgian

To this day, I am incredibly thankful for the effort my parents put into maintaining every thread tying my sister and I to our people and culture. Every visit to Georgia involved bringing home textbooks and stories. My mother, my sister, and I would sit together reading these aloud and writing about our days in Georgian. This, however, was the routine of only my younger years and, by middle school, these study sessions stopped, absorbed my busy schedule. Despite the additional practice, my knowledge of the language remained and my connection to my culture stayed as strong as it had always been. One aspect of my relationship with Georgian, however, has been greatly affected over the years I’ve spent in America: my confidence when speaking.

In my head, I can play out full conversations in Georgian; every word fitting perfectly into clear and structured ideas. It’s only when I try to get the words out that my grammar hiccups and I stumble when looking for the words to express my emotions, ideas, and intentions.

This has led to frustrating interactions in which others have assumed that I was only somewhat fluent or not fluent at all. Each instance in which others spoke to me in English after assuming that I could not communicate with them in Georgian hurt more than the last, but I still could not bring myself to trust in my ability to form sentences and use the language properly.

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"Do not shy away from criticism – how else will you learn?"

At first, this lack of confidence was something I just dealt with. I tried my best, saying what I could and occasionally stepping out of my comfort zone. As much as I hated how limited I felt in my expression, I did not push myself enough to get over my fears. The reality of the repercussions of this timidity did not hit me fully, however, until two years ago.

My grandmother fell ill. Incredibly ill. The last half of my tenth grade year felt as if I was hurtling towards the summer, when I would be able to go to Georgia and see her. When I finally made it to her bedside, however, I was struck by the horrifying realization that I could no longer fully express my love for her, my desire to see her the next time I returned and the time after that and the time after that.

The tears that fell on her hand were not merely of grief but also of bitter shame. I held onto her tightly, hoping every inch of skin touching her could say the words that I could not. Unable to find the words I needed, I simply repeated the same sentence over and over again.

მარტო არ ხარ. You’re not alone.

The point of this article, however, is not just to tell a story. I am writing with a message, a purpose. The experience I had with my grandmother was excruciatingly painful, but such moments often come with the best morals.

With how easily I can recall the emotions I felt at the time, I urge everyone to not be like the me of back then, so as to avoid ever feeling so miserable. Whether you are learning a new language or maintaining your fluency in another, I cannot emphasize just how important it is to go head-first out of your comfort zone and communicate. Find native speakers and learn to speak with confidence.

Figure out what colloquialisms are used in your target language so as to speak more naturally. Learn with a friend that you are comfortable embarrassing yourself in front of so that you can let go all of your anxieties and give your all. I used to barely talk to my parents in Georgian because I was always too scared to be told that I had made a mistake. Rather than protect me from shame, this tactic only hurt me. Do not shy away from criticism – how else will you learn? Even if you know every word you could possibly need in a given conversation, it is all for naught if you do not muster up the confidence to express yourself.

About the Writer Anna Stvilia is a high school senior from Tallahassee, Florida. She is a current NSLI-Y Finalist for the Turkish summer and Korean academic year programs. “My love for learning languages began when I first moved to America at the age of six and began learning English. I have since experimented with various languages such as Japanese, Turkish, French, etc. I am almost done with high school as a part of the IB Diploma Programme and in the future, I hope to get a degree in International Relations and move to a different country.”

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From Over Yonder by: Carson Collins Hindi, English (Southern dialecticism)

“Buddyrow.”

A term of endearment; most closely refers to someone with which you share a kin-like connection.

One of the few words heavily used in Southern dialect derived directly from Lumbee English.

“Yonder.”

Yonder can mean here, there, way over there, or way, way over there. Originated from my grandmother’s Southern drawl and pursed lips.

“Might could.”

My personal favorite of Cackalacky slang that means exactly what you would think it means. Gets extra points because of its classification as a “double modal,” or two verbs expressing a mood.

My Spanish teacher, Profe Corzo, constantly tells my four-person class, “¡Tienes que pensar en español, hijos!”, or, “You must speak in Spanish, children!” Just as I try to heed her advice when I converse in other languages, these three words are simply just that to me — three words that require no predetermined thought, that are ingrained in my personal lexicon. If my grandmother calls me from “over yonder,” I come.

I had never, up until two years ago, questioned my identity in a broad sense. Like many other white North Carolinians, my racial and ethnic identity had become lost in obscure assumptions of 20% Czech heritage, a faux dash of Cherokee, and the rest just “American.” But, if I had known that my Southern drawl was “lulling, handsome, and smooth,” I “reckon” that I’d have embraced my Southern identity much sooner.

