Islanders are “karibuni sana.”
That’s “very, very welcome” in Kiswahili, and it’s a greeting to be translated 10 different ways at the island’s first World Language Festival on Jan. 11.
The festival is a Russian innovation, imported by Bainbridge High School/Contract Studies senior Nick Hasko.
While an exchange student there last year, Hasko participated in a language festival of more than 33 different tongues.
“They offered everything from ancient Russian to Farsi to Kiswahili,” Hasko said. “This experience inspired me to try this on the island.”
The World Language Festival will fulfill the American Studies requirement for a “democracy in action” project, for Hasko and his fellow students in the Commodore Options Programs.
But the impact, they hope, will be island-wide.
Ten Bainbridge High School classrooms will feature a foreign-language presenter for the half-day program. The linguists will discuss and demonstrate Polish, Norwegian, Farsi, Kiswahili, Filipino, Japanese, Hungarian, Russian, Italian, Chinese and a Native American dialect.
While several presenters are native speakers, others acquired fluency from living abroad. Islander Ron Konzak, who will demonstrate Polish, actually learned English as a second language in the immigrant-dominated Detroit suburb of his childhood.
Wildlife conservation biology student Rena Grice learned Kiswahili by total immersion in the language when she traveled to the Serengeti. Grice, a 1999 BHS graduate and now a senior at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., lived with a Tanzanian family in country’s capital, Arusha, and in a mud hut with Maasai tribesmen.
“It’s called ‘Swahili’ but it’s really Kiswahili,” Grice said. “Swahili means ‘the people’; adding ‘ki’ means ‘language of the people.’ It’s a trade language, meaning it was used by people who traded between tribes and countries, so it’s startlingly easy to learn.”
Grice notes that the structure of the language reveals much about Tanzanian social constructs, and points to the prominence of the polite greeting that precedes even a routine exchange.
“Even if you’re just buying butter from strangers,” Grice said, “you must first ask how they’re doing with their day, then how their family is and how their house is. It’s considered very rude not to.”
Lingua
Because the language festival’s mini-lectures will be repeated six times, listeners have the opportunity to experience more than one tongue and organizers hope the casual atmosphere will encourage drop-ins. Various cultural artifacts will also be on display.
“The kids have been collecting information from the consulates,” said Emily Grice, Contract Studies program advisor. “They have flags, money, stamps and more.”
High-school-level students in the Commodore Options School – a cluster of school district alternative programs housed at the former Commodore Middle School – may also share souvenirs of their own foreign study, student and festival co-organizer Dana Cuykendall says. Options students are now studying in Sweden, Denmark and Belize.
Besides offering a taste of different languages, the students hope to gauge the community’s interest in learning languages not offered in Bainbridge schools or community classes.
Islanders may take Park District introductory Japanese and French classes and study Italian and Latin through the Chamber of Commerce Community Schools.
BHS students are offered Spanish and French, while Contract Studies students may study Italian, Russian and Chinese through Seattle’s Washington Language School.
Younger Bainbridge students are offered before-and-after school language classes at all three elementary schools, but the offerings are inconsistent from elementary to elementary, and dwindle to a French elective in middle school.
“The students would like to see language instruction be younger and broader,” Grice said.
Exit polls taken at the event will identify languages and approaches islanders might favor.
One proposed project for polyglots of all ages is a “language cafe,” that would feature conversation and study in a casual, round-table format. Such language lounges typically meet one evening every month for camaraderie and conversation.
Hasko views learning foreign language as a step toward global understanding.
I feel that Americans, in general, are lingually inferior to their counterparts,” he said, “and this is something that I feel needs to change.”
Hasko, who speaks Spanish and taught himself Russian, plans to acquire fluency in other tongues.
“I plan to study every single language I can,” Hasko said. “I am going to be a student my whole life. The next languages to learn are Turkish and Polish…
“Basically the idea is to become a global citizen.”
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The Student Action Congress of the Commodore Options School presents a World Language Festival noon to 6 p.m. Jan. 11 in Bainbridge High School’s 300 Wing. Participants will attend a series of 45-minute presentations of language and culture, including Norwegian, Swedish, Arabic, Polish, Kiswahili, Native American, Japanese, Finnish, Farsi, Hungarian, Russian, Filipino and Italian. Sponsored by Commodore Options School American Studies Class, Bainbridge High School ASB and the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council. Children under 12 years should be accompanied by an adult.
For information, call 780-1269.
