By Aaron Pan
你好, hola, привіт, xin chào, and こんにちは. Those are just a few of the many ways to say hello on Earth.
The United States of America is a diverse country with more than 350 languages spoken, according to the U.S. Census. Often called the “land of opportunity,” many immigrants flock to the U.S. in search for a better life.
What some people may be unaware of is that Delta also has diversity. Although English is most commonly spoken, you can find many Spanish speakers along with a few Vietnamese, Chinese, Ukrainian, Japanese, and other language speakers sprinkled throughout the school.
Sophomore Milla Kidd’s story began more than 20 years ago when her parents were living in Japan. They met each other through mutual friends and eventually married.
There was an issue. Her father was from Minnesota, and her mother was Japanese. They had to choose one country or the other. They moved together to Jackson, Mich. They lived there for 15 years before coming to Muncie. Living in a household with a Japanese and English speaker was the perfect environment for Milla to learn.
“I speak Japanese, and I learned it because my mom spoke it, and I just grew up with it,” she said. “My dad spoke English, so it wasn’t too hard, and it was pretty easy to pick up on it.”
She’s glad that she didn’t have to take any classes to learn English when she was younger, but even now she continues to learn Japanese due to its difficulty. Japanese is one of the many languages that doesn’t have a definite alphabet. Instead, every word is unique and written differently with different strokes.
Milla doesn’t just plan to vacation in Japan, in the future she would like to live there. However, she’ll need to do a little work.
“Their slang and their terms change a little bit,” she said. “Sometimes you might not understand what they’re saying, but most of the time, it’s easy.”
Sophomore Denys Krushenytskyi flew all around Europe to escape the Russo-Ukrainian war that started on Feb. 24, 2022 and is still on-going. As a result of the war, Denys came to America, where he became bilingual.
Denys speaks two languages, English and Ukrainian. Being in a new environment, there were multiple challenges that Denys had to face.
“It was difficult because I didn’t know any English, but I had a teacher helping me learn it, so it was a little easier,” he said.
There are still things that Denys wants to improve on.
“Yeah, sometimes they don’t understand what I’m saying because I pronounce things weird,” he said.
Although the future is uncertain, Denys hopes to one day use his language skills in English and Ukrainian to work for businesses as a translator.
Sophomore Tatianna Gomez-Lucero is confident in her language skills. Speaking both Spanish and English, she hopes to become an attorney and assist with translation for her clients.
Gomez-Lucero’s confidence in her language skills stems from her early introduction to languages.
“I grew up speaking Spanish,” she said. “I went to pre-school in Muncie to learn English.”
After elementary school, Gomez-Lucero was as fluent as any other student her age, earning a certificate in English fluency. For her, languages are important; they are a way of expression with different meanings.
Junior Cergio Diaz’s story begins in Texas, where his mother was born. For him, learning Spanish was a necessity to connect with his grandparents.
“My grandparents can’t speak any English, so in order to talk to them I had to learn Spanish,” he said. “I didn’t really learn it, I just grew up with it like how Americans grow up around English.”
Even though he’s both proficient and fluent in Spanish, Diaz always learns new words. He does struggle with communication among other Spanish speakers.
There are two main types of Spanish speakers, LATAM Spanish (Latin American) and Spain Spanish.
“Where you’re in Mexico, people speak a different type of Spanish,” he said. “Here at Delta, they teach you Spain Spanish, so some of the words that Mrs. May tries to teach us, the students, are a little different from what I use.”
As a fluent Spanish speaker, he understands why some students at Delta struggle with learning Spanish. There are two Spanish teachers at Delta. Mrs. Churchill teaches Spanish I and II, and Mrs. May teaches Spanish II, III, and IV.
“I feel like it’s a lot harder especially with both the teachers being different,” he said. “It’s a big step up from Churchill to May. I think it’s a lot harder to learn Spanish from American students’ point of view. “
As both a fluent Spanish speaker and teacher, Spanish teacher Mrs. Churchill understands the struggles of some students who want to learn Spanish.
