Linguistics

Born in Malaysia, Xin Yi Lim was raised in a family where English, Malay, Mandarin and Cantonese were all spoken regularly – but that was merely a jumping off point for her multilingual talents.

The University of Toronto student, who will officially graduate this fall, is conversationally proficient in 11 languages – five more than are required for a person to be described as a hyperpolyglot.

In addition to the five languages spoken by her family, Lim now also speaks Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Turkish and Swahili.

@uoft Meet #UofTGrad24 Xin Yi Lim, who speaks 11 languages 🗣️ Lim is set to graduate this week with a master’s in Hispanic linguistics with a collaborative specialization in diaspora and transnational studies from the department of Spanish and Portuguese in the Faculty of Arts and Science. Originally from Malaysia, Lim says she fell in love with Toronto’s diverse community and hopes to continue living in the city. Following fall convocation, she hopes to pursue a career that combines her passions for graphic design and languages. Discover the full story via our link in bio or at uoft.me/b1j. #UofT #convocation #polyglot #hyperpolyglot ♬ original sound - University of Toronto

And the list continues to grow.

“Languages have opened doors to so many friendships and work opportunities for me,” Lim says. “Learning them is a genuine way of creating connection.”

As part of her master's degree in Hispanic linguistics with a collaborative specialization in diaspora and transnational studies from the department of Spanish and Portuguese in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Lim examined how Spanish evolves and changes for bilingual Colombians in Toronto.

Her linguistic journey began at the age of 12, when she began studying Spanish and joined a team that competed in language competitions.

In addition to language, Lim also competed in figure skating as a member of the Malaysian junior national team. In fact, it was her skating career that inspired her to learn Turkish – after encountering the Turkish national team, and their language, at a training camp in Switzerland.

Lim didn’t intend to focus on languages and linguistics when she arrived at U of T. She initially enrolled in life sciences with the intention of becoming a cardiac surgeon. But it wasn't long before she switched to a specialist program in Spanish.

A key turning point came when she took a course on linguistic varieties of Spanish taught by Professor Laura Colantoni. “She’s an amazing professor and her course was so intriguing, so I decided to pursue linguistics and took more courses with her,” says Lim, who earned an honours bachelor of arts in Spanish with a specialist in Hispanic linguistics and a minor in Latin American studies in 2023.

Along the way, she challenged herself by taking a new language course every year: French, Turkish, Portuguese, Italian and Swahili.

She didn’t need to take a course for Indonesian, though. “Because my dad worked in Indonesia for about 15 years, we picked that up too,” she says.

Lim has competed in and taught figure skating in both Malaysia and Canada

While she added to her list of languages, Lim also advanced her prowess in skating as a member of the Varsity Blues figure skating team in 2020 and 2021. She also holds a 1st Kyu in Kyokushin karate and is a bartender, mixologist and graphic designer.

Going forward, Lim hopes to continue skating professionally, including by performing internationally as a skater with Disney on Ice.

And, no surprise, she also plans to continue expanding her range of languages.

“When you learn another language, you’re really expanding your cognitive load — and that in turn helps you learn your next language,” says Lim, who describes being able to converse in 11 languages as feeling “like I have 11 channels in my brain.”

She adds that the biggest benefit has been her ability to connect with more people and cultures. “Nelson Mandela said, ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart,’” she says.

“After I learned that saying, I never saw languages in the same light. I realized that even if I could only say a couple of words in somebody else’s language, it would let them know how much time, compassion and effort I have for understanding other cultures.”

Next on her list? Arabic. “I’m so interested to learn it. It’s one of the most diverse and popular languages in Toronto, but the script is really challenging,” Lim says.

“That one requires time.”

‘The name is who they are’: How convocation readers train to pronounce grads’ names

rahul.kalvapalle — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 22:10:11 +0000

‘The name is who they are’: How convocation readers train to pronounce grads’ names rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 11/07/2023 - 17:10

Topic

Our Community

Convocation 2023

Faculty of Arts & Science

Linguistics

Hearing your name read aloud inside Convocation Hall is a moment of pride and significance for students graduating from the University of Toronto.

That’s why U of T puts special effort into helping readers – the people who read the names of graduating students at convocation ceremonies – prepare for the challenge of trying to pronounce thousands of names correctly.

“Our graduates, especially at a big university like U of T, come from all over the world – and their names come with them,” says Elizabeth Cowper, a professor emerita in the department of linguistics in the Faculty of Arts & Science who is one of U of T’s reader trainers.

“The name is who they are.”

The training includes how to recognize names’ likely places of origin, avoid common errors and detect pronunciation clues.

“We give them pronunciation keys; we give them a booklet where they might be able to recognize some of the common traps,” says Christina Kramer, a reader trainer and a professor emerita in the department of Slavic languages and literatures.

She adds that, while readers might not get every single name right, “What we want to happen is that every student who crosses the stage feels that the person reading the names has given due consideration to the pronunciation of their name.”

In the weeks leading up to the ceremonies, graduating students also have the option of sending information about their name pronunciations – or a recording of how they pronounce their names – to the Office of Convocation (see this FAQ for details). They can also add phonetic advice to the card the reader will use at the ceremony.

“We appreciate the hard work our students have put into their studies and getting to this moment,” says Samantha Smith, acting director of the Office of Convocation. “We want to honour that by ensuring the name they hear as they are called onto the stage is their name, said correctly.”

