Journalists' Hands-On Experiences | Speak Dating Event 2024 in Festival Walk on Sept. 26
(By Anson Lin)
This year marks the 23rd anniversary of the European Day of Languages and the 11th anniversary of the Speak Dating Event in Hong Kong.
To celebrate the annual European Day of Languages, Speak Dating Event 2024 took place in Festival Walk from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. today (Sept. 26), organized by the European Union Office to Hong Kong and Macao, the European Union National Institutes for Culture in Hong Kong (Alliance Française, Goethe-Institut Hongkong and Istituto Italiano di Cultura) and the Dante Alighieri Society, in collaboration with numerous European Consulates General in Hong Kong.
The event began with an opening talk by Harvey ROUSE, Head of the European Union Office to Hong Kong and Macao.
He expressed the hope of sparking the curiosity and interest of participants in these European languages and cultures, which may encourage them to explore linguistic diversity and embrace cultural differences.
He also highlighted the aim of the event to promote a culture of mutual trust and respect through language education.
He expressed heartfelt gratitude to the organizers and invited the Consul Generals to take photos together.
The event kicked off with more and more people participating.
Participants of all ages took an active part, most of whom were young people. Primary and secondary school students in uniforms came for the event after school. Parents, along with their kindergarten-aged children, participated. The elderly also joined the event.
As its name implies, the event ran in a way akin to "dating".
First, I got a "European languages passport" from the staff, which displayed 11 European languages to choose from, including Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.
I could choose several language booths that I was interested in and learn handpicked words with the teachers, after which I could get stamps on my "passport".
As a language lover, I was more than thrilled to "date" with diverse languages.
I heard some voices expressing their excitement in both Cantonese and French when I queued at the German booth. I could not help but turn back to look at them.
One of the two young ladies asked me if I was a student fond of languages.
I said "yes" without a second thought, as if I were a language student several years ago, who would choose as many language electives as possible to feel how sounds and words were constructed in different languages.
Although a voice sprung up in my brain telling me that I was no longer a student, I said to myself, "My passion for learning languages will stay as strong as what it was like when I was in the university!"
Then we started communicating with each other in French, from the reason why we learned French to the effort we had made. They told me that they knew each other in the French class organized by Alliance Française. They were both enthusiastic about patisserie, which motivated them to learn French.
One of them also told me that she had recently collaborated with Czech chefs to give cooking classes to children. She said that she would go to the Czech booth to learn a few words later.
Brief as the conversation was, it made the waiting time more colorful and inspired me to make more effort in language learning.
I joined the activities in three booths in total, including German, Portuguese, and Finnish booths. The teachers were all dedicated and patient. They also shared different teaching techniques.
The German teacher started the "dating" by greeting me in German, which was engaging. She introduced herself first and then led me to use the same sentence pattern to introduce myself.
The Portuguese teacher started simple conversations with me after she knew that I had previous experience in learning it, which was reminiscent of some words and collocations I had learned.
The Finnish teacher showed me some common words and taught me their pronunciation. After my repeat, she told me that the double form of the same letter, for example, "ii", meant the pronunciation of a long vowel, which triggered my interest in exploring other phonetic rules in Finnish.
The "datings" went very smoothly and I got three stamps as expected. I handed my "language passport" to the staff to register for the lucky draw. Maybe I will win a free language course (French, German or Italian) or other exciting prizes? I hope so!
As I left, there were still long queues at each booth. I felt like I was swimming across a colorful sea, where beautiful words in diverse languages kept bubbling up...
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