Speaking, Cooking and Singing in Zulu

Innovative African language program boosted by federal grant

The daughter of missionaries, Beth Restrick grew up in South Africa, Swaziland, and Mozambique, where she learned to speak miscellaneous words in a swirl of native languages as well as colonial Portuguese. But it wasn’t until she arrived at BU as full-time director of the African Studies Library that she learned to converse properly in Zulu. Restrick, who completed four consecutive Zulu courses, is one of a growing number of students, staff, and BU community members participating in the College of Arts & Sciences African Studies Center’s innovative African languages program, which since the late 1970s has offered a growing number of classes in a variety of native African tongues including Zulu, Hausa, Swahili, Wolof, Amharic, Mdeble, Igbo, and Xhosa.

After a spell of federal cutbacks put the program in peril, the US Department of Education (DoE), through its National Resource Centers (NRC) Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants, recently provided $2.3 million to the African Studies Center (ASC) to offer fellowships for students and support Africa-focused education, particularly African language instruction. The NRC and FLAS four-year grants, part of the Title VI program of the DoE Office of International and Foreign Language Education, promotes greater understanding of countries and regions across the globe through foreign language, cultural immersion, and research.

“When I lived in Africa I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would have an opportunity to learn Zulu halfway around the world in frigid New England,” says Restrick. “And not only that—I was learning from a trained linguist. While immersion is always best, rarely do you find someone who knows how to teach a language—and that was the benefit I had here.”

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