In Other Words

In Other Words is The Ubyssey's 2023 culture supplement about the languages that shape and connect us.

All in In Other Words

November 28, 2023

Building inclusivity into the French language, one classroom at a time

A beginner French class cycles through the basics of the language: numbers, greetings, family members — but unlike the English language, it will also cover gender.

Renée Rochefort

November 28, 2023

Encoding language: Cognition vs. computation

In the field of computational linguistics, language variation and binary machine logic converge.

Stuti Sheth

November 22, 2023

I didn't write this poem

I could make a fence around breath and laughter and / meaningless joy and routine sadness / here it is, sketched with broken / pencil smudged by the palm of my hand / but would you see it?

Jocelyn Baker

November 22, 2023

The Philippines speaks more languages than Tagalog. Why does UBC teach none of them?

I wasn’t raised in the Philippines, so all of my knowledge of the country comes from my family and what they chose to expose me to.

Elena Massing

November 22, 2023

Kitchen morphemes

What is my native language? I say my sister, there is no other word for it.

Maya Mior

November 22, 2023

‘An act of great care and great love’: The path toward Yiddish at UBC

Families, chosen and inherited, are also often contentious, diverse and messy. Still, learning a language that holds so much fragmented history requires an effort that communicates more than the words themselves.

Tova Gaster

November 22, 2023

Stumbling to find the right words

English was always my worst subject in elementary school.

Aisha Chaudhry

November 22, 2023

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I learn to swear reading Catcher in the Rye / in Chinese, 10 years old and foreign / in a country called the Motherland.

Isa S. You

November 22, 2023

What can speech tell us about brain health?

Spanning topics from singing to AI, UBC’s Integrated Speech Research Laboratory (ISRL) has a diverse set of interests. Most recently, they have been looking at what speech can tell us about our brains — potentially contributing to a better understanding of the detection and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Gloria Rahgozar

November 22, 2023

Why are you (hearing people) like this?

In Canada, over 90 per cent of d/Deaf children are born to hearing parents — the same parents who may never learn sign language nor teach it to their d/Deaf child.

Emilija Vītols Harrison