Nearly 70 MIT students gathered for an event called “Heritage Meets Heritage” on 27th October. The purpose of the event was to get students talking about their heritages and learn about each other’s, with topics of discussion including multilingualism, multiculturalism, words and their meanings in different languages, and the various nuances in communication.
There were also quizzes and some fascinating facts about languages around the world:
Where is the world’s largest Japanese community outside of Japan? São Paulo, Brazil
What African country has Spanish as an official language? Equatorial Guinea
What language do the Amish speak? A dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch
Which country has the largest Francophone population in Asia? Vietnam
I also learnt from the event article that the third-most spoken language in Massachusetts, USA is Portuguese and the location of the oldest continuously operating library in the world is Lisbon. I want to know more!