Image: Rammy at the L&C Fair, via Emily Rutz
It’s that time of year again! The Languages and Cultures Fair, held on Sept. 30 by the Languages and Cultures Department, featured 11 languages and disciplines: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, ASL (American Sign Language), Linguistics and TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages).
While there was much anxiety that it would rain on the day of the fair, we were pleasantly surprised by clear skies and good spirits, with many people in my French class staying for well over an hour. Everyone was enthusiastically going around to each different ‘country’ where they got their “passports” stamped, speaking to the representatives of each booth, taking quizzes, playing games and eating yummy snacks ranging from Pocky to Swiss chocolate to even crepes! Even Rammy, our much beloved mascot here at West Chester, made an appearance! He doled out many high fives and held a Russian nesting doll as if it were his own child. While he couldn’t verbally produce a response, I could tell he was very much enjoying the fair.
Out of all the booths, the Japanese booth seemed to have the most fans, as I was in line for over 10 minutes waiting to speak to the people there. There, you could get your name spelled in Japanese and written on an index card to take home with you. But all of the booths were a joy to go to and each had a unique activity attached to them. At the ASL booth, you learned to ‘say’ your favorite animal in sign language. At the Spanish booth, I learned which countries do or don’t speak Spanish — turns out, Belize is a majority English-speaking country!
At the linguistics booth, the excited students and professor told me all the benefits of majoring in linguistics. “Communication is more important than ever and being able to understand not only how one language communicates but how every language communicates and interacts,” said Linguistics major Avery Rose McKnight. “I think it’s very important to not only understand ourselves better and how to express ourselves but to understand how everyone expresses themselves.”
Leaving the fair, you drop your ‘passport’ into a mystery box that, at the end of the day, is used in a raffle where participants can win gift cards to the bookstore, Saxby’s and more! While the allure of the raffle may have been what drew in visitors — along with attending for a grade in a language class — the importance of this fair lies in how essential knowing different languages and cultures are in this day and age. I was originally extremely hesitant and annoyed that I had to take two years of a language, but I had a lot of fun in the class and learned the benefits of being multilingual.
When I meet people who aren’t from the United States, one of the first things I notice is how good they usually are at speaking English. This is because they’re usually taught one or more languages starting at a young age with the expectation of obtaining fluency. While America is generally doing pretty well in terms of language, with around 23% of Americans able to speak one or more other languages — which is above England, France and Italy — we are still behind compared to countries in Scandinavia and the European Union. It is also important to note that while in European countries, you are taught to be multilingual at a young age; in America, unless you are the child of an immigrant or otherwise exposed to other languages, you likely will not learn a different language until middle school or even high school depending on the quality of your education.
When asked if he doesn’t think enough Americans have language education, Gabriel Stevenson, a student who takes German, weighed in: “Oh yeah, I think we need to be started way earlier on (our) languages ’cause then we can really develop the sounds that you… need to have to successfully speak that language.”
Luckily, at a school like WCU, you get the opportunity to learn languages you otherwise wouldn’t have in high school. For example, WCU is the only state school in Pennsylvania that has a Russian major, so if you want to learn Russian — which is spoken by around 170 million people around the world — then here is the place to do it! Like many other language programs at WCU the Russian department has a lot of study abroad programs and opportunities, with English student Emilie Smith doing a study abroad program in Kyrgyzstan, a beautiful country in Central Asia full of emerald rolling hills and gorgeous lakes.
“I went to practice my Russian… it was very illuminating,” said Smith. “Learning other languages expands your mind and makes you think about a lot of stuff.”
But why is it important to learn other languages, anyway? To you, it might be a bothersome addition to your seemingly endless general education and baccalaureate requirements that get in the way of your major. Multiple professors and students weigh in on this:
“There is an assumption, especially when you live in a place like the United States, where you can just… use English and be okay with that,” Linguistics professor Dr. Israel Sanz said. “Learning other languages feeds you all of these cognitive advantages, advantages educationally, advantages professionally… it gives you another layer of understanding of how the world works.”
Madame Roxanne Petit-Raselle, professor of French and Italian, also weighed in from a traveling perspective. “If you want to understand the world around you and be a better global citizen, if you want to travel and not just be a tourist… you need to speak at least one language besides English,” she said. “People think that artificial intelligence will do the work for them, other people believe that everyone speaks English on the planet, which is not true. When you travel abroad, wherever you go, artificial intelligence is not here for you. A tourist goes from one place to another, they stay in their bubble and they never interact with the locals. But the travelers, they actually interact with the locals, and they have so much fun. That is definitely some experience you don’t have as a tourist.”
She also stated that it is a big advantage from a career perspective, not just if you want to work internationally, but even in the U.S.. In the Mid-Atlantic region, for example, there are a lot of French companies that work with a lot of people from France, including Dupont. When asked in class what the most beneficial languages to speak are, Petit-Raselle said they are English, Spanish, French and Arabic, as they are widely spoken not just in one country, but they are Lingua Francas that are spoken widely across the world. Though admittedly, she does have a soft spot for Italian, as it is one of the languages she teaches.
If you don’t have time in your schedule for a language, don’t fear! This fair also showcased the various clubs dedicated to each language and culture, such as the Chinese Club. “As someone who is Chinese,” says Vice-President Colin Wong, “I’m able to.. seek outlets of like, talking about my culture, and I’m able to share my experiences with other people. It’s a fun club, we try to keep it lighthearted and teach culture and whatnot, and I try to demonstrate not just past culture… but also modern Chinese culture. We don’t talk about political stuff, it’s much more lighthearted subjects.”
At the end of the day, this fair made me realize how many passionate polyglots there are at WCU, and that really gives me hope that more language and culture programs will be established at the university one day, and that people in my country will become more empathetic and interested in other cultures beyond an aesthetic standpoint. So if you missed the fair this week, never fear! It will likely be bigger and better next year!
Emily Rutz is a first-year English major.