Furthermore, as I spent six weeks in India with seven other American students to learn Hindi on a State Department-funded scholarship program in the summer of 2017, those adjectives are the exact descriptors I garnered about my Southern way of speaking. I ventured to Indore, India, with the sole intent of achieving a level of intermediate proficiency in Hindi. Little did I know that, while I was learning Hindi sentence structure, I would simultaneously be learning regional dialectal slang from my newly acquired friends. Indeed, their patois became mine, and mine, theirs. I incorporated words into my vocabulary like “hyphy” meaning exciting or fun, from Lizzy, who hailed from the Bay Area.

From my friend Fatou, I acquired New York City slang, such as “tight” and “brick,” meaning “upset” and “very cold,” respectively. When I offered up my “might could” for implementation, I was given snickers in return. Nonetheless, it was intriguing to see my day-to-day words equally embraced. Not only was I surrounded by linguistic diversity for the first time in my life, I also contributed to this diversity myself.

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"Essentially, in the world of sociolinguistics, North Carolina is dialectal heaven."

Hearing this regional dialecticism being unknowingly embraced by my newfound companions caused me to search and delve deeper into Carolinian dialect and diasporic history. I even surprised my own father, a tried and true Carolina Tar Heel by birth, with factoids about our dialect. I read into theories of r-lessness, or literally, the dropping of the letter r, a feature sporadically heard in my own grandfather’s Appalachian speech. R-dropping itself was caused due to an anomalous societal juxtaposition of southern bourgeoisie and slavery. Prior to commonly accepted thought, r-lessness is quite a paradox; Africans who were stolen and brought to the States, and the South, especially, in the 1700s were the first to initiate this linguistic feature into the Southern English of today. Essentially, in the world of sociolinguistics, North Carolina is dialectal heaven.

It’s odd to think that my lingual “awakening” occurred halfway across the world, and while learning Hindi, no less. Yet, being in a community where regional cultures were so embraced caused me to do the same, and ignited a curiosity for linguistic intricacies in my home state. Understanding the social and political connotations associated with dialecticism and regional slang has not only triggered me to probe into this intensely intriguing diasporic inquisition; it has also caused me to embrace my “Cackalacky” legacy.

So, next time I hear my grandmother call me from “over yonder,” I’ll remember who I am and will always be: a North Carolinian.

About the Writer Carson is a high school senior at Wake Christian Academy in Raleigh, NC. He is a NSLI-Y Hindi Summer 2017 Finalist (Indore) and a China 2019-20 Academic Year Finalist. “I actually started becoming heavily interested in language learning in my 9th grade Spanish 1 class. From there, I've branched out and studied French, Portuguese, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Hausa, and a few other languages, all to varying capacities! My favorite pastime is protesting Duolingo."

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Loving & Fighting: In Gujarati

by: Aditi Desai

Gujarati

Part I: Jamna (Birth) Birth is akin to some class of a divine miracle, giving passage to the formation of a living and breathing being. The beauty of jamna is the precise yet chaotic unfolding of nature, paving way for an innocent life to be born into this corrupted world. Mine was sudden, or rather, to be gentler on myself, simply unannounced. Not once did my parents shy away from saying my jamna was unplanned. Sweetie, taru jamna ni apeksha nothi (We didn’t expect your birth), they would hastily comment in Gujarati, their native tongue, whenever I whined with questions about my origins.

Upon learning this, I added “jamna” to the Gujarati dictionary hidden in my mind. Then, they would make sure to tell me that their love for me was unconditional, larger than the oceans, in fact.

Yet, I could visualize the fleeting sparks of tension race through my anxious mother’s hazel eyes when I questioned her about my jamna. My parents’ trivial battles regarding finances, raising me, and education dominated peaceful Sunday night dinners and graduation ceremonies. My unforeseen birth, was just, well, another burden, another reason for them to put on masks and act as a unified couple, another excuse to compromise despite their inflexible mindsets. They tried to do it because of my jamna.

Part II: Bharnvanue ane Vachvanue (Studying and Reading) I, being my obedient self, followed every direction by my teachers and parents. Although my parents could barely come to an agreement on any matter regarding their personal and professional lives, they did agree on one mantra: utilize and take advantage of the beauticious gift of knowledge.

You see, they’d calmly say, Ayaa America ma tane bahu badha taka che. Tahne bahnuvu pardse caranke amare evu taka koi devas notu maryu India ma. (Here, in America, you have every chance you could possibly dream of. You will have to study hard because we never had this can in India).

