About Multilingual Week

SFU Multilingual Week (MLW) is taking place from February 24th to March 1st. All events are free. Everyone is welcome. MLW is SFU’s annual global connection on campus: your opportunity to meet new people with whom you may share language and cultural connections. To hear from different language speakers and language experts. To find out how language knowledge sets you up for success in your life and career. MLW transforms the SFU experience by engaging with the university’s multiplicity of language speakers as we celebrate together. Multilingual Week is a time of collaboration and respect.

The Department of Linguistics will be hosting a series of research talks throughout the week. We will also be participating in the Multilingual Week Tabling Event on Wednesday, February 26, 11:00am–3:00pm in the AQ North Concourse. Come meet execs from the Linguistics Student Union, researchers from our Linguistics Labs, as well as our Student Advisor and other staff. Learn all about our programs, initiatives, and upcoming courses.

We look forward to seeing you there! 

Session I: Multilingualism and Indigenous Language Revitalization

Speaker: Jasḵwaan Bedard
Title: X̱aad Kíhlga Tl'a Guusuugiigang: A Haida Research Framework for Learning X̱aad Kíl
Date and time: Monday, February 24, 12:30pm–1:30pm
Location: RCB 7402 & Zoom
Register: Free tickets via Eventbrite

About the speaker:

Jasḵwaan Bedard is a tenure-track instructor with the Indigenous Languages Program (INLP). Jasḵwaan is a Haida language educator and advocate from G̱aw Tlagée (Massett), Haida Gwaii. Her research involves developing resources for Indigenous communities to strengthen their Indigenous languages.

Jasḵwaan’s work aims to provide a pathway for specialized Massett Haida language immersion guided by Haida community, laws, and values. Jasḵwaan has contributed to Haida language programming since 2007 and has taught multi-level language classes to community learners since 2015. Jasḵwaan's work includes translation and transcription of X̱aad Kíl as well as resource and curriculum development. 

Session II: Graduate Research in Multilingualism

Speakers: Sylvia Cho, Danielle Deng, and Leon Lee
Date and time: Tuesday, February 25, 3:00pm–4:00pm
Location: RCB 7402 & Zoom
Register: Free tickets via Eventbrite

Danielle Deng is a PhD student at SFU Linguistics and a researcher at the Language and Brain Lab and the Language Learning and Development Lab. Her research interests centre on second language speech perception, especially accent adaptation and word recognition. Danielle is also doing research on audio-visual processing, where she explores perceivers' looking patterns when processing various types of speech information. Danielle will be presenting a talk titled Cracking the Accent Code: How Language Learners Make Sense of Unfamiliar Speech. 

Leon Lee is an MA student at the Department of Linguistics who is interested in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics. His research work involves using EEG, eye-tracking, and fMRI techniques to study healthy adults and the elderly, as well as children diagnosed with ASD. Leon's talk is about how differences in letters-sound correspondence between learners' native languages and the new languages, and how organized the letters-sound correspondence in the new language would affect the outcome of learning new words in that new language. The talk is titled The Effects of Congruent and Systematic Spelling-Sound Conversion on New Word Learning.

Sylvia Cho, a PhD student at the Department of Linguistics, will present a talk titled Who’s Speaking? How Language Affects How We Recognize Voices. From the abstract: This study explores whether we can tell if the same person is speaking when they switch between different languages. Recent research has shown that voices share a similar acoustic structure (e.g., Lee et al., 2019). While differences in the acoustic properties of a voice are largely individual, some variations have been observed based on language and speech style (Lee & Kreiman, 2023). These speaker-specific differences are believed to be important for identifying who is speaking. A recent study on Cantonese-English bilingual voices found that acoustic differences were mostly idiosyncratic but did not consistently vary across languages (Johnson & Babel, 2023). While there is a growing body of research on the acoustic properties and variability of voices, it remains unclear how these differences affect our ability to recognize speakers. This study, therefore, examines how listeners identify speakers when listening to bilingual voices. A total of 120 listeners participated in an experiment where they had to determine whether different voice recordings came from the same person. The recordings featured voices of Korean-English bilingual speakers from Vancouver, including different languages (Korean vs. English) and speech styles (reading vs. extemporaneous). The data were analyzed to measure the effects of speaker, language, and speech style on voice discrimination. The results will be discussed in terms of the relationship between bilingualism, voice perception, and speaker identity. 

Session III: The Science of Multilingualism

Speaker: Yue Wang
Title: Sights and sounds behind bilingual speech communication
Date and time: Friday, February 28, 1:30pm–2:30pm
Location: RCB 7402 & Zoom 
Register: Free tickets via Eventbrite

Explore what happens in the human brain as we acquire and speak additional languages. Using behavioural and neuro-imaging techniques, Prof. Wang has been studying the processing and acquisition of second-language speech sounds by both children and adults. Wang's Language and Brain Lab focuses on the study of language and speech, including its perception, production, and acquisition. The lab also explores multilingual cognitive and neural processing, incorporating computational linguistic research across a variety of languages.

Abstract: In today’s multilingual and multimedia environment, we often communicate in nonnative languages, with nonnative speakers, and increasingly with AI assistants like Siri. These interactions occur in diverse settings and media, from face-to-face conversations to phone calls and video chats. For many, understanding and being understood in these diverse contexts can be challenging. This talk presents research on how bilinguals adjust their speech production and perception to improve intelligibility. We explore strategies speakers use to enhance clarity for nonnative listeners or AI chatbots, such as speaking louder, slower, or modifying specific speech sound features. We also investigate how perceivers identify useful cues to better understand nonnative speech, including benefiting from clarified speech and supplementary resources like seeing the speaker’s face or hand gestures. Our findings reveal how auditory and visual cues work together to optimize nonnative speech perception. Finally, we discuss potential applications of AI-based technology to enhance speech clarity and intelligibility in bilingual settings.