Melissa Rossow doesn’t have many conversation partners in her classes to learn Wolof, a language spoken in Senegal.

“Sadly, I was the only student the whole first year I was here,” she said.

Rossow, a Kansas University graduate student in anthropology, is learning Wolof to study the plants Senegalese use to treat diseases.

She represents what some KU language professors hope is the future of their departments  students fulfilling their four-semester language requirement by taking one of the 23 languages other than Spanish that KU offers.

“After Sept. 11, there was a sudden awareness of how critical language knowledge can be, and especially how lacking we in the U.S. are in language resources,” said Marc Greenberg, chairman of Slavic languages and literatures. “This goes not only for Arabic, but a whole host of languages throughout the world, not only in areas that are critical to us at the moment, but also in those that are likely to be important or critical to us in the future.”

In fall 2001, 2,367 students  or 46 percent of those enrolled in a foreign language  were taking Spanish. French had the next highest enrollment with 882, German had 433 students and Italian had 363.

The smallest programs were Danish, with three students, Ukrainian and Wolof, with two each and Yiddish with one.

Focus on Spanish

Bill Keel, chairman of Germanic languages, said most students simply didn’t know about the variety of languages KU offers. And many come from high schools that only teach Spanish.

“The other languages are not even on the radar screen,” he said. “When they come to KU, the inclination is to learn a language they’re familiar with.”

And even some KU advisers tend to keep Spanish as a “default” language without urging students to explore other options, Keel said.

Census figures show about 1 in 10 Americans speaks Spanish, though most of those also speak English. That makes Spanish a practical language choice for many students, said Danny Anderson, chairman of Spanish and Portuguese.

But with average class sizes of about 25 students  about seven more than the ideal class size for languages  he said he supported the effort to diversify language choices.

“It’s not going to hurt us at all,” he said. “As a matter of fact, we’d prefer to have a little less pressure.”

Cultural interests

Successfully teaching the less commonly taught languages starts with sparking an interest in other cultures, language professors said.

That’s what got Kendra Holtzman interested in taking Serbo-Croatian. The doctoral student in political science wants to be a conflict negotiator in the region.

“I’ve been told it makes a big difference, actually being able to talk to them directly,” she said. “I don’t want to introduce a bias by not knowing the language.”

Nathan Rhoads, a senior in political science and Slavic languages and literatures, hopes to use his Russian as a pilot in the Air Force. He’s part of KU’s ROTC program.

He decided to take Russian simply because he liked the way it sounded and because not many Americans speak it.

“A lot of people have this mistaken idea (less studied languages) are hard because they’re uncommon,” Rhoads said. “I think Russian is easier than Spanish.”

And many students use languages as a gateway to international business, Greenberg said.

“An interpreter can only convey so much,” he said. “The majority is lost. If I were in business and investing a large sum of money, I would not want all of my information about the locus of that business filtered through an interpreter.”

Marketing efforts

Professors of the less studied languages are stepping up their publicity campaigns.

Some hang fliers around campus advertising their classes. Most departments have Web sites touting their classes. And professors are trying to tell more high school counselors about the variety of languages.

The federal government also has started an effort to get Americans to learn more languages. KU received a $125,000 grant in 1999 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop seven less commonly taught languages at KU.

Beverly Mack, the associate professor of African and African-American studies who administered the grant, said the money sent professors to conferences and established a Web site  www.ukans.edu/~lctls.

“If you don’t market the language beyond the university  at the high schools and on the Web site  then you’re not going to get the students,” she said. “You have to go above and beyond the call of duty. It comes with the territory.”

As for Wolof, Fiona McLaughlin, assistant professor of linguistics and African studies, said she has a new secret recruiting tool when she’s talked to students about the language. Wolof is the native language of incoming basketball recruit Moulaye Niang, who is from Senegal.

“I told them there’s an added bonus for speaking Wolof  you can speak to our newest recruit in his native language and he’ll be thrilled,” she said.