My immigrant parents, and thus being a first generation Indian, spurred my hard-working nature.

Constant conversations with my future-engrossed parents enabled me to add “bharnvanue ane vachvanue” to my further spreading dictionary. Without having the constant motivation to please my parents and to pursue a degree, my work ethic would have suffered. I shake my head now, but at the time I imagined that me studying would somehow mend their already shattered relationship.

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Part III: Nanpan (Childhood) My mother’s artificially glossy lips would make their way to my rosy cheek as she dropped me off at my Dadi’s, or her mother’s place. I recall hanging onto the loose leather end of the belt hanging from her waist, entreating her to keep me bonded to her side. She, polite and gentle, would carefully pry my stubby fingers from her long silky arm, convincing me she would be home from work in no time. Then, we could go to the park, roller skate, and even get ice cream. Lured by her enticing words, I would reluctantly let go of her belt.

Yet, each weekend I spent at Dadi’s ended in the same manner. Mummy would show up at Dadi’s, hours past her initial promise. She would coat me in faded lipstick, apologizing and attempting to restructure the expression of irritation and contempt on my face. Her careless demeanor and slurred speech hinted at her night of drinking, and I knew she turned to alcohol exclusively in times where she didn’t want to deal with a life she never wanted. Household duties, a job, paying bills, a husband who argued with her, and her child — these were all items she never asked for, but was simply expected to deal with as a “modern Indian woman.” Upon realizing this, I’d turn away from her foul-smelling breath, hiding the wells of tears ready to fall out. A su kare che? Tari ekaj dikri che (What is this that you are doing? You only have one child).

"A language does not die out when one moves away, but rather dutifully follows those who choose to embrace it and explore the depth of its meaning."

Part IV: Chuta Cheda (Divorce) A miniscule stain on a shirt leads to it being put into an aggressive washing machine, where it is whipped and slapped against the sides repeatedly until it is completely wrinkled. The initial stain has no guarantee of coming off if the right detergent is not used. The primitive clashes between my parents heightened over the years, building on the already present tension. The right ingredients were simply not present in their once beautiful union: compromise, self-sacrifice, and understanding were mythical in their alliance. The splotch in their relationship, never properly washed off, created an imperfection within the entire garment — my shattered household.

The copious, salty tears drifted across my face as the attorney questioned me about which parent I would choose to live with. I frantically eyed both of them. Mummy’s neutral, blotched face stared 36

back at me. Flashes of days at the park and shopping for cholis (skirts) in India dashed before my eyes. She placed her grip upon my bare shoulder, reminding me of all of the instances, at school, the mall, ice-skating, where her grip was the sole factor keeping me upright. My Papa cautiously inched closer to me, making sure to maintain a distance from Mummy. He gently smiled at me with his no-teeth showing grin. Through the years, I have learned to associate this delicate grin with assurance that all is well when it does not seem to be. His grin is present in the forced family photos that adorn our walls. He handed me a plain tissue, a blank slate, with no past or future, something that I long for in that instant. A ramata nathi, a mari zindagi che. (This isn’t a game, this is my life). I avoided the lawyer’s pressing questions for a while, but was ultimately confronted with the decision I had foreseen, yet was still fearful of. My parents were divided, separated through a chuta cheda (divorce). I was the sole being that kept them unified. There was no more marriage, no sacred agreement, that linked the two individuals I had learned so much from: both how to learn and fight.

Part V: Samjan ane Sukha (Understanding and Success) The stunning nature of language is represented by the fact that it is universal. Individuals of copious backgrounds rely on words from their own native tongue to communicate their opinions, voice their ideas, and convey their emotions. My ears would continuously prick up during the countless afternoons spent at Dadi’s following the chutta cheda as she read aloud classical Gujarati novels to keep my mind distracted. Gujarati is one of many languages in India, spoken in a small rural section of the vast country. Yet, despite its origination in the meager but modest area of Gujarat, with its compliant speakers, Gujarati has been brought to numerous foreign locations.

Although these speakers, like Dadi or my parents, often reside where English is the common method of communication, Gujarati is still preserved in their daily thoughts and minds. A language does not die out when one moves away, but rather dutifully follows those who choose to embrace it and explore the depth of its meaning. Language is not limited to being spoken in just one location. It can be universal if you choose.

