[ROUGH CUT] Use of Native Languages on Campus

How many times have the thought of using your native language on your University Campus ever occur? The use of native languages on a University Campus is almost rarely discussed. Attending the University of Minnesota as a current freshmen, I was quickly mesmerized by the diverse student population that I saw while on campus. Especially when I am walking to my class. But once I was in my classes, this diversity was quickly dismissed.

According to the 2014 statistics of different ethnic groups on campus, located on the University of Minnesota Admissions Diversity page, students of color only makes up 30% of the student population. Based on this chart, we can see that about 5,920 out of 30,135 students’ falls into the category of minority students (excluding the international and unknown students). Making up only about 20% of the student population. But if we were to include international students, and with the thought in mind that their native language isn’t English, there would be about 8,707 out of 30,135 students (about 29% of the student population) that attends the University of Minnesota whose native language could be another language besides English. Although the number is relatively low, there is still some diversity in the student population at the University of Minnesota. These numbers could also be an inspiration to many multicultural and whose first language isn’t English high school seniors to consider the University of Minnesota in order to increase the number of multicultural students here.

With the increase in multicultural students, it will help to continue creating a diverse university. Which is important because in the article, Why Does Diversity Matter at College Anyway? “Diversity expands worldliness…College might be the first time you have had the opportunity to have real interaction with people from diverse groups…Diversity enhances social development. Diversity prepares students for future career success…Diversity prepares students for work in a global society…Interactions with people different from ourselves increase our knowledge base…Diversity promotes creative thinking…Diversity enhances self-awareness…Diversity enriches the multiple perspectives developed by a liberal arts education” (Hyman and Jacobs 2009).

In order for me to conduct interviews with students of color for when they use their native languages on campus, I went to the Multicultural Center located in Appleby Hall, the second floor of Coffman and the Live Learning Community that I am a part of. This is mostly because it was difficult to approach students of color as I was walking and coming back from class. Afraid of taking up their time and making them late to class or to a meeting, or as I say, “place, time and manner” of when something is appropriate to do. When interviewing the students that I met in these three places on the question “when and where do you use your native language on campus?”, most of them mentions only using their native languages when they are in these locations on campus. As one student says: “It depends on the people you know. Some are definitely my friends who comes to the UofM and to MCAE in Appleby. And sometimes in Coffman. But it really depends on the people.”

Furthermpre one question that I had asked students that left me intrigued was the question, “how do they feel about using your native language or only being able to use English in class?” Many of the students that I interviewed were okay with the idea of only being able to use English, as it allowed the student to feel included in the classroom and be able to communicate with others. But many students also recognized and took note on how only using English in their classrooms on a daily basis has affected their linguistic skills in their native language. With one student, Ilhan, whose native language is Somali, saying: “Speaking my native language in class is not really encouraged, so I don’t speak it. Unless the person I’m talking to is also speaking the same native language. I think that overtime, speaking English in class has impacted my ability to speak my native language negatively because I don’t speak 90% of the time and overtime you lose some of the linguistic skills.”

From my interviews, I recognized a theme that occurred frequently, and that is the fear of losing their native tongue when they only speak English on campus. Unless you are in a multicultural Live Learning Community, it’s hard to use your native tongue everyday on campus. The only two places that the University actually tell students about is the Multicultural Center and Coffman second floor where all the student organizations are located.

Not having a lot of places to use your native language on campus, this will eventually lead to a language loss and language shift. A language shift is when one language becomes dominant over another, which will lead to a language loss (Janet Holmes 58).

Not many people realizes the importance of our native languages until they are no longer able to use it. From the article Importance of Language — Why Learning a Second Language is Important by Leonardo De Valoes, he says “The most important one, however, that we can learn is our own mother tongue as this is one of the most basic parts of our identity. If we were to lose our own tongue, for example, if we were to grow up in a country which is not our own, someplace that is not our home, in my opinion, we would be losing a part of ourselves.” Our native language is important because it allows students to be bilingual. Studies has also shown that people who are bilingual are smarter. They are more prone to adapt to the environment easier because they are always switching between languages. A study at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain called Why Bilinguals Are Smarter saw that “bilingual subjects not only performed better, by they also did so with less activity in the parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it” (Bhattacharjee 2012).

Bibliography

Bhattacharjee, Yudhijit. “Why Bilinguals Are Smarter.” The New York Times.The New York Times, 17 Mar. 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.

Holmes, Janet. “Language Maintenance and Shift.” An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Fourth ed. Harlow: Pearson, 2013. 53–75. Print.

Hyman, Jeremy S., and Lynn F. Jacobs. “Why Does Diversity Matter at College Anyway?” US News. U.S.News & World Report, 12 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 Nov. 2015.

Valoes, Leonardo De. “Importance of Language — Why Learning a Second Language Is Important.” Continuing Education. 26 Feb. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.