Free Languages Festival open to all
Mon, 08 Feb 2016 02:30:00 GMT
A day-long series of events including languages taster sessions, language history, the Brontë novels, international music and the history of English takes place on Monday 22 February here at the University and staff and students are invited to attend.
Visitors to the festival will have the chance to try Chinese, discover an aptitude for Arabic or speak some Spanish. They will learn how the classic fiction of the Brontës fares when translated into foreign languages and have an opportunity to explore the evolution of English and the importance of linguistics.
The event is a day-long Languages Festival, aimed at a wide range of participants, from school and university students to members of the public. It marks UNESCO’s long-established International Mother Language Day.
Organised by the department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, this free event is designed to boost the study of language at schools, colleges, university and among adult learners.
Language Taster Sessions
The programme of events includes a series of Languages Taster Sessions, at which University staff members who are native speakers of Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, French, Chinese and Italian will introduce their mother tongue and teach some simple phrases.
These are linked to courses that are provide by the University’s Modern Languages Centre, aimed at students but also members of the public who are not enrolled on a degree course.
The Languages Festival – part of the Sound.Vision.Place sequence of events organised by the University’s School of Music, Humanities and Media – begins with a talk that establishes the importance of studying language and linguistics. After sessions on a wide range of topics that include the challenges facing interpreters and ways of using film as part of language teaching, it concludes with a concert by a leading German brass ensemble.
“We wanted to include the idea that music is part of language and that you can communicate through music,” said Languages Festival co-organiser Dr Renia Lopez, a Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages and Linguistics.
Festival Speakers
Speakers at the festival are visiting experts – including an adviser from the Spanish Ministry of Education – plus lecturer-researchers from the University itself. They include Professor Dan McIntyre, whose session is entitled Exploring the History of English, and Dr Erica Gold, who will reveal how linguists recover information from lesser-known languages.
Partners supporting the Language Festival include the Spanish Embassy, Leeds Museums and Galleries, the Instituto Cervantes in Manchester, plus Brontë 200, the project launched by the Brontë Society to commemorate the 2016 bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, eldest of the famous literary sisters. The Festival will feature an exhibition entitled Exploring Language through the Brontës novels – international versions of books and films. It will include foreign translations of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. A midday session titled Language through music will be a concert by University of Huddersfield music students plus a film selection provided by the Brontë Museum in Haworth.
Attendance at the Festival is free and open to all, but places should be reserved at http://www.hud.ac.uk/sound-vision-place/events/languagesfestival.php, where there is also a full timetable of events and details of speakers.
Dr Lopez said that the festival aimed to emphasise the importance of languages and linguistics.
“But it is not just about the language, it is also about the culture,” she added, and sessions at the Festival would explore this dimension.