About the Writer “I am a STEM and humanities enthusiast! I have found that literature and writing opened up a unique door to a realm which I for so long left undiscovered. As an individual who continually uses the logical and scientific portion of her mind, writing has given me the chance to touch on my cultural heritage and background: something that I was once reluctant to disclose and cloaked.”

Aditi is a high school junior at Livingston High School in Livingston, NJ.

captions for "The Sound of Tamil" (next page): Traditional South Indian temple near the road; a plate with traditional South Indian foods, including idli (rice cake), various chutneys, medu vada (fried savory donut), and kesari (a sweet); ancient carvings at Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu (built in Pallava dynasty in 7th-8th centuries & current UNESCO World Heritage Site); fresh coconut water; famous 8th-century Hindu temple for deity Parthasarathy (Thiruvallikeni, Chennai, India)

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தமிழி

ஒ (The Sound of Tamil)

by: Adhithi Sreenivasan

Tamil

Adhithi is a high school junior from New Jersey.

My parents are from the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Years ago, they immigrated to America where I was born. However, we have made trips back to India every two or three years, the bustling traffic and chatter always imminent as soon as I step out of the airport into the humid Chennai night. My grandmother inevitably presses Cadbury’s chocolate into my palm upon greeting me and chatters with my mother on the ride home.

In the morning, my cousin pats my head as she dashes out the door in her neatly plaited hair and ironed blue uniform to go to school. These are customs that almost never change every time we go back.

It was different last year, though. I flew to India alone. On a connecting flight to Chennai, I happened to be seated next to an elderly woman who had just visited her daughter and was flying back to India. She had limited English and predominantly spoke Tamil. During that flight, I served as somewhat of a translator for her and the air hostesses, despite my lack of fluidity. At the end of the flight, the woman smiled and thanked me for translating. It got me thinking—Tamil had served to be so useful, but where did it come from and what exactly is this language?

Tamil is a language belonging to the Dravidian family. These languages are primarily spoken in the southern region of the Indian subcontinent and primarily include Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. There are over 70 million speakers, mostly concentrated in India and Sri Lanka. However, there is also a sizable diaspora in countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, etc. It has also been granted classical language status.

This is due in part to its ancient origins dating back to 450 BCE-700 CE, or the era of Old Tamil. This transitioned into Middle Tamil (700 CE-1600 CE) and finally into Modern Tamil. The language uses the Brahmi writing system, although the script was significantly altered over time to the modern one that is known today. The alphabet is syllabic with twelve vowels and eighteen consonants, and these are combined in the script to form various sounds.

Many literary works also came into existence from an early period. Some are classified as Sangam literature, which denote Tamil historical poems written within the time frame of 500 BCE to 300 CE. Some famous pieces of Tamil literature include the Tolkappiyam (ெதா கா பிய ) and the Thirukkural (தி ற ), which are among the most ancient.

The former discussed grammar, while the latter is made up of 1,330 couplets that discuss various morals and virtues that one should have.

Other unique features of Tamil include its retroflex consonants, which involve curling the tongue to produce distinct sounds. There are also characteristic differences in the context in which the language is spoken, namely between the highly formal sentamizh (ெச தமி ) and colloquial petcha tamizh (ேப தமி ). Sentamizh is typically used for news or historical dramas and reenactments. So, Tamil features this fascinating phenomenon of using varieties of the same language in different situations — also known as diglossia.

Tamil, being such an ancient language filled with a rich history that continues to this day, is truly beautiful. As with all languages, it is of utmost importance to preserve and continue speaking the language so that the sound of Tamil and other languages never fade.

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photos from Adhithi Sreenivasan (see previous page for captions)

Proverbs, Poetry, Polyglot: Interview with Mehroj & Vanessa at Iskanderkul, Tajikistan

EDITOR'S NOTE

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Mehroj is from Hisor, Tajikistan and has been a Local Coordinator for the NSLI-Y Persian program in Dushanbe, Tajikistan for the past few years. He absolutely astounds me with his passion for language and international affairs, and I’m so lucky to have had such a kind-hearted and inspiring Local Coordinator on my NSLI-Y journey. Mehroj answered these questions in Tajik over email to encourage me in my Tajik language skills. I hope my translation did his words justice.

MEHROJ'S EXPERIENCES WITH...

Russian. In my grade school, besides Russian, we didn't study other languages. Tajikistan historically was a Soviet state, so most people know the Russian language. Most of my friends, neighbors, and teachers converse in Russian or use Russian vocabulary. I’ve spoken Russian since a young age.

