Welcome to the Department of Foreign Languages of Midwood High School.
The Foreign Languages Department is headed by Ms. Paulette V. Johnson, Assistant Principal, Supervision. Ms. Johnson and her team of twenty-two teachers provide pupils with the opportunity to develop and acquire proficiency in and pursue the study of the language and literature of four languages: French, Spanish, Italian and Latin. The Foreign Languages Department also offers a full range of courses in English as a Second Language (ESL), and Haitian Creole bilingual program.
We would like invite you to join us and experience the thrill and satisfaction of being able to communicate with others around the world. We are pleased to offer variety of cultural activities throughout the school year. Join us in our International Festival or take a trip abroad and experience language first hand.
Events
and Publications Faculty
Did you know?
The modern Spanish language contains some 7,000
words derived from Arabic. During the 700 years that Spain and Portugal were
part of the Islamic civilization, the Moors' culture and society dominated the
Iberian Peninsula. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand expelled all Moslems (along
with Jews) in 1492 for political reasons
because they wanted to build a European empire that could compete with England,
France and Holland. They could not, however, erase the wide breadth of the
Moors' contributions to science, architecture, engineering, art, agriculture,
animal husbandry, horsemanship, government, the military, literature,
technology, the textile industry and domestic life, as can be seen in the
terminology and vocabulary of Spanish that is derived from Arabic. Many familiar
words in English are also Arabic in origin such as orange, alcohol, algebra,
cotton, etc
Urdu, spoken in Pakistan, and by a number of Midwood students, also contains a large percentage of vocabulary derived from Arabic. This is because the renowned Muslim emperor of the Mughal dynasty in what is now Pakistan and India, Akbar (the Great) commissioned scholars to develop a language that would be understood by the Turks, Persians, Arabs, Hindi, and other soldiers of his huge army. The Emperor Akbar ruled from 1556 to 1605. The language developed by the finest intellects of the period was known as the language of the "Lashkars" or uLashkari". The literal meaning of the word Urdu is lashkar, or army. Thus, for different reasons, Urdu also has a large lexicon of Arabic (or words derived from Arabic), the same as Spanish. Click here to see some Spanish/Arabic/Urdu cognates
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