International students make up 13 percent of the student body and the languages they bring with them help broaden the university’s understanding of the world’s many cultures.
For students who wish to practice their foreign language skills with native speakers, the Mills International Center in the EMU offers the opportunity to hear the many languages of the world.
“I love working at the Mills. It’s such a great place to spend time,” said interim associate coordinator Kate Stoysich. “I get to meet people from all over the world.”
Stoysich said her Spanish skills allowed her to dive deep into the cultures of the countries she visited while working in the Peace Corps. On top of the connections she made with those in Spanish-speaking countries, she believes that language serves as a way to expand one’s perception of the world.
“How I think about things in the world is a reflection of how I understand things as an English and Spanish speaker,” Stoysich said.
Each term, Stoysich collects data on UO students’ languages. The results show that students speak a variety of 40 languages, ranging from wide-spoken ones like Mandarin Chinese to less common ones such as Marshallese, the language of the Marshall Islands, located in the central Pacific Ocean, west of Hawaii.
Scroll to view the languages found by Stoysich’s survey ↓
| Language | 2016 Fall | 2017 Winter |
| English | 130 | 121 |
| Chinese | 23 | 26 |
| Japanese | 22 | 14 |
| Spanish | 14 | 15 |
| Arabic | 10 | 9 |
| Korean | 7 | 13 |
| French | 7 | 5 |
| Vietnmaese | 6 | 9 |
| Cantonese | 6 | 6 |
| Farsi | 4 | 4 |
| Russian | 4 | 2 |
| Indonesian | 3 | 4 |
| German | 2 | 1 |
| Visayan | 2 | 0 |
| Telugu | 1 | 2 |
| Ahrmaric | 1 | 1 |
| Maasai | 1 | 1 |
| Marshallese | 1 | 1 |
| Portuguese | 1 | 1 |
| Punjabi | 1 | 1 |
| Ukrainian | 1 | 1 |
| Urdu | 1 | 1 |
| Creole | 1 | 0 |
| Czech | 1 | 0 |
| Hebrew | 1 | 0 |
| Irish | 1 | 0 |
| Khmer | 1 | 0 |
| Maai-Maai | 1 | 0 |
| Norwegian | 1 | 0 |
| Pidgin | 1 | 0 |
| Tagalog | 1 | 0 |
| Thai | 1 | 0 |
| Hindi | 0 | 1 |
| Kingrwandan | 0 | 1 |
| Pushto | 0 | 1 |
| Tamil | 0 | 1 |
| Teochew | 0 | 1 |
| Uzebek | 0 | 1 |
| Filipino | 0 | 2 |
| Italian | 0 | 2 |
| Total | 258 | 248 |
Preserving a language
Senior linguistics major Yu Lha hails from Tibet, a country in Central Asia. In addition to English, she speaks four other languages.
Her mother tongue is Khroskyabs, an endangered minority language in Tibet. Khroskyabs has approximately 5,000 speakers who reside in only three to four Tibetan villages.
“It’s an oral language; we don’t have a writing system,” she said. “This makes Khroskyabs very vulnerable because the two dominant languages — Mandarin Chinese and Tibetan — both have writing systems.”
On top of finishing her degree at the University of Oregon, Yu Lha is working to preserve and document her language. She explained that she is working to develop the language’s first writing system. She hopes her efforts will lead to more people using the language in different contexts, such as on social media.
In addition to developing a writing system, Yu Lha documented the oral traditions, proverbs and tongue twisters of her mother tongue in a book titled “Warming Your Hands with Moonlight,” a translation of a Khroskyabs proverb.
Yu Lha explained the meaning of the proverb: although moonlight is bright, it offers no actual warmth. It is a humble way to refuse someone, a way to say that one is looking in the wrong place.
According to Stoysich, the Mills Center is a place for students who are looking for new viewpoints, insights and conversations.
“Speaking foreign languages adds to our diversity of perspectives. It changes how the brain processes information.”
Correction: The spelling of Yu Lha’s name was corrected