English. When I was in Grade 11, an English teacher came to our school and gave us lessons for one year. For me, this language seemed so fascinating that I prioritized other subjects a relatively lesser amount. After a year, I already fluently conversed. When I was accepted to the National University of Tajikistan, I often went to the American Corner and volunteered there. This gave me a chance to become a better speaker through talking with American teachers, and I learned a lot about American culture.

Arabic. In university, my major is Middle Eastern Studies, and I currently study Arabic there. For vocabulary, Arabic wasn’t difficult because Tajiki shares 40% of its vocabulary with Arabic. But for grammar, studying this language was harder.

Hebrew. In 2016-17, studying for a period of six months as an exchange student at the University of Minnesota, I studied the Hebrew language since

Mehroj Muhiddinov this language seemed fascinating to me.

Farsi. My boundless love for Farsi poetry compelled me to immerse myself in Farsi. Until our Russian period, Tajiks wrote with the Perso-Arabic script and, the Soviet government, having implemented the Cyrillic script, eliminated the Perso-Arabic alphabet. Writers, scientists, intellectuals, historians, and Farsi-Tajik poets such as Ferdowsi and Rudaki wrote with the PersianArabic script: one of the significant cultural aspects that Tajiks shared.

Забон донӣ, ҷаҳон донӣ

You know the language, you know the world

MISCELLANEOUS!

Language-learning tip. In order to study language, we should like that language to the utmost degree and have a special love with respect to that. Without loving the language, studying it isn’t easy.

Favorite poem. A poet that I love the most would be Mavlono Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi, with the pseudonym Rūmī. He was a poet that attained the hearts of thousands of people all over the world.

He was born to a Tajik family in present-day Afghanistan, and his poems have been devoted to love for humankind and mutual understanding.

Favorite proverb. “Забон донӣ ҷаҳон донӣ” “You know the language, you know the world” - It’s a traditional Tajik proverb that knowing languages is equivalent to knowing the world.

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Uzbek & Tajik: Siblings from Different Language Families by: Rayyan Merchant

Uzbek, Tajik Persian

This past summer, I traveled to Tajikistan with the National Security Language Initiative for Youth Program to learn Tajik Persian, the local dialect of Tajikistan. Although my initial interest in learning Persian was to explore the connection between Persian and Hindustani, I became fascinated with the Uzbek influence on Tajik language and culture. This led me down a fascinating path of history and culture of a region that was once a center of learning and commerce along the historic Silk Road.

Tajik Persian belongs to the Southwestern branch of Iranian languages, which itself a branch of the Indo-European language family that includes English, Russian, and Dutch. Generally considered to be a variety of Persian rather than a separate language, Tajik in its standard form is almost indistinguishable from its Iranian and Afghan counterparts. General distinguishing features include the usage of the verb истодан (istodan - to stand) to form the present progressive as well as Russian, Uzbek, and archaic Persian words that other dialects do not employ.

Uzbek, on the other hand, is a Turkic language, part of a language family that extends from Europe all the way to Siberia. Specifically, Uzbek falls under the Karluk branch of Turkic languages, making it a sibling of the Uyghur language spoken in Western China. Some prominent features include its lack of vowel harmony and the rounding of the vowel /ɑ/ to /ɒ/, both features the majority of Turkic languages do not have.

Turkic and Iranian peoples have been in close contact with each other for centuries, with early contact in the sixth and seventh centuries likely beginning this long-lasting relationship. Over centuries of trade, war, and intermingling, the two languages slowly exerted influence over each other’s grammar and vocabulary as communities interacted with each other. However, only around the beginning of the sixteenth century did the Tajik language began to exhibit features that distinguished itself from the Persian of other areas. In these areas, Tajiks and Uzbeks intermarried and lived amongst each other, creating a unique merger area that still exists to this day. On top of this, for one reason or another, many Tajiks in Uzbekistan identify either solely formally or completely as Uzbek, despite having grown up speaking Tajik in their home. Even within the cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, Tajik enclaves within Uzbekistan, many identify themselves primarily

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as Samarkand or Bukharan rather than Tajik. A similar situation exists in Tajikistan — albeit to a lesser extent — with the Uzbek population. Most, if not all, formally identify as Tajik with the government, even if they informally identify as Uzbek. Due to this intermingling, Uzbek and Tajik inherited huge amounts of vocabulary and grammatical features from one another, resulting in strong similarities both in formal and informal speech.

