When I told everyone I received a grant from my university to go to Holland, the image that immediately popped into most people's heads was the red light district, drugs, and other things of ill-repute. They were much relieved when I explained it was for a summer program in linguistics at Universiteit Leiden, the oldest university in the Netherlands.
That meant every day was spent learning about languages that don't usually make it into university curricula: Avar, Old English, Ossetic, and Old Persian. We also spent time every day translating stories from their cultures. Who knew that medieval priests could be so bawdy!
Aside from the daily courses, there were evening lectures where Ph.D. candidates and already established professors presented their research on everything from Shiwiar phonology to personal names as evidence for dialectical difference in Hittite. As linguaphiles in the audience ourselves, we couldn't help but to tease apart every section of the presenters' arguments to verify the claims.
All of this, from the courses to the lectures, were offered in English. It serves as the lingua franca, which perhaps needs updated to lingua anglica. However, when we out of the classroom the conversations transformed into a benign Babel. The program was offered in Holland, so of course, many native Nederlanders attended. Yet the Italians rivaled them in number as well. Then there were the French and German factions, as well as a contingent of Chinese, a contingent of Russians, a contingent of Scandinavians, and a sprinkling of others, all of whom were speaking the language that seemed most viable to them. It was an awesome cross-section of people, languages, and cultures, and I was right there amongst it.
As many of my friends--and probably most of my acquaintances from this program--can tell you, I take my role as a cultural ambassador very seriously whenever I am abroad. I always try to acquire a basic proficiency in the main language of wherever I am going. For the Netherlands, this was definitely helped by Washington and Lee's very own Ashley Ooms, who would try her best to correct my garbled words, grammar, and pronunciation. Thankfully, upon my arrival I could navigate the airport, train station, and find my accommodation for the trip. The Dutch are notorious for switching into English if they detect even the hint of a foreign accent, and that only happened to me twice during the process!
Being amongst linguists who spoke so many different languages, I tried my best to join their conversations without sabotaging the linguistic framework. I can proudly report to my Chinese teachers that I had a full conversation on 伊朗语言学 without having to insert any more Englishisms than the Chinese students themselves. Walks to and from the bar after academic presentations were an especially fruitful time for language lessons. The Italians were especially helpful. Normally we'd communicate in a mélange of Italian and Spanish (the latter when my Italian fell through), but I'd always end up learning the Italian form of any Spanish word I used.
I could talk for many more paragraphs about all the individual experiences that combined into one of the best two-week periods of my life; however, I will move to my concluding thoughts. At Washington and Lee, we are very fortunate in our professors. They are smart, passionate, and insightful. Dr. Lynch often tells us in choir that the people and experiences in our lives are like threads, weaving together to form the person we really are. He also tells us to seek out and cherish those "shining, golden threads" we run across. I can confidently say that these two weeks of people, languages, and cultures have given me a small treasure hoard of these threads. I only hope I can weave the experiences into a tapestry worthy of their value.
