Yale Daily News

Updated: Monday, November 23, 2009 1:03 a.m.

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On path to learning obscure languages, Elis play it by ear

Staff Reporter
Published Monday, April 7, 2008

Ari Berlin ’10 fared well during his spring-break travels to Morocco and Spain. He mastered “jus d’orange” in French and got by in Barcelona with his high-school Spanish.

“I’m not a languages kind of guy,” Berlin says.

Yet he speaks — or “interacts,” rather — in four languages: English since birth, Spanish from high school and Zulu and Afrikaans after Yale’s language programs.

Berlin has no ancestral connection to Africa: His Facebook picture displays South African children playing with his dark, curly hair. But as an African Studies and International Studies double...

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