The most visible example of this intermingling can be seen in both languages’ vocabulary, where many words resemble their counterparts, with the majority retaining the same meaning. Common words such as ko’cha, mehmon, sabzavot, qog’oz (meaning street, guest, vegetable, and paper respectively) are understood in both languages. However, some words, such as хунук (xunuk), have taken on separate meanings. In Tajikistan, it means ‘cold’, but in Uzbekistan, it means ‘ugly’ (which could cause some troubles for an unknowing traveler). Furthermore, previously non-Turkic prepositions such as chunki (because) as well as some prefixes and suffixes have found their way into standard and informal Uzbek. Overall, the standard registers of both languages acknowledge the influence of the other to some extent, but not to the extent that is actually present within the vernacular. In the following example, you can see the similarities and differences between the two languages. Grammatical features have been highlighted for greater clarity.

As you can see, informal Tajik demonstrates a greater influence from Uzbek, substantially differentiating it from standard Tajik. The most prominent feature is the words common to both, such as kartoshka, shurbo, and aralash (potatoes, soup, mix). One can see that informal Tajik has adopted aralash but formal Tajik has not, opting to keep omexta as part of the verb to denote to mix. The next feature is the interrogative enclitic utilized in Turkic languages that turns a sentence into a question.

all photos by Rayyan Merchant (in article: Mountains near Iskanderkul; Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Rayyan at Hisor; Hisor Fortress; Tajikistan 41

At the very end of the sentence, the enclitic -mi suffixes itself onto the sentence, transforming it into a question. This has taken the place of the Persian oyo, which performs a similar task. Also represented is the shared usage of certain prepositions as postpositions. Specifically, the words ба (ba to), дар (dar - in), and қати (qati - with) can be placed after a word instead of before them. The word kardagi (constructed from the Persian suffix -гӣ -gi and the stem карда karda of the verb ‘to do’) has become used in a range of verb tenses, similar to Uzbek verbs. The most popular of these verb tenses is the present perfect. Instead of the standard Tajik кардаанд karda-and (they have been), one says рафтагӣ-анд ‘raftagi-and.’ Besides this, raftagi can also be used in the past perfect tense as well as a conjectural tense, which has further deepened the divide between Tajik and its Iranian counterpart Farsi.

Ultimately, Uzbek has had a dramatic effect on both standard Persian and the informal Tajik variety, due to the many centuries of contact in Central Asia speakers of both languages have had with each other. Tajik has adopted Uzbek grammatical structures and vocabulary at both the informal and formal registers, and the same can be said for Uzbek. The two have come together to form their own group of languages, making them fascinating — not only in the context of their own language families, but also the world.

About the Writer Rayyan is from Pembroke Pines, FL and is a high school senior at the American Heritage School. He is a NSLI-Y Tajikistan (Persian) Summer 2018 Alumnus, as well as the 2019 Southeast Region Alumni Representative for the NSLI-Y Alumni Association.

The interactions between language and politics as well as the history of linguistic minorities fascinate Rayyan and have led him to study languages such as Tajik, Konkani, Urdu, Spanish, and Portuguese. In college, he plans to pursue a Linguistics Major while hopefully continuing his study of Classical Voice.

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A Tajik Tasting Menu by: Vanessa Hu

Tajik Persian

all photos from Vanessa Hu. above, the last meal I ate with my host family, a traditional Tajik dinner (osh, fatir, salad, watermelon)

NON. A large, round bread essential to all Tajik meals. SHIRBIRINJ. A breakfast porridge composed of boiled milk and sweet rice.

“Gir, gir, Anisa.” Using my Tajiki name, Khola, my host grandmother, urges, “Take, take.” She wrestles the non, a bread fresh from the market and the size of a large Frisbee, or perhaps the wheel of a small bicycle, rips it in half with triumph, and places a large chunk next to my bowl.

I stutter, “Ah, rahmat, thank you,” but it doesn’t deter her. Her thick fingers push the bowls of cream and jam and sliced cheese towards me. It’s practically an army advancing upon my fortresssized bowl of shirbirinj that I’m shoveling into my mouth, its texture echoing the Chinese congee porridge my dad makes every Saturdays.

Sweat trickles on my neck, sunshine dripping from the edges of the roof over the table, the miz.

Instead of a dining room, our havli, courtyard, has the Miz: tucked at the foot of the main family home’s patio is a raised platform with railings, and upon it is a low table, with mats around it for us to sit, legs crossed or stretched or tucked underneath.

My hands tingle, hesitant. Do I reach for non or tea or flick at the flies sliding down in the chaka cream? Khola latches onto my indecision and peers at me, a glimmer of gold tooth peeking out.