She remembers the times when she herself was a student, sitting at a desk in Spanish class at Cowan High School. After high school, she continued her path into becoming a Spanish teacher and eventually landing into college-level Spanish classes.
She graduated from Ball State with a degree in Spanish education, and also worked with the Department of Migrant Education.
However, her path was full of bumps along the way.
“Sometimes when my professors spoke very fast, it was hard for me to understand, especially with their accent,” she said. “It can be really intimidating.”
There are still obstacles for her, even today as an educator.
“A lot of students don’t want to be in there because it’s required for college credits,” she said.
She believes that instructors need enthusiasm, even when they want to take the easy way out and not teach to the best of their abilities. To her, languages are like a muscle; if you don’t use it, you lose it.
Freshman Alexis Nguyen’s story is no different than most immigrants. About 25 years ago her parents left Vietnam behind to pursue the many promises that America offered — superior education and quality of life. They moved to Indiana, where she was born. Nguyen speaks both English and Vietnamese, but her fluency in Vietnamese has deteriorated severely after adapting to America. She even describes her Vietnamese as a little “broken.”
“I grew up in a Vietnamese household, so they just spoke Vietnamese,” she said. “That was kind of just from influence from my family. I lost my fluency, but I can still speak it well.”
For her, learning English was initially a struggle due to the differences in the two languages. In Vietnamese, the language is spoken with multiple filler words including “yeah” and “no.” (“vâng” and “không”) Due to this, she struggled a bit in pre-school before eventually picking English up in elementary school.
She wasn’t the only one to struggle with learning languages. Her parents immigrated to America without any English fluency. However, as time went on they gradually learned more and more English with the help of friends and family.
Senior Lina Pan doesn’t remember a lot about her early childhood. Born in Eugene, Oregon, it was an unusual place to raise a child. In Eugene, her parents owned a Chinese restaurant.
Due to how busy their worklife was, they were unable to adequately raise her. Shortly after Lina was born she was flown out to Fuzhou, China in the Fujian province where she lived for the first 4 years of her life with her grandparents.
In Fuzhou, Lina gradually learned Mandarin (Chinese) from her grandparents and the people in her neighborhood. After she was 4, she moved back to America, but in a whole new location — the small town of Albany, Ind. As she gradually assimilated into the American lifestyle, her ability to speak Chinese slowly faded.
“English is my best language since I’ve been speaking it since I was 5 very regularly” she said. ”At this point, I am probably only able to speak Mandarin at a conversational level, simply because there weren’t any sort of, you know, Chinese kids around to practice with or talk to with my Mandarin.”
Her parents noticed her decline in fluency and wanted her to take classes to re-learn Chinese.
“My parents decided to enroll me in an online class. It was called LingoAce,” she said. “It was supposed to help me learn grammatical structures better. It was a one-on-one online class with a tutor that taught me Chinese.”
Lina didn’t enjoy her Chinese classes that occurred twice a week, every week. After a month, she quit due to the difficulty.
There are likely more stories similar to Lina due to the sheer difficulty of the Chinese language.
The U.S. State Department lists Chinese (Mandarin) as a category IV language, the most difficult category, category I being the easiest. According to the State Department, category IV languages such as Chinese take approximately 88 weeks or 2200 class hours to learn fluently. In comparison, Spanish, a category I language, only requires 24-30 weeks or 600-750 class hours to achieve fluency.
In the summer of 2024, Lina’s family decided to take a vacation to China, the first time she’s been back in 14 years. They visited mainland China and Hong Kong. She doubts she’ll live in China in the future, but doesn’t rule out the possibility.
Living amongst the locals was about as difficult as she expected.
“At the level of Mandarin I’m at, I’m probably more at a child’s level,” she said. “If I were to ever go back to mainland China, I would definitely have a little difficulty communicating, unless it was in an emergency.”
