Please enter search keywords
2 min read
I’d like to share my experience participating in the “Language Festival in Akashi,” which was held in Hyogo Prefecture last December.
The Language Festival (LF) is an annual event organized by APU students, faculty, and staff since 2022 to help people discover the richness of languages and cultures around the world. LF is also featured during APU’s annual Tenku Festival.
At the LF in Akashi, international students from APU hosted sessions introducing their languages, offered dishes from their home countries, and performed energetic dance routines. There was also a special talk by linguist Yuma Ito, who introduced the Mlabri language, spoken by about 500 people in Thailand and Laos.
This event allowed us not only to hear different languages, but also to learn directly from native speakers about the origins and histories behind them. It felt almost like traveling around the world in a single day.
Languages from Asia, Europe, and beyond—Tamil, Jamaican Patois, Ukrainian, Russian, and many more—were presented through in the speakers’ own voices, offering a rare and valuable experience.
Learning about the stories and cultural contexts hidden behind words gave me a sense of “warmth” that I had never felt from simply reading text. Foreign languages that once sounded like mysterious spells suddenly became expressions filled with emotion and meaning.
For example, the Arabic greeting “As-salamu alaykum” literally means “May peace be upon you.” In the past, meeting a stranger in a harsh environment could be tense or even dangerous. This greeting served as a promise of safety—“I mean you no harm.”
Moments like this reminded me that everyday greetings reflect a region’s religious beliefs, relationship with nature, and sense of interpersonal distance. Through this event, I truly felt the “emotional temperature” that words carry.
One of the core ideas of the Language Festival is not to focus on “countries.”
Learning a language means learning about the hearts and lives of the people who speak it.
The Language Festival reminds us of simple but important truths we tend to forget.
If you’re thinking, “I’m interested in the world but don’t know where to start,” or “I want to experience cultures I’ve never been exposed to before,” why not join the next Language Festival?
You’ll find a warm and vibrant world of words—one you can never discover in class or in a textbook—waiting for you.
Hello everyone! I'm Sho Nishimura, a second-year APM student! Recently, my favorite hobby has been traveling to various places and enjoying delicious food!
Through my activities in SPA, I hope to connect with many different people. I would love to share more about the unique features of Beppu and APU with all of you through SPA!
Copyright (c) 2016 Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