“Gir, Anisa. Aren’t you hungry?” She pushes the bread even closer to me. I swallow. I have to leave for class in five minutes, but I wouldn’t finish this in five years. Is this how it’d be, every day?

Where do I begin eating? How would I even stop?

TUSHBERA. Bite-sized meat dumplings, the size of a bumblebee wrapped in a lily. Served steamed or fried.

There seems to be some unspoken agreement: Firuza, my exuberant fourteen-year-old host sister, scatters tiny dumpling skins across the tablecloth and pinches thimble-sized meat mounds atop the skins. My Apa, Firuza’s mother, then executes dextrous folds on each one until a tiny curved dumpling sits in her hands — then, repeat.

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Aren’t they shaped like wontons? I think. I’ve folded wontons with my mom, but ours are three times bigger. On impulse, I ask, “Metavonam… Can I?” Apa nods sternly, and my hands inch forward. Fold in half, pinch edges, fold in half again to create a meat pocket, bring the corners of the skin halfway around the world, and press them together like a kiss.

Tushbera dumplings I folded, on the first day I met my host family

I cradle my tushbera-wonton in my palm, thrilled at my handiwork. Firuza’s hands pause, and Apa’s sharp eyes widen in surprise at my impeccable, itty-bitty dumpling. An hour later, I’m sitting at the Miz popping steamed tushbera in my mouth. I don’t have any dumpling sauce to dip them in. But with the tart chaka cream that Apa spoons in my plate, they taste a bit like home.

MANTU. Flaky-skin buns, a sunset-crisp color. Often with sesame seed sprinkled on top. Typically a meat-onion filling; can be a soft triangle or baby-cheek round.

“Anisa, gir.” Khola slides two porcelain platters onto the Miz, laden with both round and triangle mantu. Before I can ask, Khola points to the round buns. “These have sabzavot, vegetables, and” — she pokes a triangle — “these are gush, meat.”

A playful lilt tints her chiding. “Anisa doesn’t like gush, so we made vegetable ones.”

The view of my host family's havli (courtyard); our table is at the left corner

“Ah, rahmati kalon.” I bashfully brush my hand over my heart and incline my head in thanks. A blazing Tajikistan afternoon revitalizes itself in my chest, even though my skin is already cooling in the early evening glow. I dip a plump bun into the chaka and take a generous bite, streaks of white converging at the corners of my beam. The golden skin crackles just lovely on my tongue, and I find myself with a delectable mouthful of potato, onion, and cauliflower.

“Bomaza!” I exclaim. I lather on more chaka, munch, munch again, until I’m left with fairy dust on my fingers and creamy lightness on my palate. I eagerly scoop up a triangle — the fatty beef and onion sticks to my teeth, but its savoriness crunches in harmony with the chaka all the same. Firuza, somehow already halfway through her fourth mantu, catches my eye and winks at me.

I weigh a mantu in my hand. The mantu are surprisingly hefty, stuffed like feathered pillowcases. They’re as snug as the turquoise headscarf Khola ties around her hair just after dawn, as snug as her tree-trunk arms when we'd say goodbye.

Delicious mantu made by my host mother and grandmother 44

DINNER FEAST SPECIAL. OSH, the national dish of Tajikistan — a golden rice topped with carrot slices, chickpeas, and beef. Accompanied by salad; FATIR, a rich, flaky bread; and TARBUZ, watermelon. A labor of love from the bosom of every Tajik home kitchen, a classic feast fit for all occasions: birthdays, national holidays — and farewells.

"The cadence of Tajiki, once a frequency I could not grasp, shimmers around me."

“Ah, assalom aleykum!” My hand dances up over my heart in greeting, surprised at all the neighborhood women my family had invited. With the late-evening sky deepening into vermillion, blurring into the grapevines casting hazy shadows and translucent-green grapes into our havli, we all squeeze in around the Miz. Firuza sits to my left, Khola to my right, Apa across from me. At the center of the table are two enormous platters of osh, with thin carrot slices, plump chickpeas, and generous chunks of fatty beef tumbling down slopes of sand-dune-colored rice. Numerous salad dishes, trays of ripe, coral-pink tarbuz, and pieces of fatir are scattered across the surface. After everyone showers my Khola and Apa with compliments on the attractive spread, the feast commences.