Watch a video about U of T's training for convocation readers

U of T linguistics prof researches Torontonians' unique speaking style

siddiq22 — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 19:12:49 +0000

U of T linguistics prof researches Torontonians' unique speaking style

siddiq22 Mon, 07/31/2023 - 15:12

Cutline

Derek Denis, an associate professor of linguistics at U of T Mississauga, is researching how Toronto's diverse languages are influencing English locally (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Subheadline

Derek Denis and his students are examining Toronto's city slang and distinctive accent

Do you say "Toe-rohn-to" or "Tronno"? And what about that old stereotype that Canadians tend to say "aboot"?

While such distinctions in how we speak English are subtle and may be explained by a difference in dialect or variety, it’s how these subtle changes occur in a multicultural city like Toronto that interests Derek Denis, an associate professor of linguistics in the department of language studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

While teaching one of his courses, Denis told his students about Multicultural London English (MLE), a multiethnolect – a way of speaking with influences from multiple different languages – studied by linguists.

A subsequent conversation with a student led him to wonder if Toronto also had its own multiethnolect.

Denis and U of T Mississauga students Vidhya Elango, Nur Sakinah Nor Kamal, Maria Velasco and Srishti Prashar conducted research and found that the Greater Toronto Area does indeed have its own multiethnolect – which they call Multicultural Toronto English (MTE).

It’s a way of speaking that arises from a variety of unique features present in Toronto, including the vast diversity of languages spoken in the city. The team's findings were published earlier this year in the Journal of English Linguistics.

“I was telling [students] about the development of a new pronoun – which is the ‘man’ pronoun – in MLE,” Denis says.

“Pronouns are slow to change linguistically, so the fact there is this new pronoun was exciting, and one of my students put her hand up and said, ‘We have that here, too.’”

An example of this is, “I almost missed the TTC, but mans made it here anyway,” where “mans” replaces the pronoun “I.” Variations heard in Toronto and in London include man, mans and mandem.

Indeed, “mans,” “Tronno“ and other such terms are features of MTE, Denis says.

The study found that among immigrant youth communities in the Greater Toronto Area, the way vowels are pronounced differed from previous reports of how Canadian English is spoken.

While similar phenomena have been documented in European cities, there hasn’t been a lot of research on the subject in North America, prompting Denis' interest in looking into the way Torontonians speak.

“I grew up in Scarborough, in a pretty diverse area,” Denis says. “You hear all kinds of English around you, all kinds of accents. So I started looking into this in an academic way.”

Denis’ team of work-study students collected data through interviews of youth in ethnolinguistically diverse regions of the GTA, which involved a set of questions to answer, casual conversations and a word list to read aloud.

“We noticed particular vowel realizations,” he says. “So, we created a list of about 100 or so words that had those target sounds in them.”

The researchers investigated a mix of vocalic phenomena, but two of them – “Canadian raising” (for example, the difference in the way Canadians and Americans pronounce “about”) and “goat” monophthongization – particularly caught Denis’ attention.

“Canadian raising affects two vowels,” Denis says. “When the vowel is followed by a certain sound, the realization of that vowel is a little bit higher in the mix. It’s subtle.”

However, the not-so-subtle “aboot” is what Americans hear us say, as the phenomenon doesn’t exist in American English. Denis says the presence of such a stereotype results in a social meaning attached to how the word is pronounced. As a result, his team's research shows that young Torontonians are trying to avoid pronouncing the word in any way resembling “aboot.”

As for the phenomenon of “goat” monophthongization, Denis explains that a monophthong is a sound formed by one vowel in a syllable – like “cat” – while a diphthong is a sound formed with a combination of two vowels in a syllable, like “coin,“ or the subtler “goat.”

“It’s the process of a vowel that is normatively produced as a diphthong becoming a monophthong, so there’s less movement of the tongue,” Denis says.

Denis and his team found that in MTE, the youth surveyed exhibited “monophthongization” – a two-vowel syllable turning into a one-vowel syllable – with the word “goat,” where the “oa” sound became more of an “oh” sound: “goat versus “goht.”

“‘Goat’ monophthongization is probably the phenomenon we can most clearly link from an influence from Jamaica patois,” Denis says. “The vowel in Jamaican patois is not quite exactly the same, but we can trace the influence to it.”

MTE results from what linguists called a “feature pool,” where several variables influence how a language slowly changes over time. In Toronto, some of those features might be associated with ethnic diversity, such as with the “goat” example. But some features arise from the authenticity of being from a particular community – such as in the difference of how the word “Toronto“ is pronounced within the city itself or by others from elsewhere.

The results of the team's research showed a great deal of variability in the ways of speaking among youth in immigrant communities – the result of various changes and developments in how English is spoken across Toronto, notes Denis, who continues his research on MTE and plans to publish a book on the findings.

“It’s like this mixture that people pick and choose from,” Denis says. “That’s why I hesitate to call this a dialect because it’s not exactly that – it’s a pool of features that individuals use to develop their own linguistic style.”

In U of T’s new ASL course, students learn how to sign – and better understand Deaf culture

geoff.vendeville — Mon, 16 May 2022 16:10:48 +0000

In U of T’s new ASL course, students learn how to sign – and better understand Deaf culture

geoff.vendeville Mon, 05/16/2022 - 12:10

Cutline

(Photo by Daisy Daisy/iStock/Getty Images)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Linguistics

U of T Scarborough

Soon after Ariya Ahona began learning American Sign Language (ASL) at the University of Toronto, she realized that language would be only one of the many things she’d be learning.

That’s because in instructor David Wiesblatt’s class, students learn not only to sign, but to understand the values, norms and etiquette associated with Deaf culture. “If I hadn’t taken this class,” Ahona says, “I’d never have had the opportunity to see this whole other side of life.”

