As students increasingly flock to language classes at Brown, the study of Tagalog, the native tongue of the Philippines, has gained popularity. The language has been the subject of student-led Group Independent Study Projects in recent years, with this year's GISP enrolling as many as 14 students.
"Language study at Brown is booming," said Merle Krueger, associate director of the Center for Language Studies. Krueger helped the students coordinate the GISP and is currently sponsoring the course.
"We have students taking Tagalog for all kinds of reasons: they're interested in development studies, they're interested in working for international organizations that will work in the Philippines or the language is part of their heritage," he said.
As sponsor, Krueger said he found course materials for the GISP and enlisted the help of native speakers of Tagalog, including Mario Jiz GS, who periodically joins the class to check students' pronunciation and grammar.
"The class has a book to teach them Tagalog, so they learn it on their own," Jiz said.
Like most GISP sponsors, Jiz is unpaid, but he said the reward of contributing to study of his native tongue is ample compensation.
"It's fine with me not to be paid," Jiz said. "Most of these kids have Filipino heritage, so I'm actually very happy to be giving them the opportunity to learn the language of their parents and share whatever I know about Tagalog."
Jiz's efforts have made for an engaging and educational experience, according to students in the GISP.
"Since most of us heard the language as children, we can usually tell if something doesn't sound right," said Erikson Arcaira '07, student coordinator of the GISP. "But it's great to have Mario come in and share his knowledge with us."
Arcaira said he lived in the Philippines until age 8, when he came to the United States. Still, he said he has had no training in Tagalog and decided to learn his country's language while he still had time.
"I heard that there was a Tagalog GISP for the last few years, so I thought it would be fun to continue it and start one this semester," Arcaira said. "Most of us are of Filipino descent, so it's great to learn our parents' language. In fact, all but one of us have a connection to the Philippines."
This one student is Jamie Farris '07, an American without any Filipino family members or heritage.
"I figured learning the language would be interesting and challenging, and definitely worthwhile," Farris said, adding that though he may not be tied to the Philippines by blood, he has many family friends and a girlfriend who are Filipinos.
Farris said his lack of familiarity with Tagalog has led to some difficulties.
"I don't pick things up as quickly as some of the others because I never heard Filipino when I was young, but the class is small and everyone has been great about helping me," he said. "I have taken a few years of Spanish, though, so there have been some similarities," he added, referring to the Spanish influence on Filipino culture and language.
Due to continued interest in Tagalog, some have questioned whether it should be offered as a course instead of a GISP.
"These kids are trying to learn the language by themselves, and it would be enormously helpful if there was some faculty member who could teach them," Jiz said. "My expertise is in biology, so I may not be the best teacher."
Krueger said adding a new course to the curriculum is more difficult than some might expect.
"The problem in deciding which new languages to offer is that, of course, it costs money," he said. "We now offer over 20 languages at Brown, so it's a difficult decision to offer a new one."
Krueger added that the popularity of languages is cyclical, and interest in a given language can come and go rather quickly.
"If it turns out that a language is really hot right now but then geopolitically becomes not as enticing, administrators (then) have courses with very limited enrollment but that are hard to cut because of the fact that they're already part of the curriculum," he said. "That said, I think it's very useful to see if there is consistent student interest, which there seems to be with Tagalog."
Krueger said the University could conceivably offer new courses by sharing resources with others and offering inter-university courses over the Internet.
"It's impossible for even the largest and wealthiest university to provide instruction in every language. But with distance learning technologies, it seems to me that the best solution would be for universities to share their resources when it comes to the less-taught languages," he said. "If someone at Yale teaches Zulu, someone here teaches Haitian Creole and at Harvard someone is teaching Tagalog, maybe through distance learning technologies we could arrange to share."
Both Krueger and Jiz said they believe Tagalog could be useful for students interested in international work.
"Tagalog is sort of a fusion of East Asian languages and Spanish, because the Philippines was under Spanish influence for 300 years," Jiz said. "It's a very versatile language and can be a great help if someone is interested in Asian languages or European ones."
Krueger pointed to the University's recent efforts to increase its global presence as a reason to expand language studies at Brown.
"Internationalization is the buzz word right now," he said. "I can't imagine internationalization without language study."
