Turn Up the Languages Festival

What do you need to do?

This festival’s success depends on everyone’s participation—and it requires only a few minutes to prepare! We’ll give you a badge with a mouth/hands and an ear/eye, and a space underneath each where you’ll write down your language(s).

• The mouth/hands mean: “I can speak or sign to you in ……… [language or languages]
• The ear/eye means: “Please speak or sign to me in ……………[language or languages you understand at any level], even if I respond in English.”

What if you don’t speak/understand anything but English?

You can join still the fun! Just write “Any” underneath your ear and take a wild guess when someone speaks to you, or laugh, play, use your hands, or learn how to say or sign “hello” in different languages.

Would you like to help out?

We need participants and participant-trainers. Participant-trainers teach others about the festival. You would commit to attending a one-hour training session during the first week of September and hold two half-hour sessions during the first three weeks of September in student houses (students) or your offices (faculty/staff).

Who is organizing this festival?

A group of faculty, staff, and students from across campus came together to plan a week filled with connection, laughter, languages, and dialogue in celebration of our diverse community.

Join us and bring your friends along too! You can sign up anytime (but the sooner the better) online. We will send you the festival schedule and more information about where and when to pick up your badge.

You can also contact one of the coordinators: Christophe Golé, Reyes Lázaro, Abril Navarro.

Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Five College Center for World Languages, the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, Lewis Global Studies Center, Smith College libraries, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and the translation studies concentration.

Monday, September 30

Sign-Up on the Esplanade

10 a.m.–2 p.m., outside the Julia McWilliams Child ’34 Campus Center
A chance to sign up for the Turn Up the Languages Festival (September 30–October 4). Faculty, staff members, and students explain and demonstrate how it works.

Festival Kick-Off

5–6 p.m., Weinstein Auditorium
A celebratory kick-off with an explanation of the festival. There will be an opportunity to sign up. 

Tuesday, October 1

Sign-Up on the Esplanade

10 a.m.–2 p.m., outside the Julia McWilliams Child ’34 Campus Center
A chance to sign up for the Turn Up the Languages Festival (September 30–October 4). Faculty, staff members, and students explain and demonstrate how it works.

Story Time Across Languages

7–8 p.m., Boutelle-Day Poetry Center, Wright Hall 102
Story Time is an event where students from all over the world come together as a community to enjoy being read to, looking at picture books, and sharing stories from their homes with fellow students. Milk and cookies will add to the cozy atmosphere—pajamas are encouraged!

Wednesday, October 2

Sign-Up on the Esplanade

10 a.m.–1 p.m., outside the Julia McWilliams Child ’34 Campus Center
A chance to sign up for the Turn Up the Languages Festival (September 30–October 4). Faculty, staff members, and students explain and demonstrate how it works.

Friday, October 4

International Music and Dance Party

4–5:30 p.m., Chapin Lawn (rain location: Campus Center 103/104)
Join us for the International Music and Dance Party, where we’ll celebrate our languages and cultures through vibrant music, dance, and delicious snacks. Come experience the linguistic and cultural diversity on campus and enjoy an afternoon full of fun and connection.

Monday, October 7

Ross Perlin, “Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues”

5–6:30 p.m., Klingenstein Browsing Room, Neilson Library
Contemporary cities are the most linguistically diverse in history, even as half of the world’s 7000-plus languages are endangered. How did this happen, and what does it mean for the future of language? Ross Perlin, author of the new Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues, describes the race to document and support little-known languages, following six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities, from New York’s outer borough neighborhoods to villages on the other side of the world, to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages against the odds. He also explores the languages themselves and the particular challenges and opportunities for language documentation, maintenance, and revitalization in urban areas.

Ross Perlin is a linguist, writer, and translator focused on exploring and supporting linguistic diversity. His book Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues was published this year by Grove in the US and the UK. Since 2013 he has been Co-Director of the Endangered Language Alliance in New York. He also teaches linguistics at Columbia. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s, and elsewhere, and his first book Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy ignited a national conversation about unpaid work. He has an MA in Language Documentation and Description from SOAS and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Bern.