Demand for sign language classes has been growing rapidly over the last several years: the Modern Language Association reported that in 2016 it was the third most-studied language in U.S. universities, behind only English and French. In popular culture, ASL is seemingly everywhere: from Deaf West Theatre's revival of Spring Awakening on Broadway; to the reality show Deaf U, set at Gallaudet University in Washington D.C., a college for the Deaf and hard of hearing; to the movie CODA, this year's best-picture winner.

Wiesblatt, a sessional lecturer in the department of linguistics in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, has taught ASL at campuses across the country and has long worked as an advocate for high-quality instruction and Deaf cultural awareness. This year, Wiesblatt, who is Deaf, taught the Faculty of Arts & Science's first-ever ASL course, LIN211H1: American Sign Language I.

David Wiesblatt has taught ASL at campuses across the country and has worked as an advocate for high-quality instruction and Deaf cultural awareness (photo courtesy of David Weisblatt)

Wiesblatt began tutoring students privately at the age of 14. These days, in addition to teaching ASL at the high school and university level, he also works as an interpreter. “My mom was my role model,” he says in a video relay interview. “She was a successful Deaf woman who communicated in ASL, and a real inspiration for me.”

His class introduces students to Deaf culture, which is also beginning to be depicted more accurately in mainstream movies and TV shows. “Back in the day, if you saw Deaf characters they were struggling as Disabled people; they were not respected as members of a cultural minority,” he says. “The attitude has shifted now that people are more informed, and I think that shift is drawing people to learn the language that is used.”

Wiesblatt stresses that learning ASL requires commitment. Students must learn not just vocabulary but also a different grammar and syntax – ASL grammar, in fact, has more in common with French than English. “It’s a fast-paced course and I have high expectations of the students,” Wiesblatt says. “It takes a tremendous amount of practice to become fluent.”

ASL signers use their faces even more than they do their hands. The position of your eyebrows and mouth are key to proper expression – a difficulty that ASL signers have had to contend with as people mask up during the pandemic. “Seventy per cent of ASL is on the face, with only 30 per cent on the hands,” Wiesblatt says. “And the grammar is all on the face – so when a mask obstructs that, the grammar is compromised.” Still, he notes that COVID-19 has also increased awareness of and interest in ASL, thanks to frequent TV announcements.

Wiesblatt says he isn't surprised so many non-Deaf people have shown an interest in learning ASL. “It really opens up a different sort of processing for students, and shows them a new way of learning,” he says, adding that in the workplace “the applications are endless.”

In any public-facing profession, ASL could be useful for professionals looking to communicate not only with Deaf clients, but those who cannot communicate verbally. In recent times, there has also been a push toward teaching infants sign language, so they can communicate before they learn to talk. The demand for ASL interpreters is growing, too.

A&S alumnus Michael Samakayi an international grad, left his mark on U of T with an ASL club & course.

U of T Scarborough has offered an ASL course since 2007. In the Faculty of Arts & Science, the impetus for the course came largely from the efforts of Deaf graduate Michael Samakayi. The Mastercard Foundation Scholar from Zambia founded an ASL club on campus and approached the faculty with a proposal for an undergraduate class.

Ahona, the student in Wiesblatt's class, says she's learned a lot in the span of a semester. “One of the goals is to be able to have a conversation, and even tell stories,” says Ahona, who is majoring in life sciences as a member of University College.

“With everything being online now, we’ve become so used to being able to rewind and fast forward. It makes listening hard to process and since it has multiple inputs, ASL feels easier to understand in a way.”

Ahona especially appreciates what Wiesblatt’s class has taught her about Deaf culture. “When we started, we didn’t go straight into ASL,” she says. “We spent a couple of classes just talking about the cultural aspect.” She says she is much more sensitive to the difficulties that Deaf people experience in a world built to serve the needs of the hearing.

“All these different conversations came up in class, and I was like, “Wow, this entire world has always existed. And now we’re finally starting to see it emerge.’”

By learning Kanien'kéha, U of T grad Andrea Johns launched a journey of self-discovery

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:26:40 +0000

By learning Kanien'kéha, U of T grad Andrea Johns launched a journey of self-discovery

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 06/23/2021 - 13:26

Cutline

Andrea Johns, whose great-grandfather survived a residential school, says learning the Mohawk language Kanien'kéha connected her with a part of her heritage that was taken away from her family (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Topic

Centre for Indigenous Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

Linguistics

Woodsworth College

Andrea Johns heard the Mohawk language, Kanien'kéha, for the first time when she took an introductory class on the subject in her second year at the University of Toronto.

Yet, the words somehow felt familiar.

The experience reminded her of something Murray Sinclair, the Ojibwe former senator, judge, and head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, said during a visit to campus a few years ago: When you speak your language, your ancestors wake up.

“It’s a blood memory,” says Johns, who is Kanien'kehá:ha/Mohawk, and a student in U of T’s Indigenous studies specialist program.

“Your ancestors are speaking through you.”

Through hours of practice, homework and oral exams – even a Star Wars-inspired instructional YouTube video, Johns developed a conversational-level proficiency in Kanien'kéha. That makes her the only person in her family to speak the language of her great-grandparents, she says.

The Woodsworth College student’s journey of self-discovery at U of T began as a mature student after years of waiting tables and bartending. At age 29, Johns decided to attend university – more than a decade after finishing high school – in a bid to challenge herself and launch a career that involved helping Indigenous communities.

