4/24: stories of teaching lesser spoken languages

In the USA, the most commonly taught languages in school include Spanish, French, American Sign Language, German, and Italian. This list is biased partly toward the most commonly spoken languages in the world, and partly toward European languages in general. Of course, there is value in students learning a language spoken across the world by many individuals; it allows them to communicate with many more people than with just their native language. It also allows them access to swaths of literature, film, news, and other media produced in that language that were otherwise closed off to them.

However, studying languages with smaller populations of speakers also has value—but this type of study is not often possible without the "backing of a state and significant financial investment," according to Professor Hagop Gulludjian at UCLA, who teaches about Armenian language and culture. Without financial or political motivations to teach students a language, or ingrained cultural biases toward a language, it's difficult to convince government-funded schools to teach a new language, especially on already strained budgets.

Professor Gulludjian teaches Western Armenian at UCLA, in a newly established lectureship at the university. Unlike most college-level language classes, which use grammar and vocabulary as the main tools to achieving proficiency, Gulludjian uses creative writing and expression as one of his main methods to increase student engagement with and learning of the language. His students include Armenians with and without knowledge of the language, and he also encourages his students to write and read in the form of the language they are most comfortable with, even—and perhaps especially—if that form has historically been considered a 'lower' dialect by linguists.

One student of his said that the course in Western Armenian helped her to realize the potential of Armenian for "thinking and talking about the contemporary world and our future". For students used to speaking their native or heritage languages only in a familial or household context, exposure to literature and creative thinking in that language—both written by others or composed by themselves—allows them to further appreciate the language, as well as think about how it can contribute to the world's future. The languages we teach in schools are the languages used by students to built that future. So if we are limited in the scope of languages we teach, we will limit our own futures as well. 

Another example of the potential in learning less commonly taught languages is the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, founded in 2015, which I've mentioned briefly in this segment before. Before the project's creation, Wôpanâak had no living speakers and "existed only in historical documents". Now, at least 20 students a year are learning a curriculum taught entirely in Wôpanâak, including not only language study but also cultural study. With the dedication of a few individuals—as well as enough financial support—a language can go from completely silent to spoken in conversation, classrooms, and homes. 

Finally, in California, a state-funded dual immersion program in Fresno teaches in both English and Hmong—the second-largest Hmong population in the US is in Fresno—to a class of Hmong heritage speakers, 90% of whom learned English as their first language. This program was also advocated for by community leaders, and the complete pathway includes classes in elementary, middle, and high school, as well as Fresno State college. By beginning to teach Hmong in elementary school, this program might allow its students to achieve higher fluency than many other language programs that begin in high school or college, like Professor Gulludjian's program in Western Armenian. 

Each of these stories shows how dedicated and relentless individuals within a language or cultural community are almost always the driving force behind any systematic change in language education. Financial, social, and other systematic barriers often prevent the learning or usage of less common languages in classrooms, but determined individuals have found cracks in the system to build their own models of language education. These models incorporate not only the most spoken languages of the world, but also languages with immense cultural value to communities and often untapped wealths of creativity and knowledge to contribute to the modern world. 

To read more about any of the three projects mentioned above, you can click on the hyperlink in each section.