This document summarizes Rafael Scapin's Dawson Speaks Project at Dawson College, which celebrates the college's linguistic diversity. The project compiled a list of over 50 languages spoken by Dawson students and faculty, representing 14 different language families. It also features short videos telling personal stories in 13 of the languages, like Yiddish, Polish, Bangla, Korean, Portuguese, Mexican Spanish, Ukrainian Russian, and Mohawk. The goal is to showcase the human faces behind the languages and understand their shared deep structures despite surface differences. The project website is at dawsonspeaks.com and contact information is provided for Rafael Scapin.

1. Rafael Scapin, Ph.D.
Coordinator of Educational Technology
Dawson College (Montreal)

2. Rafael
RaphaelRaphäelRaphael

3. Source: http://www.gens.info/italia/it/turismo-viaggi-e-tradizioni-italia

4. Dawson College Seen from Space
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73tL5wGP8sE
Source: Google Earth

5. Dawson College
Source: Google Maps

6. Island of Montreal: Towns
By Hardouin at English Wikipedia - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=492918

7. Dawson College
Source: Google Maps

8. Dawson College
The biggest Cégep (college) in Québec,
with 11,000 students
http://montrealmosaic.com/files/montrealmosaicwebmagazine/article-images/img_5228.a.jpg

9. Anglophones, Francophones and Allophones

11. Montreal: Mother Tongue
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Montreal

12. Montreal Population Ethnic Origin
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Montreal

13. Dawson Speaks Project
Celebrating Dawson’s linguistic diversity
The linguist Dan Slobin once said:
“Human languages are like human faces”, capturing
nicely the idea that, underneath obvious and sometimes
striking surface differences, both human faces and
human languages share deep common structures.
Languages can be viewed the same way: on the surface
they may seem and sound completely different, but they
all share underlying characteristics that make them part of
the same –human- communication system….

14. Dawson Speaks Project
Celebrating Dawson’s linguistic diversity
In Fall 2012, the Dawson Languages
Department started Project DawsonSpeaks: a first
attempt to compile a list of languages and language
varieties spoken by Dawson students, faculty, and staff.
But we also wanted every language to tell a story; we
wanted every language to show its human face.
The result is a collection of personal love stories with
language.

15. Dawson Speaks Project
Celebrating Dawson’s linguistic diversity
https://vimeo.com/61727562

18. Afroasiatic 5
Austroasiatic 2
Austronesian 2
Dravidian 1
Indo-European 33
English Creole 2
Iroquian 1
Japonic 1
Language Isolate 1
Mongolic 1
Niger-Congo 3
Sino-Tibetan 1
Turkic 2
Uralic 2
Dawson Speaks Project:
14 Language Families

19. Dawson Speaks Project:
14 Language Families
Afroasiatic Austroasiatic Austronesian Dravidian
Amharic
Arabic
Hebrew
Somali
Tigrinya
Cambodian (Khmer)
Vietnamese
Tagalog
Waray
Tamil
Indo-European
Albanian, American Sign Language, Armenian, Bangla (Bengali), Bulgarian, Creole
(Haitian, Saint Lucia), Czech, Danish, Dari, Deccani Urdu, Dutch, English (American,
British, Canadian), French (France, Québec), German (Austria, Bavaria,
Switzerland), Greek, Hindi, Italian (Abruzzi, Basilicata, Calabria, Campo Basso,
Lazio, Napoli, Standard), Moldavian, Norwegian (Bokmal, Trendernorsk), Pashto,
Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Azores, Brazil, Portugal), Punjabi, Romanian, Russian
(Russia, Ukraine), Serbo-Croatian, Sicilian, Slovak, Spanish (Colombia, Cuba, El
Salvador, Ecuador, Mexico), Ukranian, Urdu, Yiddish

20. Dawson Speaks Project:
14 Language Families
English Creole Iroquian Japonic Language Isolate
Jamaican patois
Taki-Taki
Mohawk Japanese Korean
Mongolic Niger-Congo Sino-Tibetan Turkic
Mongolian Igbo
Swahili
Tshiluba
Chinese Turkish
Uzbek
Uralic
Finnish
Hungarian

21. Dawson Speaks Project:
Language Families

22. http://dawsonspeaks.com/

23. Dawson Speaks Project
Celebrating Dawson’s linguistic diversity
https://vimeo.com/64598763
Helen Karanika
Dawson’s Modern Languages Department

24. Dawson Speaks Project: Videos
https://vimeo.com/64601946
Sonia Zylberberg – Yiddish

25. Dawson Speaks Project: Videos
https://vimeo.com/64598583
Rachel Bilski – Polish

26. Dawson Speaks Project: Videos
https://vimeo.com/64598579
Meshu Begum – Bangla

27. Dawson Speaks Project: Videos
https://vimeo.com/64599877
Eun-Ah (Anna) Bang – Korean

28. Dawson Speaks Project: Videos
https://vimeo.com/64601945
Nicolas de Pena - Portuguese / Azores

29. Dawson Speaks Project: Videos
https://vimeo.com/64601947
Natalia Yanez- Mexican Spanish

30. Dawson Speaks Project: Videos
https://vimeo.com/64598639
Tali Yegupov – Ukraine Russian

31. Dawson Speaks Project
Paddie Hemlock – Mohawk (Kanien’keha)

32. Dawson Speaks Project
Celebrating Dawson’s linguistic diversity

33. Questions

34. rscapin@dawsoncollege.qc.ca
@rscapin
facebook.com/rscapin
Contact Me
Rafael Scapin, Ph.D.

35. Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qk8GH9RjBg