Now, as she prepares to graduate this week, Johns says her time at U of T gave her a deeper understanding of her identity, heritage and the language of her ancestors.

Johns entered U of T through the academic bridging program, which helps students acquire the essay-writing, research and other skills necessary to make the transition to first-year university courses in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

In her first year on campus, she won an award for a paper she wrote about the links between residential schools and the over-representation of Indigenous Peoples in prison. Like countless other Indigenous Peoples in Canada, Johns says she has a personal connection to the residential school system.

“Almost every Indigenous person that I know is in some way connected to the residential school system, whether they’re aunts, uncles, parents or grandparents,” she says. “They face intergenerational trauma because of the residential schools.”

Johns’s paternal great-grandfather Gowandehsonh lived in Six Nations of the Grand River. The reserve, near Brantford, Ont., is home to people of the six Haudenosaunee nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, Onondaga and Tuscarora.

Johns says Gowandehsonh was fluent in all six Haudenosaunee languages, although he seldom spoke any of them after experiencing abuse at the Anglican-run Mohawk Institute Residential School in Brantford, one of the oldest, continuously operated residential schools in Canada.

She says her great-grandfather was forced to attend the boarding school from his childhood to teenage years. Survivors of the school say they were fed oatmeal daily and still call it “the Mush Hole.” In 1972, two years after the institute closed, it became the Woodland Cultural Centre, home to a museum, Indigenous art exhibitions and a language revitalization department. After a recent search of the grounds of a residential school in Kamloops, B.C. uncovered the remains of 215 children, members of Six Nations called for a similar investigation in Brantford.

For Johns and her family, one of the many consequences of residential schooling was a disruption in the chain of inheritance of Indigenous languages, traditional knowledge and shared history. She says she began to slowly reconnect with her roots in elementary school in Fort Erie, Ont., by getting involved with the Fort Erie Native Friendship Centre and attending her first pow wow at the former SkyDome (now Rogers Centre), where dancers performed under the stadium’s open roof.

But it wasn’t until she spoke Kanien'kéha for the first time in Ryan DeCaire’s class at U of T that she felt truly in touch with her heritage.

“It’s just something inexplicable,” she says. “I felt more connected to the worldview and histories of the Mohawk people.”

Ryan DeCaire, an assistant professor at U of T's Centre for Indigenous Studies and department of linguistics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, says there are only about 1,000 fluent speakers of Mohawk dialects alive today (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Johns says she was particularly drawn to the imagery of place names in the Mohawk language. For example, Tkaronto, the Mohawk root word for Toronto, translates to “the place in the water where the trees are standing.” Johns also notes that there is less of a “sense of possessiveness” in the verb-based Mohawk language than in English. Instead of “my mother,” she says, a Mohawk speaker would say, “ake’nihsténha,” which literally means “she mothers me.”

“When you speak these kinds of languages, and language shapes thought, you stop thinking about the world and how you own things and more about how you relate to things in the world and how they relate to you,” Johns says.

In DeCaire, Johns found a teacher who had similarly developed a passion and proficiency with the language as an adult. The assistant professor at the Centre for Indigenous Studies and in the department of linguistics in the Faculty of Arts & Science was born and raised in Wáhta Kanien’kehá:ka Territory, east of Georgian Bay, and became fluent in the language through immersion-style learning and living with Elders. He joined U of T to teach an undergraduate class in Mohawk and help bring the language back from the brink of extinction.

At present, five Mohawk dialects are featured on UNESCO’s interactive atlas of the world’s endangered languages, with DeCaire estimating only about 1,000 fluent speakers are alive today – many of whom are older. Despite language revitalization efforts dating to the 1970s, “we’re still losing speakers faster than we’re making them,” he says. “To make positive steps in revitalizing the language, we have to concentrate on young adults.”

DeCaire’s course made such an impression on Johns that she established an Indigenous Languages Club, where students could learn and practise Mohawk and Anishinaabemowin. The group held several get-togethers, including a documentary film screening, before COVID-19 resulted in restrictions on in-person gatherings last year.

In addition to introducing her to the language of her great-grandfather, Johns says the Indigenous studies program at U of T taught her about treaties and other Indigenous Peoples around the world. For three months, she studied at Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga – New Zealand's Māori Centre of Research Excellence – on a Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Scholarship. In Toronto, she also took an Indigenous music class in which students made their own hand drum from raw hide and deer skin. She was one of two recipients of the President’s Award for Outstanding Indigenous Student of the Year in 2019.

Earlier this year, she landed a job with the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, where she sits on a committee on Indigenous food sovereignty and helps Indigenous clients fulfil educational and employment goals.

Johns says her learning journey is far from over. She’s planning a possible return to U of T for graduate studies in Indigenous trauma and resiliency at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. She’s also teaching Kanien'kéha to her young niece and nephew.

“My great-grandparents were very persistent in believing that education was the way forward to take control of our own education,” Johns says.

“There weren’t many opportunities back then. I think they would be very proud to see I used education to improve my life and others’.”

Indigenous grads share stories of self-discovery at First Nations House ceremony

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 28 May 2021 20:13:21 +0000

Indigenous grads share stories of self-discovery at First Nations House ceremony

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 05/28/2021 - 16:13

Cutline

U of T's First Nations House celebrated Indigenous students who are graduating, or marking other significant achievements in their academic careers, during a virtual ceremony this week (images courtesy of First Nations House)

Topic

Centre for Indigenous Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

First Nations House

Indigenous

Linguistics

With drums, song and air hugs, the University of Toronto’s First Nations House celebrated Indigenous students who are either graduating next month, or who have completed another important milestone in their academic careers.

