General Languages – LangLabbies

March 17, 2026March 17, 2026

Don’t give up on Arabic!

أهلا يا أصدقاء

As an Arabic student at Reed, I’m here to commiserate. While we’re blessed with fantastic language scholars like Asma, there are very few of us and we don’t have a department like other languages. And considering that the vast majority of contemporary Arabic-language media is not in Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic), it can be hard even to just interact with the language in a natural way. Also, coming from an English-speaking background, Arabic is HARD! All this to say: I get it. You love learning Arabic, but you feel overwhelmed by endless conjugations and roots and forms and regional specificities? Allow me to present a few online resources I’ve found.

Hans Wehr Online

Arguably the most reputable Arabic/English dictionary but in online form! You can even type in Roman letters and it will transliterate for you. You can type a root and it will give you all of the forms and nouns that derive from it.

2. ACON Online

ACON is a really useful conjugation tool. You select the three letters that form the root of the word, its form, and the perfect and imperfect vowel sounds, and it will list all of the possible conjugations laid out in the Western (starting with أنا) or Arabic order (starting with هو) according to your preference.

Struggling still?

Maybe you feel like you still don’t quite have enough of a grasp on things to use these tools – you might be wondering what all of these forms mean and what they’re for, or why I’m calling the present tense “imperfect”. If that’s the case, that’s totally okay too! Go visit Asma during her office hours or book a tutoring session with me on IRIS and we’ll try to make things a little clearer.

March 16, 2026March 16, 2026

Embrace embarrassment!

A Tweet reading: "How it feels to speak French to French people" with the cartoon image of a court jester dancing in front of a queen sitting on a throne.

Do you find learning a language to be embarrassing? It’s a very normal human emotion, but embarrassment seems to be worse than death for some. Just thinking about embarrassment makes me feel embarrassed! So why do we feel embarrassed when we learn languages, and what can be done about it?

I read a paper titled “Embarrassment in English language classrooms” by Khajavy et al. (2025) to learn more about what embarrassment is and why it stops me in my tracks during my language classes. Embarrassment is defined as “a social, self-conscious emotion in which a person feels some level of discomfort and awkwardness” (Khajavy et al. 2025:182). I hate to say it, but embarrassment is just all in our heads. It can feel difficult to even explain why we feel embarrassed since it’s entirely based on how we imagine what others are thinking. Overall, it’s an emotion that depends on how we assess situations that we’re experiencing in the moment, so it might vary from person to person. For me, I get super embarrassed when I’m unprepared for class, but others might not feel the same way. This isn’t to say that feeling embarrassment isn’t valid—we all experience it, whether it’s visible or not.

March 13, 2026March 13, 2026

Learning French to read Duras with Qiuyi!

Today we’re speaking with Qiuyi, our drop-in French tutor! We chatted about the experience of learning French from the beginning level, adjusting to intermediate classes, and Marguerite Duras. Meet Qiuyi in the Language Lab during her drop-in tutoring hours!

Leilani: Hi Qiuyi! To begin the interview, could you tell me a little bit about yourself and how long you’ve been speaking French?

Qiuyi: Yeah! My name is Qiuyi, and I’m a sophomore majoring in Comparative Literature. This is my second year learning French, so I’m a new learner.

February 20, 2026February 23, 2026

Connect with the Language Houses this spring!

Screenshot of the "Upcoming Language Scholars Events" page. A photo of the eight Language Scholars standing outside Reed College Old Dorm Block.

Have you been wanting to attend the Language Houses’ many fun language events, but don’t know where to start? Check out the new (!) Language Scholars Events page on the International Programs Office website! Here, you’ll find information about big campus-wide events (including ours at the LangLab) as well as regular weekly conversation hours in the Language Houses. I know the Language Scholars put in a lot of work in compiling all events into a single place, so I highly recommend you check it out!

P.S. for all my loyal Google Calendar users out there, you can also add their Calendar to yours!

December 5, 2025

Book recommendation: In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri, "In Other Words." Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian woman wearing a brown sweater, sits at a desk with two large books open on it.

As we approach the end of the semester, I thought I’d recommend a for-funsies book to read over winter break: In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri (2015). Last semester, I wrote a blog post on journaling as an effective language-learning strategy. Jhumpa Lahiri’s memoir expands on this idea of writing in a second language (Italian), and also talks more on her experience living in Rome, Italy, to immerse herself in the language. Lahiri is the author of The Namesake (2003) and Interpreter of Maladies (1999), and this is her first nonfiction book.

November 21, 2025December 1, 2025

International pop, inspired by K-pop!

Characters Mira, Rumi, and Zoey from "Kpop Demon Hunters" (2025) wearing demon-hunting gear and holding weapons.

It’s official, the K-pop (Korean pop) craze has arrived at the Language Lab. I’ve become enamored with K-pop’s fan-cams, shiny photocards, and the trendy choreography. Fortunately at the Language Lab, the K-pop culture has spread worldwide, and I made a list of international pop groups to keep an eye on. These groups have taken the popular model of K-pop but with a local flair that makes the music appealing to its country of origin. Give them a listen!

