This Londoner is learning her Indigenous tongue as language learning gains popularity

Growing up in Six Nations, Katsitsakwas General was taught Cayuga in school. But it was always Kanien'kha (the Mohawk language)that she had felt a life-long ambition to learn, her Indigenous language that reminds her of her grandparents.

So when a colleague of hers who knew of her desire to learn Kanien'kha connected her with an online beginners class, she leapt at the opportunity. Now, through her weekly Zoom classes offered by the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, General said she's getting the chance to reclaim her language.

"My grandpa knew Mohawk, but he didn't really share in speaking it," she said. "He would speak with my grandma, but it wasn't something that was shared with us really, the grandchildren."

Now a grandparent herself, General is trying to speak Kanien'kha with her grandchildren at homein London. She's been participating in Zoom classes since last summer, and is now practicing her Kanien'kha whenever she can, putting up notes around the house and joining practice groups on Facebook messenger.

Through the course, she's had the chance to connect with learners from across the country students in Vancouver, Windsor, and Toronto, connected by the shift to online-language learning that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused.

"I look forward to it," said General. "And with all this, I'm learning about technology too."

Learning another language gains popularity

The pandemic and theample downtime many people have seems to be a motivator for learning new languages, some reports show.

The popular language learning app, Duolingo,reported that in the weeks following the WHO's announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic, 30 million new subscribers joined theapp to learn a language a 67 per cent increase from the year before.

At academic institutions, university students are also showing more interest in new languages.

Enrolment in first-year Spanish language courses at Western increased 10 per cent this year, said Ana Garca-Alln, the undergraduate chair of Western's Department of Languages and Cultures.

The department made room for the increase in demand by offering additional classesfor Spanish, which Garca-Alln said is their most popular undergraduate language course.

"I think more people are taking the opportunity to study and take courses because they're online, not just language courses," said Garca-Alln.

Western's first-year Arabic, Japanese, Persian and Italian courses are also at capacity, but the department doesn't always have the faculty to teach more sections of a course. Garca-Alln said that her guess is that if more sections of non-Spanish first year language courses opened, they'd see a similar increase in enrolment.

"Some students are in love with the culture, some have friends that are native speakers of that language and they just want to learn," she said.