Students and their families cheered and applauded as the names and photos of the Class of 2021 appeared on screen during a virtual celebration this week.

Robin Rice, who completed U of T’s transitional year program designed for adults aiming to qualify for university, said she was grateful to First Nations House for supporting her return to school after she dropped out at age 16.

“I started TYP in 2018 and it was a journey all about who I am, where I come from, what I’m supposed to do in life and where I’m supposed to be,” said Rice, who is Ojibway and whose family comes from Wasauksing First Nation.

“This journey has opened up my voice so much.”

Rice added that she plans to continue her education at U of T in Indigenous studies and social work, with the long-term goal of working in child welfare.

While the annual ceremony was held virtually for the second year in a row due to ongoing pandemic restrictions, Michael White, the director of First Nations House, said it was essential to keep the tradition going.

As a band member of M'Chigeeng First Nation who became the first in his family to graduate from university when he earned a degree in anthropology from U of T, White says he is well aware of the significance of convocation for many Indigenous students.

“When I was a kid in Toronto and I walked through U of T, not in my wildest dreams did I think I would’ve attended this school, graduated from this school,” he said. “It’s very common for Indigenous students not to feel a sense of inclusion in this space.”

Next year, staff at First Nations House hope to welcome students back to a building, which has received significant upgrades over the past year. Carpets and windows have been replaced, walls were repainted and the kitchen equipped with new appliances. Space was also created on the first floor for workshops and other events.

The virtual convocation event for the Class of 2021 was organized by Tash Naveau, interim student life co-ordinator, and was emceed by Tyler Pennock, a writer, poet and U of T graduate of Cree and Métis heritage.

The ceremony’s keynote address was delivered by Alan Corbiere, a M’Chigeeng historian, U of T alumnus and assistant professor at York University. He reminisced about his time at U of T, where he met Kahontakwas Diane Longboat, the founder of First Nations House.

“After attending the programming offered by [Indigenous] student services as well as First Nations House and listening to the Elders and visiting scholars, I left U of T to continue my journey to discover more about being an Anishinaabe,” Corbiere said.

Before he joined York University, he set up an Anishinaabemowin revival program at M’Chigeeng’s Lakeview School, the Manitoulin Expositor reported.

For Andrea Johns, who graduates this June with a degree in Indigenous studies, book and media studies and creative expression and society, studying at U of T also involved a process of self-discovery.

She said her great-grandparents were placed in residential schools and made to feel ashamed of their heritage. So, with the help of classes taught by Ryan DeCaire, an assistant professor in the Centre for Indigenous Studies and the department of linguistics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Johns became the first in two generations of her family to learn her ancestral language: Kanien’kéhai. She founded the Indigenous Languages Club, which offers drop-in lessons on Mohawk and Anishinaabemowin. She also discovered a passion for beading and taught her sister.

With her five-year-old niece watching the graduation ceremony on Zoom, Johns said, “We’re setting up the next generation to do the things that our ancestors would have wanted for us.”

Fancy, but not too fancy: Linguistics researcher cracks open the complex language of craft beer

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 17:10:28 +0000

Fancy, but not too fancy: Linguistics researcher cracks open the complex language of craft beer

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 02/04/2021 - 12:10

Cutline

(photo by Maskot via Getty Images)

Sean McNeely

Topic

Breaking Research

Faculty of Arts & Science

Graduate Students

Linguistics

Research & Innovation

Do you remember when a beer was just a beer and there were no fancy names or eloquent descriptions of flavour on the side of the can?

Times have changed. With the emergence of a booming craft beer market in North America, a complicated new language has emerged – one that attempts to pair the connoisseurship associated with beer’s egalitarian appeal.

Lex Konnelly, a PhD candidate in the University of Toronto’s department of linguistics, in the Faculty of Arts & Science, explored “craft beer talk” in a paper recently published in the academic journal Language & Communication.

“As a craft beer drinker myself, I have a personal interest in the industry,” they said. “And I noticed a lot of meta-linguistic discussion about craft beer talk, even in my own social networks. I was really interested in just what exactly was happening there – like what features people were picking up on that came across as pretentious or elitist, for example. And what flew under the radar.”

While exploring how the language developed was interesting enough, Konnelly said they wanted to delve even deeper.

“I wanted to think about how these formulations, these descriptions of products, work to perpetuate and reinforce various types of inequalities – particularly class inequality – which is a central interest for me in terms of how we talk about these sort of artisanal things.”

Konnelly focused on the local craft beer scene, exploring small craft breweries in the Greater Toronto Area. The websites of breweries were reviewed, as were the descriptions of the companies themselves and the language used to describe their beer.

Konnelly noted that much of the eloquent and descriptive language used around craft beer mirrors that of wine, “which is not surprising, particularly for linguists who are familiar with how people talk about food.”

In other words, when we describe the taste of what we’re eating or drinking, we often refer to things that aren’t actually ingredients in the food or drink we’re consuming. Among serious craft beer drinkers, for example, there are expressive descriptions about “hints,” “notes” and “traces” of flavour, or combinations of flavours.

“There's this kind of specificity that happens when we're assessing the flavor of something,” said Konnelly. “So, it's not just citrus, it's tropical citrus – like citrus on its own is somehow not fancy enough.”

This is part of how beer is subtly constructed to be fancy in a linguistic sense, Konnelly added, since not only is the consumer expected to recognize “citrusness” in the beverage, but they are also expected to be able to distinguish between regular citrus and tropical citrus.

