Freshman Lee Mook is the most talented linguist at UNC
He founded Carolina Language Communities this fall
UNC freshman Lee Mook wasted no time getting involved on campus his first semester at Chapel Hill.
Contrary to most freshmen scrambling around Fall Fest signing up for way too many random club listserves, Lee decided to start his own organization: Carolina Language Communities.
It aims to create communities of language speakers within Chapel Hill, ranging from Swahili to Chinese to Italian, who meet once a week for an hour at a time to speak their respective languages, play games, watch movies and discuss hot topics.
Lee told The Tab: “Carolina Language Communities is the ultimate language networking group.
“It does not matter what language you speak or want to speak, we either have or will start a community for the language you love.”
Lee and each language community leader speak multiple languages (Chinese, Spanish and English). Unsatisfied with his trilingualism, he came to UNC wishing to learn Bahasa Indonesian but was unable to find a way of doing so.
“I realized there must be many UNC students who have had the same experience.”
The idea also came to him as part of a larger goal.
“I wish to see UNC become the center for languages in North Carolina.”
Eleven communities now have leadership teams and are rapidly growing in membership, including Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Turkish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese and Dutch. Swahili and Russian are up-and-coming.
The Chinese community had their second meeting last weekend and took a trip to Li Mings Global Mart in Durham to buy traditional Chinese food and practice speaking. It was extremely successful, and Lee said they made new friends who will be attending the next meeting.
Carolina Language Communities is not limited to UNC students. The organization plans to reach out to Chapel Hill community members of all ages to attend community meetings. Eventually, they hope to create tight-knit groups that will generate and foster friendships.
If you’re interested in joining a community or starting one, please contact [email protected].