Khola flaps her hand at the lone cucumber plate amongst the tomato-onion salad bowls. She announces, “We prepare cucumbers because Anisa doesn’t like tomatoes.” Our guests murmur, and I flush. But my ears to perk up at the timbre of fondness in her voice. The women chatter delightedly, and the cadence of Tajiki, once a frequency I could not grasp, shimmers around me. Khola elbows me, shaking me out of my daze. “Anisa, it’s your last night. Why don’t you say something?” I stop midbite, a succulent cube of beef waiting patiently atop the mound of golden rice on my spoon.

I blurt out, “Man hanuz ser nestam. I’m not full yet.” She blinks, taken aback. But she recovers a second later, twinkling in her eyes and gold-tooth smile unmistakable. Khola pushes more fatir towards my plate.

“Gir, Anisa. Take — until you’re full.”

“Rahmat. Thank you, Khola.”

As the sky deepens its blush, it disperses light speckles across its indigo expanse, like how Apa scatters sesame seeds across mantu tops before toasting them a rich gold. I scoop up another sandcastle of soft rice, let crisp cucumber crunch between my teeth and watermelon quench my tongue, savor bite after bite of delicate, flaky fatir that dissolves in my mouth with a tingling, sweet warmth. It emanates a mild fieriness like every Dushanbe summer evening, whenever I gaze up from the havli after dinner to soak in Tajikistan’s drowsy twilight sun.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank every single person who has cheered me on and encouraged these New Semantics endeavors thus far: Brian and the NSLI-Y Team, for supporting me from NSLI-Y and beyond; the Volume 2 contributors and Alumni Insights participants who also share this crazy love for language with me (especially Rayyan and Shreya, my fellow Alumni Representatives!); Dr. Fellbaum, for so kindly allowing me to interview you about your computational linguistics work; and Carly, Mehroj, my NSLI-Y classmates, and my Tajik host family and teachers for being my companions in an experience of a lifetime.

I am immensely thankful for my parents, who unconditionally believe in me and eagerly show off New Semantics to every relative, friend, and acquaintance we come across. Thank you to my older sister, Melinda, who never fails to inspire me to pursue my heart to the fullest. And thank you, reader, for believing in the power of our words and our language to better the world around us.

Meet the Editor Vanessa Hu is a graduating NJ senior of Livingston High School’s Class of 2019. She is a language enthusiast, competing in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad since eighth grade, and in the 2017 International Linguistics Olympiad. Vanessa also was 1 of 11 students chosen nationwide by the State Department’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth to study Tajik Persian in Tajikistan (Summer 2018).

Vanessa likes to write, as Co-Editor-in-Chief of her school’s Inner Voices Literary Magazine and having earned a National Silver Key in the Scholastic Writing Awards. She also is an avid traveler — one of her favorite travel memories is eating bento on the train in Japan, just like a local commuter!

In her downtime, Vanessa likes to do Pilates, dabble in Japanese, bake and drink bubble tea with her sister, and watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. This summer, she is excited to learn Python and travel to China (and work on her Mandarin!). Vanessa plans to study Linguistics and Computer Science at Harvard University starting Fall 2019.

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Cited Sources Cover: “Untitled” by chuttersnap can be reused under the Unsplash License. Library, room, indoors and interior design.

Title Page: “Book choices” by Giulia Bertelli can be reused under the Unsplash License.

Logo: "Language" made by Freepik, "Hot air balloon" made by Vectors Market from Flaticon can be reused under the Flaticon Basic License.

Letter from the Editor: “Desk Top” by Annie Spratt can be reused under the Unsplash License.

About Writer icon: “Conversation” made by Freepik from Flaticon can be reused under the Flaticon Basic License.

NSLI-Y Alumni Insights: “Moldova”, “Latvia,” “Estonia”, “Russia”, “Tajikistan”, “Jordan”, “Morocco”, “Turkey”, “China”, “Taiwan”, “Indonesia”, “India”, and “South korea” made by Freepik from Flaticon can be reused under the Flaticon Basic License.

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“Connecting Cultures”: “Dinner Table” made by Freepik from Flaticon can be reused under the Flaticon Basic License.

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“Finding the Words” “Untitled” by Mark Billante can be reused under the Unsplash License. Georgia, tbilisi, shop and plant. “motivate” made by Freepik from Flaticon can be reused under the Flaticon Basic License.

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“Loving & Fighting: In Gujarati” “A close-up of a candle lights line with blurry effects and a glass jar in foreground” by Val Vesa, “Baby feet” by Janko Ferlič can be reused under the Unsplash License.

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Acknowledgements “Thank You in Different Languages.” Christian Community Aid, www.ccas.org.au/2016-cca-volunteer-thank-event/.

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