This particular practice is heavily borrowed from wine, according to Konnelly.

But there are key differences between wine and craft beer language.

“For the most part, when we think about how people talk about wine, it is very serious,” Konnelly said. “It's intense and it's very particular. Craft beer wants to borrow some of these features of how we talk about wine in order to say, ‘Hey, beer is a fancy thing, beer can be a fancy, elite commodity.’ But, at the same time, ‘We don't want to take ourselves quite that seriously.’”

The result is a language that wobbles along a tightrope that includes both elitist aspects and a desire to reach a wide audience.

“And so that's something that I found to be really fascinating about how Toronto brewers, in particular, constructed beer as this simultaneously fancy, but also egalitarian thing,” Konnelly said.

Take the description of a popular local pale ale as an example: “The minute you crack your can, an aroma of grapefruit, mango and pine hit you in the face; like a beaver slapping his tail on a pristine small body of water in Ontario.”

Yet, while the language of craft bear may strive to seem down-to-earth, it’s a landscape that’s also perceived to be dominated by white men who can afford expensive beer, potentially creating gender and socio-economic divides.

“So while you can market craft beer as something for everybody, that raises a really big question of who exactly everybody is,” Konnelly said.

“At the end of the day, access to the language really depends on who can afford that access in the first place. And so, even if you change the language of how craft beer is described, that might not necessarily change that you have to pay $8 for a pint. The way we talk about craft beer is part of how we justify its value.”

The higher price tag – along with the involvement of the craft industry in the gentrification of neighborhoods – suggests that craft beer is becoming an increasingly important part of the hipster or yuppie lifestyle, where authenticity and locality are important selling points – all of which can feed into class, race and gender biases, according to Konnelly.

“This is part of a broader story that connects ... to how we think about artisanal markets in general,” they said. “There's a class divide that continues to widen in access to these commodities.”

U of T undergraduate students track variation in languages spoken by Toronto's immigrant communities

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 16:46:04 +0000

U of T undergraduate students track variation in languages spoken by Toronto's immigrant communities

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 02/24/2020 - 11:46

Cutline

U of T undergraduate students Mira Chow, Jonathan Ng and Kate Cheung examined variations in Cantonese pronunciation through the Heritage Language Variation and Change project – an initiative of the department of linguistics (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Jovana Jankovic

Topic

Global Lens

Resarch & Innovation

Faculty of Arts & Science

Humanities

Innis College

Linguistics

Undergraduate Students

University College

Woodsworth College

Famous for its ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity, Toronto is an ideal location for examining if, how and why languages change across generations of immigrants and their descendants.

Three undergraduate students in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science recently set out to examine variations in Cantonese pronunciation through the Heritage Language Variation and Change (HLVC) project, an initiative of U of T’s department of linguistics spearheaded by Professor Naomi Nagy.

The mandate of the HLVC is to collect and analyze linguistic data from ten languages – from Korean to Tagalog – to examine how they change after they are imported to Canada and passed down to successive generations.

“Our goal was to look at how the Cantonese language changes between different generations of speakers in Toronto versus in Hong Kong,” says Mira Chow, a third-year Innis College student who is pursuing a specialist in anthropology with focus on society, culture and language, as well as a minor in physiology.

The student researchers focused on so-called “lazy pronunciation” in Cantonese – more formally known as “denasalization” – where the “n” and “l” sounds at the beginning of some words are interchanged.

“We noticed that in very common words, denasalization was taking place,” says Chow of the idea that sparked the project.

However, the group’s findings were counterintuitive. They initially assumed that “lazy pronunciation” might be more common in Toronto than in Hong Kong, since the stereotype is that a language somehow “degrades” in a new country.

“To our surprise, this type of pronunciation actually started in Hong Kong and occurs at a higher rate there than it does here in Toronto,” says Jonathan Ng, a fourth-year University College student who is majoring in linguistics and sociology.

“We’re still not exactly sure why this is the case,” says Chow, “but some scholars suspect that frequency in use might be related to increased variation.”

In other words, common words subject to denasalization are used more frequently in the home country.

The student researchers are all native Cantonese speakers who grew up in Hong Kong and attended international schools where English was the language of instruction before coming to U of T. Nagy, who supervised the student project through the Research Opportunity Program, says heritage speakers and international students are invaluable to her research because of their linguistic skills and cultural experience.

“I don't speak a lot of the languages we’re looking at,” says Nagy. “But I can work collaboratively with students who have the necessary expertise – and the field of sociolinguistics and my research portfolio both grow.”

All three students are particularly interested in sociolinguistics – the subfield of linguistics that examines social and cultural variables in language.

“What drew me to this project, as an overseas student, is that I really get a sense of how my heritage language is different when I'm away from home,” says Kate Cheung, a third-year Woodsworth College student who is double majoring in anthropology’s society, culture and language stream as well as human geography.

“I'm very interested in questions about how to preserve culture and language after migration."

Ng also sees connections between the personal and the academic realms of the project.

“This project connected my identity and who I am with theories about language,” he says. “I learned a bit of Japanese growing up in Hong Kong, so I’m really interested in how people of the same ethnicity but different backgrounds come to speak the same language in different ways.”

Nagy initiated the project because of what she perceived as a gap in the field of sociolinguistics – one that was highlighted when she moved to Toronto after spending 12 years at the University of New Hampshire, which she calls “a very, very English-dominated university and state.”

