While Brown offers a wide variety of language courses, sometimes students want to study a language that does not currently have a course available. However, this does not mean they won't be able to study that language at Brown! Group independent studies (GISPs) and individual independent studies (ISPs) are two viable ways to study a language not currently offered.
To learn more about the process of undertaking a language-focused independent study project, we talked to Yomi Adegbile, a student currently pursuing an independent study in the language of Bislama. Bislama is an English-based creole language spoken in Vanuatu, an island nation in the Pacific. Yomi, a second-year Brown-RISD dual-degree student, is preparing to live in Vanuatu over the summer through a language-study grant from Brown, so this course will prepare him to interact with people on the island.
Vanuatu, Yomi told us, is one of the most linguistically dense nations in the world, with over 113 languages spoken by a population of about 300,000. A child's first language is usually the individual language of their parents' tribe, but Bislama is a lingua franca spoken by most people on the island and used to communicate in day-to-day interactions outside the home. English and French are also used, but usually in more formal settings, like classrooms or government documents.
Yomi noted that over 90 percent of the words in Bislama are derived from English, though often with spelling differences, and the rest of the words come from various Pacific Islander languages. While learning a Creole language is "easier if you already speak the base language" (in this case, English), Yomi said that learning Bislama has not been "as easy as I expected." The grammatical structure, for example, incorporates features that are quite different from English. Still, Yomi says he's been able to learn it faster than French or Chinese, both of which he has formally studied at Brown.
In order to do an independent study, students must find a faculty sponsor and then create a proposal, including a syllabus planning the entire semester. For language study, GISPs are preferred, so the student can practice speaking with other learners; because the Bislama course didn't work with other students' schedules, Yomi ended up doing a true ISP. He said it was "pretty easy making the syllabus," and that he used academic articles, anthropology books, documentaries, and YouTube videos as course materials, as well as a practice workbook and dictionary he found online. Dr. Jane Sokolosky, the director of the CLS, is Yomi's faculty sponsor. She helped him assemble the syllabus, and he periodically checks in his learning progress with her.
Of course, there are challenges that come with studying a language independently. Yomi noted that because he doesn't have a native speaker or instructor of whom to ask questions, he sometimes has to make an educated guess about a word in a text or the workbook that doesn't have an English translation. Since Bislama does not have a standard written form, there are also spelling variations in different texts and media in the language. To interact with other speakers, Yomi has been able to find people through the Internet, as well as converse with people he knows who speak other similar Pacific Island creole languages with which Bislama is mutually intelligible.
Day-to-day, Yomi follows the assignments he planned out in the syllabus, including Bislama-language movies, subtitled in English. While staying on top of self-assigned work isn't too difficult for him, he said that "the language structure is very different"—for example, Bislama has no word for "to be" and instead uses noun markers to denote whether a word is subject or object. The Independent Study has also given him the opportunity to learn about Bislama's linguistic history. The result of colonization and the slave trade, Bislama arose among enslaved people brought to Australia from different islands across the Pacific, who spoke different languages and needed a language to speak together. For his final project, Yomi will do an open-ended independent research project, and he hopes to integrate his illustrative work into the assignment.
By the end of the semester, Yomi believes he will be able to listen and converse fairly well with other Bislama speakers, though he predicts he will still have work to do on reading and listening fluently. "It's definitely been a productive experience," he said. "I wouldn't mind doing it again, for a different language."
An ISP or GISP is a great opportunity if you are interested in a language not currently taught at Brown. While learning independently can present a unique challenge, the CRC and departments at Brown have support systems for interested students. You can learn more about the process here. "If you want to learn a native language of your family, or [there's] just a language you randomly want to learn, then I would definitely recommend it," Yomi finished.