Story written by Ling Juan, IPD, ’18
Growing up in Taiwan, Mandarin was my first language. My first encounters with Korean were watching Korean dramas with my grandmother as a child. Learning Korean was naturally fun to me as a beginner; the pronunciation of Hanja is similar to Chinese and the spelling is alphabetic like English.
Story written by Seth Joyner, IEM, ’17
I grew up “mixed.” Whatever that means, right? My background in language learning comes from a Quebecois grandmother who spoke French and instilled a sense of pride in me for the language, while my mother, who had refused to learn French growing up, spoke to me in English.
Story written by Tangut Degfey, IPD, ’18
My language journey started when I began studying Japanese at Middlebury College. Growing up, I was interested in the East Asian region, particularly the
technology that came from there. We had a TV, a refrigerator, a radio and other electronics equipments that were imported from one or more East Asian countries and the more I saw the names of the countries on those equipments, the more I grew passionate about learning about the culture and geography.