At most American schools the phrase "language requirement" is synonymous with terms such as Spanish, French or Chinese. Many students do not end up exploring languages which seem unusual or less practical. But what is common is not always what is best, and students and faculty of these lesser known languages say those who avoid them are missing out on a lot of hidden value.
Bengali, offered by the department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, is one such language. Bengali is the national language of Bangladesh and although it is not widely taught in the United States, about 230 million people around the globe speak the language.
Bengali Lecturer Aminur Rahman attributed misconceptions about Bengali to the fact that it does not have the same presence in the linguistic canon as other more traditionally taught foreign languages. He said the problem is "[Bengali] doesn't have a brand name such as Spanish or French."
Rahman said by discarding unpopular languages one is also discarding 300 million people in the world.
Widely-spoken languages are not the only important topics of study. Languages such as Yiddish may no longer have many speakers, but like the more popular Latin, they have a broader cultural and historical significance.
Second-year College student Hannah Brock explained the value of learning Yiddish despite the fact that only a small population still speaks it today.
"It's a dying language and by learning it I can help bring it back," she said.
While Bengali is spreading to new areas all the time, spoken Yiddish has declined significantly since World War II. The Nazi-led genocide of European Jews wiped out a large portion of native Yiddish speakers, destroying not only Jewish linguistic heritage but cultural heritage as well.
Brock explained that many students take Yiddish in an effort to reclaim and preserve that lost culture. She said those students want to learn more about their personal histories as well as Yiddish culture as a whole.
"A majority of the students are Jewish and take the class because their parents or grandparents speak the language and they want to learn it too," Brock said.
Although spoken by a large population, Hindi is also a smaller language department at the University. Cultural interests are frequently a factor for students of that discipline, second-year College student Rudhdi Karnik said. "My parents are Indian and I wanted to connect back to my culture," she said.
Rahman agreed that the cultural aspect to learning languages is another reason students should look beyond the typical class choices. "If designers of [curricula] become more open-minded, then society as a whole will become more accepting and cosmopolitan," he said.
Despite the appeal of experimenting with new curricula and offering more diverse language choices, practicality is often a limiting factor for educational institutions. "Schools simply do not have enough money to hire teachers of languages that students do not find useful or attractive," said first-year College student Kevin Vincenti, a native French speaker. "Yet I agree that schools are close-minded in choosing to advocate only the popular languages."
Vincenti explained that like many of his peers, he attended a high school which offered only French and Spanish, and so came into college with a bias toward those languages. "Knowing French has helped definitely, but I cannot begin to say how many times I wished I understood the live daily news from the Middle East and China," he said.
Like Vincenti, Karnik said he thinks branching out linguistically helps to foster understanding, in the news as well as in personal interactions. "In terms of globalization, many people speak English already, but it is always good to speak to people in their native language and not just expect them to know English," he said.
As communication technology improves and students have more opportunities to reach those in all parts of the world, more and more people are adopting views like Vincenti's and Karnik's. The opportunities to take non-traditional languages are out there, and it may only be a matter of time before the unusual becomes the norm.
"There is no such thing as an obscure language - only less commonly taught languages," Rahman said.
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