Ballard High School graduate receives Fulbright scholarship
Linfield College senior and Ballard High School graduate Lily Niland has been selected for a Fulbright scholarship to conduct original linguistics research in Peru.
“I want to see how Japanese residents in Peru use Spanish and how the two languages intersect,” Niland, who majored in intercultural communication and minored in Spanish and Japanese, said in a press release.
She wants to blend her passion for both languages in her research and looked for a site where people speak both languages. Peru’s large population of ethnically Japanese residents makes it ideal.
The Ballard native hopes to get a better understanding of attitudes about the use of Japanese and to examine how the language mixture of Japanese residents compares to that of earlier generations.
Niland’s love of language began when she tutored ESL students at Ballard High School.
“I taught them how to do algebra in English, and they taught me how to dance in Spanish,” she said.
Niland said she now lives with varying degrees of “Spanglanese."