Argentina: K4OS

Chile: Q_ARE

November 17, 2025

Recap: LangLab Karaoke Night!

Five students gathered around a microphone in front of a projector screen, singing a song in French.

Thank you everyone for attending our highly-anticipated Karaoke Night event! We had so much fun sharing songs and experiencing songs from around the world (I still have 小蘋果 stuck in my head…). Special shoutout to our Language Scholars, who got the party started! We hope to see you at future karaoke events… stay tuned!

Three students gathered around a microphone in front of a projector screen, singing a song in Spanish.

If there was a song that you heard and wanted to add it to your own international playlist, here’s everything that was sung at Karaoke Night: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMUR5lJ3P0glCteY-6fTG2iZ-NAcLb4ZK&si=M7tgTaJz0KjTUhkC

November 7, 2025

German Tutor Interview!

When did you start learning your language?

I started learning German my freshman year at Reed.

What has been the most helpful tool in learning?

One tool that I have found helpful in language learning is reading familiar texts in new languages. Reading a familiar text in a new language is much easier than reading a wholly new text in a new language, so you can enjoy reading more and stress less about the difficulty of reading in a new language.

What do you enjoy most about speaking this language or knowing it?

The thing I love most about knowing German is that I can enjoy so much more literature, film, and philosophy as originally written.

What do you recommend to people learning this language?

German can be intimidating and difficult; remember to take some time to appreciate the progress you have already made.

How often do you practice?

I try to practice multiple days a week, although sometimes life gets in the way.

If you could speak one other language what would it be and why?

I would love to be able to read Aristotle in the original Greek, so I wish I could read Ancient Greek.

Why are you a tutor?

I am a tutor because I love to learn, teach, and speak German!

How difficult was it for you to learn this language?

I found German difficult to learn, and I still have so much more to learn!

What media do you enjoy most in this language? Lit/movies/music etc

I enjoy literature most in German. Particularly poetry, which I have never liked much in English. I find many German films to be a bit cheesy.

Can you give me an example?

Kafka is my favorite German author I have read. Of course, I love all of his classic stories like Metamorphosis and In the “Penal Colony,” but one less popular Kafka story I like is “The Burrow.”

Have you ever lived in a country that speak this language?

No, but I have lived in 2 Spanish-speaking countries!

November 4, 2025

Spilling Linguistic TEA

I can actually tell how your country accessed tea leaves just by the way you say it. It’s not a magic trick or an elaborate mental gymnastics. The history of tea is broad, deep and a topic of heated debates. Ranging in various flavors from white herbal to decaffeinated earl gray, tea became a stable aspect in cultures across the world. And for such a widespread word and cultural phenomena one would expect that each language would develop a unique term to describe this healing liquid, right?

Not quite. Etymology of tea extends to just 2 derivatives: “tea-derived” and “cha-derived”. This etymology doesn’t depend on what linguistically family you speak — both Russian and Kazakh use the “chai” variation despite belonging to a Slavic and Turkic groups respectively. Similarly, both Armenian and Sudanese share a common “tea-“ derivation even though Armenian belongs to a unique branch of Indo-European family while Sundanese is an Austronesian language — thousands of miles apart.

The secret lies in the means of transportation, and more specifically, the space by which tea has conquered the world.

The term cha (茶) is “Sinitic,” meaning it is common to many varieties of Chinese. But most importantly, its roots are in the non-coastal Eastern part of China and spread the world through the ocean: first reaching Central Asia until it reached Persia and Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, the “te” form used in coastal-Chinese (still East!) languages spread to Europe via the Dutch, who became the primary traders of tea between Europe and Asia in the 17th century. The Dutch ports mainly resided in Fujian and Taiwan where the local population used the “te” variations allowing this specific form to be spread via ocean.

To put it simply, if you say “chai” then you got your drink through land trade, and if you say “chai” you can thank the ports and ocean.

Of course, there is always room for a few exceptions. For instance, Polish uses the word “herbata” whose phonetics closely resemble that of English “herbs”. Thai language also stands out — instead of the internationally acclaimed “tea” or “chai”, Thai speakers use the term “miang” translated as “fermented tea leaves”.

Makes you think twice about ordering “chai tea” next time!

October 31, 2025October 31, 2025

Chinese summer isn’t over yet … some pointers for Beginning Chinese students!

Maybe you’ve been wanting to start learning Chinese, but don’t know how to get over the initial hurdles that make it seem impossible. Never fear, for I am here to help demystify this incredible language! I started learning Chinese at Reed from the beginning level and studied abroad this past summer in Taipei, Taiwan. Trust me when I say that it’s a challenging language to learn, but not impossible! (And I might even argue that it’s been the easiest and most fun language to study…) Here are my personal strategies for approaching Chinese as a beginning student, while keeping it fun!