New classes Arrive

Swahili, Quechua, Aymara and Irish Gaelic are just some of the languages students can learn… Swahili, Quechua, Aymara and Irish Gaelic are just some of the languages students can learn at Pitt, but student Paul Lundblad wanted something else.

He wanted to learn Icelandic.

The sophomore linguistics major became fascinated with the Icelandic language during a course he took on Germanic legends, in which he was assigned several pieces of Icelandic lore.

“Icelandic is interesting because of its history, because it has remained relatively unchanged for 1,000 years,” Lundblad said. He said that because of Iceland’s remote nature, European languages barely influenced Icelandic like they did each other on the continent.

Having developed a curiosity for Northern Germanic languages – which include both Icelandic and Swedish, a language that Lundblad is currently studying – he wondered if Pitt’s Less Commonly Taught Languages Center could help.

“Paul basically came to me and said, ‘Could you offer Icelandic?'” Claude Mauk, director of the Center, said. He told Lundblad that he would have to prove that students would be interested and that he would have to find someone to teach the class.

Lundblad recalled Mauk giving him a straight, sobering answer. “[He said] it’s definitely not impossible, but it would take some work.”

Besides the issue of funding, which he knew was out of his hands, Lundblad had to prove that he was not the only student interested in this obscure language.

Icelandic is spoken primarily only by natives of Iceland, whose population is roughly 300,000. If the LCTL Center were to offer Icelandic, it would become the Center’s least-commonly known language behind Irish Gaelic – with 380,000 fluent speakers.

Lundblad drew up a petition and took it to linguistics classes. Although the Center required him to find only five students committed to taking the class, he rounded up 42 student signatures, 19 of whose authors committed to signing up for the class if offered.

There was even one student who canceled a study-abroad trip to sign up for the language this fall, Lundblad said.

He also had to find a teacher. From his prior experience studying languages, Lundblad knew that in searching for a teacher, only a native speaker would suffice. But this only made his task more difficult.

On a hunch, he sent an e-mail describing his situation to the Scandinavian Society of Western Pennsylvania. He received word in time that a native Icelander taught at Duquesne University.

After some research, Lundblad quickly realized that Professor Jona Hammer would be an easy sell to Mauk. Not only did she already hold a position in academia, but she already taught a language – English.

As Associate Director of the English as a Second Language Program at Duquesne for the past 17 years, as well as author of the recent book “Memoirs of an Icelandic Bookworm,” Jona Hammer had a suitable background to teach the new Icelandic class.

“I was so surprised that there were enough people that want to take Icelandic, because when I first came to Pittsburgh, there was no interest,” Hammer said.

When Hammer – a native of Akureyri in northern Iceland – arrived in Pittsburgh in 1974, she had given her name to the LCTL Center, advertising her availability to teach Icelandic. Although there had not been any previous interest in offering a class, various professors had referred several students to her for Icelandic tutoring over the years.

Lundblad introduced Hammer to Mauk, and after the two professors talked it over, soon enough he had his wish – the LCTL Center would be offering Icelandic 1 on a tryout basis in fall 2007 and Icelandic 2 in Spring 2008.

Hammer said if there is enough student interest to offer further courses, she would be open to teaching Icelandic 3 and 4 during the 2008-09 school year. But that would depend on her schedule and her responsibilities at Duquesne.

For this fall, Mauk said that the class will meet twice a week at night and constitute four credit hours. Although it will take place in a classroom, Icelandic 1 will be listed as an independent study course, Mauk said, because the Center was late in applying for a regular course number.