“The field has been focused on variation and change in big North American majority languages – English, French, Spanish – that are supported by institutions like schools and media. It can be a very Western discipline, so we don't really know if variation and change work the same way in other languages that are spoken here in North America, because so few have been studied.”

“When I came to Toronto, I realized we could look at other languages fairly easily with people who live here,” says Nagy. “Is the Italian or the Korean or the Russian that is spoken by several generations of people here in Toronto a systematically different dialect from what is spoken in their home countries?”

The HLVC project is an ongoing and fast-growing one, and Nagy says she’s always happy to connect with students interested in contributing.

“Sometimes students say, ‘I’m sorry I can't work for you this summer professor because I'm going home and staying with my grandma in Italy.’ But I tell them: ‘Take a recorder with you!’”

The students presented their findings at the Arts & Science Undergraduate Research Forum, an interdisciplinary event showcasing undergraduate research conducted through the Research Opportunity Program, Research Excursion Program and International/Indigenous Course Module Program.

“What struck me is how people from different disciplines were actually interested in our project,” says Cheung. “It felt like a big accomplishment when people understood our work and saw how it might relate to them.”

“I'm still working on the HLVC, and there are a lot of unsolved questions,” says Cheung. “For example, how old is this particular variation in Cantonese? How has Cantonese been affected by other Chinese dialects with different roots?”

One thing is certain: there remain many more questions than answers, which means research opportunities for students of all levels in the project will continue to grow.

First-year U of T course shines a light on language-based discrimination

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 17:16:52 +0000

First-year U of T course shines a light on language-based discrimination

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 12/05/2019 - 12:16

Cutline

Most consider race, gender, religion or sexual orientation to be sources of discrimination, but U of T's Nathan Sanders teaches first-year students that language is also a "major factor in unjust social structures" (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Alexa Zulak

Topic

Our Community

Academics

Faculty of Arts & Science

Linguistics

New College

Trinity College

Undergraduate Students

Victoria College

When you think of social justice, you’re likely thinking about how some people are discriminated against because of their race, gender, sexual orientation or religion.

But you may not realize how language fits into these dynamics.

“A major factor in unjust social structures is language,” says Nathan Sanders, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Arts & Science’s department of linguistics at the University of Toronto.

“If you speak a prestigious – or even a neutral – variety of the local dominant language, you’ll have an easier time accessing various aspects of society than other people generally will.”

In Canada, this means someone who speaks “Torontonian English” may have better luck finding a job, getting help or being taken seriously than someone who might have a strong Newfoundland accent, someone who recently immigrated to Canada with only a few years of English under their belt or someone who communicates with American Sign Language.

The connection between language and society is something Sanders explores in his first-year foundations seminar on language and social justice this semester.

“Social justice is a broad term that covers a variety of ways of dealing with unjust social structures, from identifying what they are and how they work to educating people about them and working towards eliminating those unjust structures,” Sanders says.

He adds that language is not immune to those unjust structures.

“Languages and dialects are not all treated equally. Some are elevated to such a high degree that they’re taught in schools and give their speakers increased social power, while other ways of using language are denigrated, ridiculed, oppressed or even wiped out through cultural genocide,” he says.

“As linguists, we recognize the validity of all languages and the people who use them, so language-based social justice is a core tenet in linguistics.”

For Sanders, introducing these concepts to first-year students can help them challenge language-based injustice they come across in the world.

“First-year students often come into university with a lot of common misconceptions about how language works,” says Sanders. “These misconceptions often form the basis for justifying how language is used to construct and reinforce unjust social structures. So catching them early, when they are still developing as adults, helps them question these misconceptions and hopefully helps reduce language-based injustice in the world.”

Armed with knowledge from his seminar, Sanders says he hopes students will challenge language-based injustice they come across in the world (photo by Diana Tyszko)

With first-year foundations seminar classes capped at 25 students, courses like Sanders’s give new undergraduates the opportunity to experience fascinating – and sometimes controversial – subjects in small class settings that encourage analytical thinking and course participation.

For Dania Ahmed, a first-year student at New College, the course opened her eyes to new ways of thinking about language and its relationship to social justice.

“I’ve learned an immense amount in this class,” says Ahmed. “Our second class was one of the most eye-opening for me, shedding light on sign language and life for Deaf individuals. I had some prior knowledge of Deaf culture, but this class allowed me to see how inaccessible the world is. It infuriated me, but at the same time caused me to self-reflect and recognize many of the opportunities I take for granted.”

It's a sentiment echoed by Ahmed’s classmates.

“I never really considered language and linguistics as a factor affecting social justice,” says JH Han, a first-year student at Victoria College. “I thought of social justice in more of a racial, gender or status sense. But the name of the course made it sound that much more enticing to take.”

For other students, the class discussions have been equally thought-provoking.

“The class is really empowering, fascinating and has incredible group conversations,” says Micah Kalisch, a first-year student at Trinity College. “I’ve really enjoyed the content, readings and conversations about language and how it’s taught and shared.”

At the end of the day, Sanders hopes his students take away one lesson from his class.

“They shouldn’t use someone’s language as a reason to be a jerk,” he says.

“Society at large has mostly come to a collective understanding that we shouldn’t discriminate against someone because of their race, gender, religion, etc., but language-based injustice is still prevalent – even among progressive-minded people who care about social justice.

“It's not quite at the same level of awareness as some of these other categories, so I'm hoping that courses like this will help raise that awareness so that language-based discrimination can ultimately be viewed as equally pernicious as any other form of discrimination.”

