LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Something unique is happening in Louisville. It’s called Global Language Cafes.
It’s where people can sip coffee and learn a new language.
At the Abol Cafe, 7th-grade student Gwyn Smith looks forward to her Korean lesson.
“My best friends speak Korean and sometimes they conversate [sic] in Korean. So I just like to know what they’re saying and I’m interested in Korean culture too,” Smith said.
This is her second week taking part in the Louisville Language Cafe and her Korean friends come to aid in pronouncing certain phrases.
“I have, and I asked them what, and how to pronounce something because we cannot figure it out at all. They sent us a voice recording, and, you know, we’re still trying to figure that out,” Smith said.
It’s not only Korean, but people can explore Arabic, French, Somali, Spanish, Portuguese and Vietnamese.
“I want to learn, like, food and like, like how you would speak to someone like, you know, because there’s, like, the hierarchy and, like, you speak to people different ways, and that’s like the same in America, but like, much different too,” Smith said.
Jesse Sanders is the Cultural Orientation Coordinator with Kentucky Refugee Ministries. She and the Office for Immigrant Affairs are leading the initiative.
“For starters, I think it’s just great to greet people in a language they understand. When there are new people just being able to be polite to them in a way that they can receive, I think can really go a long way,” Sanders said.
It’s also a larger effort to foster cross-cultural connections and language learning within Louisville’s diverse communities.
“People are integrating into our community every day. They send their kids to school, they get jobs and they work. The more that we can meet them where they’re at, the easier it will be for them to build a life here. We have so many immigrant-owned businesses throughout the city, and the more of that we can have, the better our city is going to be,” Sanders said.
Meanwhile, Smith plans on one day visiting Korea.
“He (her dad) just brings me and he also wants to know, cause we plan to travel to Korea one day. So it’d be nice to just not have only me knowing how to speak,” Smith said.
Each session is open to the community and hosted at an immigrant-owned coffee shop. They’re held on Tuesdays and Thursdays evenings.
The Citizens Diplomacy Action Fund awarded a grant to the Global Language Cafes to support this project.