Learning Languages

A NEW LANGUAGE IN A NEW COUNTRY The experience of learning a foreign language at school is vastly different than experiencing it in person

Article by Evan Huang Graphic by Jaidyn Holt

Throughout history, communicating with others has continuously been one of the most crucial aspects of life. In almost every corner of the world, schools and teachers stress the value that learning a language has in our everyday lives. However, learning a foreign language is a long and difficult process that can’t only be taught through a textbook.

World language teacher Mariela Saad-Delgado was raised in Venezuela with part of her family Venezualan and the other half Lebanese. As a result, she grew up learning how to speak both of her family’s foreign languages, Spanish and Arabic.

“I grew up with those languages, but growing up, I would want to get better and better at them … I wanted to [eventually] be able to use them for my profession,” Saad said.

Through school and her travels around the world, Saad started to learn more languages.

“English was more cultural and something my parents told me I had to learn because it is the language of business,” Saad said. “But in Venezuela, they teach us English at school, but it’s only a couple hours a week, so I would have a tutor, so I would have daily lessons to learn English.”

The knowledge gained from learning a new language through experience and your environment is distinctly different than learning a new language through school.

“For example, Arabic, growing up you know how to speak it, but you really need to study it to know how to read and write it,” Saad said, “Having the experience and getting involved [with the language] like going to a new country, will help you learn and understand it faster because sometimes going by the book isn’t enough.”

A study by the European Commision found that 90% of European schoolchildren learn English during their upper secondary education. Meanwhile, only 58% of middle schools and 25% of elementary schools offer a foreign language other than English according to a 2017 study by the Commission on Language Learning.

Senior Caio Marques learned the English language from an American school in Brazil but said it took him about a year since moving to America to become fully competent in communicating with his peers and classmates.

“[The difficulty] is more about the culture than it is straight-up about the language,” Marques said. “It’s [more] casual, and the words that you commonly use are different, so that was harder for me.”

Marques said that each of the methods of learning a foreign language have their benefits.

“If you learn it at school, you learn the correct way of conjugating verbs and other [formal] things,” Marques said. “But if you only learn how to socialize with people then you can still hang out with native speakers.”

The biggest factors in adapting to a new language are repetition and frequent practice.

“The more you speak the language, the more you try to communicate, the more you listen, the more you surround yourself with the language the better [you’ll get],” Saad said.

Saad says that while she continues to use English in almost every moment of her life, she values the importance of continuing to speak other languages.

“If I don’t keep practicing my Spanish or call my family and talk to them then … [I] have to start thinking about [to use] the words because … [I’m] not using them as much as [I] used to,” Saad said.

While approaching a foreign country may seem frightening from a communication perspective, Saad and Marques both have had positive experiences.

“If you go to Europe, they have people there who speak English,” Marques said. “But if it’s a foreign country that isn’t invested in English, then I recommend getting a local or a tour guide to help you out.”

Saad said that the most important aspect is to keep trying to speak the language and to realize that making mistakes is something everybody does when learning a new language. “The key to learning a new language is to keep trying,” Saad said. “And most people are going to be very friendly and and appreciate that you’re trying hard to speak the language.” So while many of us can’t imagine moving to Spain without knowing Spanish or France without knowing French, Saad encourages everyone to try. “If you don’t have enough confidence [to do it] or you’re not going to try to learn [the language], then that’s a big mistake,” Saad said.

PRONOUNS EVOLVE The rise of gender diversity in the english language

Article by Marcos Membreno Graphic by Jaidyn Holt

The English language is always changing. Every year, depending on prevalent topics in society, new words and definitions emerge or fall out of use.

Through social movements and slang, words like “normalizing,” “hellacious,” “jedi,” “stan,” and even “whatevs” have been established into the English lexicon. This dynamic process is always adapting to cover developing topics with appropriate terms.

“It comes about through general practice,” English teacher Dr. Robert Boerth said. “There’s a somewhat organic process that occurs where some people will start an effort to come up with it and those neologisms [newly coined words] spread from there.”

Such is the case with the LGBTQIA+ community and the major strides they have made this past decade — people are identifying with more than just the traditional “he/him” and “she/her” pronouns. This has called for the use of alternative pronouns, with the most popular being the gender neutral “they/them.” Pew Research reports that “one-in-five (18%) americans say they personally know someone who goes by such pronouns.”

Although the word “they” is not a new word, the connotation has changed over the course of this decade. In search of ways to address people without assuming gender, society shifted the plural form of “they” to a singular one.

Boerth explains that growing up, it was preferred to use a masculine pronoun “when you were applying it to all people regardless of gender.” Later, it switched to “he or she,” and then finally where we are today, the unspoken rule is to use “they.”

Partly because of “they’s” shift to a singular pronoun, people started viewing it as an alternative to the traditional genders to represent their gender neutrality, or non-binary gender. According to BBC, studies showed this change went smoothly as it had been occurring for centuries in literature and in fact “[reduced] mental biases that favour men and [increased] positive attitudes towards women and the LGBT community.”

Last year, Merriam-Webster defined “they” as “used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary,” making them the first of many renowned dictionaries to recognize this emerging use.

“I think it’s a huge step because we still trust dictionaries,” English teacher Jay Jay Stroup said. “They feel very official and standard. Dictionaries are very much part of human’s attempt to catalog the universe and share that information widely.”

This act was a firm step in opening up non-traditional pronouns to more people, and might soon be happening with other pronouns. Pronouns like “Xe/Xer” and “Ze/Zim” are being embraced by the LGBTQIA+ community.

“Now that [these pronouns] are coming to light, I think it’s very productive in allowing people to be who they truly want to be,” said sophomore Lainey Wilemon, who is part of the leadership in the Diversity club.

However, widespread use of non-traditional pronun is dependent upon awareness. To introduce these new words and ideas, Stroup said that she believes it comes from directly educating and exposing students and teachers.

“When surveys at the beginning of the year are handed out, [teachers] could easily say ‘what are your pronouns’.”

Whether it is through school or online resources, this rise in non-traditional gender pronouns is something that will need to be integrated into students’ lives if it’s to grow in the English language. As of February this year, there are 40 schools that allow students to insert their pronouns into course rosters, according to the New York Times. Outside of school, students have taken initiative to include their pronouns on their own social media bios.

All these changes and additions to pronouns in language show that there has been and will be a need for more inclusivity in English.

“A language that doesn’t update itself and doesn’t track new connotations is not doing its job,” Stroup said.