Indigenous students at U of T honoured for efforts in language revitalization, health equity

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 20:16:41 +0000

Indigenous students at U of T honoured for efforts in language revitalization, health equity

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 11/21/2019 - 15:16

Cutline

Left to right: Tyee Fellows, Inuk Knowledge Keeper Naulaq LeDrew, U of T President Meric Gertler and Andrea Johns pose for a photo at First Nations House (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Awards

Centre for Indigenous Studies

Equity

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Arts & Science

Truth and Reconciliation

Undergraduate Students

Woodsworth College

When Andrea Johns started at the University of Toronto as a mature student in 2015, she wasn’t sure she had what it takes to attain a degree.

Everything seemed overwhelming and inaccessible, she said, to “people like me who grew up in poverty, people with mental health issues, people with little to no support, people who are Indigenous.”

Today, Johns is a fourth-year undergraduate student specializing in Indigenous studies and double-minoring in book and media studies and creative expression and society. She is also one of two recipients of the President’s Award for the Outstanding Indigenous Student of the Year – a recognition of her tireless advocacy for Indigenous language revitalization.

The award recognizes Indigenous students whose accomplishments transcend coursework and grades, and who demonstrate a commitment to giving back to their communities.

For Tyee Fellows, the other recipient of this year’s award, the accolade recognizes his passion for helping others and for being on track to become one of Canada’s few Inuit physicians.

Fellows completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology and zoology at the University of British Columbia before coming to U of T to attend medical school. A fourth-year student, he plans to continue advocating for equity and equality for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples alike.

Fellows and Johns were presented their awards by U of T President Meric Gertler during a ceremony at First Nations House last week.

“Both of you have skilfully balanced academic success with community engagement, service and advocacy on Indigenous issues,” said President Gertler, noting the two are joining the ranks of Indigenous students who have brought “a generous spirit of community service” to U of T.

President Gertler said the passion and drive of Indigenous students like Johns and Fellows are invaluable as U of T builds on the recommendations of its Truth and Reconciliation Steering Committee, works towards decolonization and fosters collaboration with Indigenous communities on key initiatives such as new scholarships and the creation of programs like the Master in Social Work, Indigenous Trauma and Resiliency offered by the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

“Above all, we aim to support and foster a vibrant and robust Indigenous presence on our campuses,” President Gertler said. “And as we undertake these endeavours, I have to say that we draw inspiration from the remarkable leadership of the two individuals that we’re honouring today.”

Fellows, a proud Inuvialuk/Caucasian, traces his interest in medicine to the influence of his father, an emergency physician.

“Seeing his day-to-day life within the field of medicine, I was able to really grasp the fulfilment in helping others,” said Fellows, whose heritage spans across Canada, with ancestors hailing from Nova Scotia, the Northwest Territories and British Columbia.

Fellows said he’s drawn to emergency medicine due to the fact that it demands both hands-on care as well as swift critical thinking, and serves as the first point of contact with the health-care system for many patients.

"The emergency department is the interface between the community and hospital," he said. "Many first impressions of the health-care system are developed here, especially for minority communities like the Indigenous people, and providing care at this interface is where I believe I can make the greatest impact."

Fellows said he’s particularly passionate about helping vulnerable people whose experiences in hospital emergency rooms often leave them feeling ostracized.

“The best thing I can provide to medicine is my pursuit towards understanding people’s fears and to provide security to them,” he said.

Fellows described the award as “deeply humbling” and emphasized his desire to advocate to both his communities that "health equity and equality will be realized between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples when we both demonstrate, by example, accountability in our accomplishments and failures, as well as practise forgiveness in one another.

“With time, our relationship will be so strong that the difference in health between our two groups will be impossible because we’ll be one.”

In her acceptance speech, Johns, who is Kanien'kehá:ha/Mohawk, Turtle Clan with ancestral roots at Six Nations of the Grand River, said education wasn’t highly valued in her family.

The great-granddaughter of residential school survivors, Johns said her family was too preoccupied with making ends meet and putting food on the table to prioritize education – yet her parents “instilled a love of reading, storytelling and a hard work ethic that has been embedded in my core beliefs.”

That love of learning saw Johns eventually make her way to U of T through the Millie Rotman Shime Academic Bridging Program at Woodsworth College, which helps students qualify for undergraduate degrees offered by the Faculty of Arts & Science.

She became involved with First Nations House and the Centre for Indigenous Studies, which she describes as “a warm light that I’ve revolved around during my time here,” and found a community that helped her connect more strongly with her culture than was accessible to her growing up.

That included learning the Kanien'kéha/Mohawk language – which hadn’t been spoken in her family in two generations – from Assistant Professor Ryan DeCaire of the Centre for Indigenous Studies and department of linguistics.

Johns’s passion for Indigenous language revitalization also saw her set up U of T’s Indigenous Languages Club, which offers drop-in language lessons for Mohawk and Anishinaabemowin, and helps Indigenous students find opportunities to engage with their language.

Johns says the highlight of her time at U of T was her three-month research placement at Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand's Māori Centre of Research Excellence, which was supported by the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Scholarship.

There, she completed a research project about Indigenous tattoo revitalization and its connection to cultural preservation. She says the work, the people she met and the places she explored made for “a life-changing experience.”

Going forward, Johns aims to attain fluency in the Mohawk language and contribute to the revitalization of Indigenous languages.

“I hope that one day I’ll be in a position to help other Indigenous students achieve their dreams, as I have mine,” she said. “There is still so much work that needs to be done at this institution and in this society to ensure that the next generation of Indigenous scholars can stand where I’m standing.

“I know that they, too, can reach for the stars, and then some.”