To many, learning a language is more than a graduation requirement or another AP score. Language brings people together, and some Menlo students have made extra efforts to embrace different languages to be able to build bridges with family, learn more about their culture and make traveling a more immersive experience.
Menlo offers four language options through the AT level: Spanish, Chinese, French and Latin. To graduate, students must complete three levels of a language; however, because many freshmen start at level 2 or 3, they have time later in their high school career to pursue a third language outside of school.
Junior Simone Lev and sophomore Yuna Lee learned Korean as a way to connect with their cultural and ethnic heritage. Lev looked to her grandparents and sought outside resources to learn the language (her mom understands Korean but does not speak it well). “I really wanted to connect back with [the Korean] side of my culture,” Lev said.
At first, Lev used Duolingo to learn Korean because it was easy for her to read and navigate. She then bought textbooks and took language classes on Zoom as she progressed. Then, the summer before her sophomore year, Lev attended the Concordia Language Villages program to fully immerse herself in Korean language and culture. The summer camp has multiple “villages” that each focus on a single language and culture.
“In my Korean Language Village, we ate Korean food every day, the staff only talked to us in Korean, and we had to talk in Korean. It was like a language immersion experience in the U.S., which was really great and amazing for language learning,” Lev said.
Lev cherishes the time she spent at Concordia Language Villages because of the strong foundation the program provided her. “It was really cool to be in an environment where everyone was working towards the same goal,” Lev said. “I don’t think there’s any way to learn a language better than being surrounded by it, sharing it and speaking it all the time.”
Lev decided to take her learning one step further – she spent six weeks at a program at Seoul National University, located in the capital of South Korea, where she attended Korean classes and explored the city. “I feel like there’s a level of things you just learn about [when you’re in the city],” she said. “I [had] to actually know how to read on subway signs, and be able to order food and figure out how to talk to cashiers.”
While Lev had the opportunity to focus on Korean over the summer, she feels as though she lost connection with the language during the school year.
“I think language is one of those things that if you’re not passionate about or connected to the culture, it’s really hard to stay motivated with,” Lev said. “Incorporating an outreach program to like other schools or programs in the area that might have different languages could be really cool.”
Lee also has Korean roots, but unlike Lev, she has been learning Korean from a young age. Her family immigrated from Korea, and her grandparents initially taught her Korean through traditional games, flashcards and constant conversations in Korean.
“[There were] times where I got really frustrated because [my grandparents] weren’t understanding me in English,” Lee said. “When I got older, [I realized] that they were sharing their own culture [with me].”
From kindergarten to 8th grade, Lee attended Korean school on weekends; initially she went to a Korean-language Catholic school in San Jose, before moving to Silicon Valley Korean School. Not only did the program expose her to the linguistic aspects of Korean, but the cultural ones too. For example, they would celebrate Korean New Year and Chuseok — a Korean “Thanksgiving” — every year. “You could go around in your traditional Korean wear and make traditional Korean origami, or eat Korean food,” Lee said of her school.
Now, Lee is a teaching assistant at Silicon Valley Korean School. “It’s just a nice way to keep up with your Korean and also it’s really fun to hang out with the kids,” she said.
While Korean was a second language for both Lee and Lev, Junior Alex Olariu’s first language was Romanian. His family is from Romania and Eastern Europe, though he was born and raised in the U.S. “I had a little bit more trouble when I was super young, because I didn’t really understand English,” Olariu said.
Like many second-generation immigrant kids, Olariu has learned how to find a balance between his Romanian and American cultures. “I know a lot of people think of it as having two sides, [but] I never thought of it like that,” Olariu said.
Fluent in Romanian as his first language, Olariu is now interested in pursuing Hungarian to connect with the other half of his family. “Half of my family’s Hungarian, and I only know a couple words,” he said.
For some students, literacy, not just conversational ability, in another language has significant cultural value. Senior Saniya Ahmed began reading Arabic when she was just seven years old. As a Muslim, being able to read the Quran is an important part of her faith. Completing the Quran took Ahmed many years because she was learning Arabic through reading the text, but she found it to be a very rewarding experience. “I’d [read] with my teacher […] and then he or she would correct me as I read,” Ahmed said. “I got to learn a whole new language in a way [and] although I didn’t really know what it meant, it was just fun.”
Reading the Quran has improved her ability to learn other languages now. “Learning how to write in another language helped the way my brain [processes],” Ahmed said.
