Wasting no time, Western lecturer Eduardo Engelsing  begins his lesson on Latin, in Latin.  None of the students speak the language, and they have to rely on physical and contextual cues to understand what Engelsing is saying and writing on the board. 

In less than 30 minutes, the students learn to communicate with Engelsing and each other with rudimentary Latin salutations and introductions, all without explanations in English.

Foreign languages can be daunting and mysterious, but the language crash courses offered by Western’s linguistics club can expose students to the basics of many obscure languages. 

Linguistics club president and Western junior Marty van Schijndel said the hour-long courses can expose students to languages and cultures they would be unlikely to ever encounter.

Van Schijndel said the courses are designed for students who do not have any background in the language being taught.

In the last crash course, Engelsing introduced the class to Latin as a “living language.”  The first half of the lesson was conducted in Latin; Engelsing used various cues to teach the class introductions and basic sentence structure. 

The second half of the course was in English;  Engelsing assessed how much the class understood the lesson, discussed the history of Latin and his teaching methodology

Brazilian-born Engelsing, who started lecturing at Western September 2007, said teaching Latin with traditional, mechanical methods is not as effective and efficient as teaching it as if it were a modern language still in common use.

He said the traditional method of teaching Latin treats the language as a purely individual,  mental activity, instead of a social activity that needs to be learned though interaction.  Students of the traditional method cannot use the language in a functional way, Engelsing said.

“They are not even able to say one simple sentence, like ‘I’m tired,’” Engelsing said.

“And they’ve been studying for 20 years,”

The next crash course is on Guaraní, with a tentative date of Feb. 28.  Guaraní is a language  native to Paraguay that is notable for its continued widespread use after colonization.

There is a crash course on Afrikaans scheduled tentatively for March 6. Afrikaans is a language descended from Dutch and mostly spoken in South Africa.  Tjalling Ypma, professor and chair of Western’s math department, will teach the course.

The linguistics club is trying to enlist non-language professors fluent in foreign languages to teach the crash courses, van Schijndel said.  Arpad Benyi, also from Western’s math department, taught a crash course in Romanian last quarter.

The club also plans to have a course on Lushootseed, van Schijndel said.  Lushootseed is a Native American language spoken by several Salish tribes from what is now Western Washington.

The club has previously done crash courses in Mayan, Ket, and Basque.  Ket is a language indigenous to Siberia and Basque is spoken by an ethnic group in Spain and France. 

Van Schijndel said most people who visit the crash courses are foreign language students.