ELAINE JIANG: I speak English, Chinese and Spanish.
GRACE YAN: Chinese.
YISU ZHANG: I also speak Mandarin.
NIKKI PRASAD: English, Hindi and I’m learning French in school right now.
INA CHOE: I speak Korean.
ISABELLA KUNC: I speak Spanish and Chinese.
When I entered Jones Hall for the first time, I didn’t expect to hear so many different languages.
As far as I knew, cherubs was a journalism camp, and, as far as I knew, we’d be doing journalism in English.
[commotion/chatting]
Upon my arrival, there were two notecards on my door. One had my name and hometown, Chicago. The other was for my roommate: Ina Choe, from Seoul, South Korea. The same day, Ina and I met Nikki Prasad and Faith Jung.
Nikki is from Lexington, Massachusetts. She’s Indian-American and speaks Hindi and French. We quickly realized that we’re both language fanatics. We talked about Lake Michigan in Hindi and messed with our friends by speaking French so that they couldn’t understand us.
NIKKI: I just think that it’s just so fun to meet someone who speaks the same language because, especially since we’re both learning, it feels safe to make mistakes and like help each other out, so that has been really fun for me.
She’s also been helping me review the French 2 curriculum so that I’m prepared for next year.
[Nikki and I practice French verb conjugations]
Hailing from La Mirada, California, Faith is Korean-American, and so she and Ina sometimes talk in Konglish, a mix of Korean and English.
[Ina and Elaine talking in Konglish]
Faith and Ina were even willing to teach us some new words in Korean. Well, kind of. They spent five minutes coaching us on the Korean pronunciation of ‘Hello, how are you?’ I was so excited when I finally got it right.
[I say ‘Hello, how are you?’ in Korean]
Little did I know, it meant something completely different. These specific Korean words became an inside joke between us, and I can’t help but laugh every time I hear or say them.
But I’m not the only cherub who’s found connection through foreign languages. Isabella Kunc was raised by Argentinian parents in Arden Hills, Minnesota. She likes to say that Spanish was technically her first language.
ISABELLA: And my parents like to say sometimes I have a very light Spanish accent, like when I’m speaking I seem almost native, which I’m quite proud of.
Isabella went to a Chinese immersion school for nine years, so she also speaks some Chinese. Isabella’s roommate, Elaine Jiang, is from Belmont, California. Their pairing may challenge the idea that roommate assignments are completely up to chance. You see, they are both trilingual, and they both speak the exact same languages. Isabella and Elaine spend lots of time discussing Spanish music lyrics and Chinese songs from their childhoods.
ELAINE: [Jiang sings a song in Chinese] Which literally means you are my small apple and it’s just this really famous like children’s song that everyone knows, and it has a crazy and super funny music video to it as well. So we just kept sharing anecdotes like that back and forth about learning languages growing up and speaking different languages.
ISABELLA: We spent like a solid hour talking in a mix of the three languages. It was really sweet for me. It was like remembering what I used to learn, and I was like, nostalgic, and it was fun. I think we connected. Do you want to hear one of them? [Kunc reads a poem in Chinese]
When Elaine first arrived, she thought for a second that her roommate’s last name was spelled K-U, instead of spelled K-U-N-C.
ELAINE: So I was like, ‘Did I get an Asian roommate?’ So I definitely have a preference for a roommate that I can culturally connect with. And even though she’s not the same ethnicity as me, I guess, being able to share languages was still a way that we could connect culturally in a way that I really appreciate.
And remember Ina and Faith? Well, they’ve bonded in a similar way. Over TV shows like ‘XO Kitty,’ and Korean TikTok dance trends.
INA: Of course I come here to engage in different cultures and diversity, but also having that little piece of home within this really diverse setting allows me to feel a little more comfortable.
For cherubs, I’m Uma Morris.
