Faculty of Arts

Student Profile

Hyewon Park awarded first place in national speech contest

(submitted by Dr. Jeffrey Newmark)

Hyewon Park, a second year student in The University of Winnipeg’s Program on East Asian Languages and Cultures, won first place in the intermediate division at the 23rd annual Canada National Japanese Speech Contest. Sponsored by Canadian Association for Japanese Language Education and held at the University of British Columbia, the contest drew contestants from across Canada. Each participant had placed first in their regional competitions and received free airfare and hotel accommodations to attend the event.

Ms. Park spoke on the importance of the Kyoto dialect, a spoken form of Japanese derived from Japan’s classical age over a thousand years ago. It was the Kyoto dialect that sparked Hyewon’s interest in Japanese two years ago when she watched “My-HIME,” an anime featuring young women in Kyoto. Having never studied Japanese, she enrolled in Introduction to the Japanese Language in the spring of 2011 and continued her studies in the Intermediate level this past year. Ms. Park hopes that someday, in the future, she will live in Kyoto and be able to speak the dialect fluently.

In the meantime, Ms. Park plans on continuing her studies in Japanese language and culture as well as saving part of her prize money to spend on a trip to Japan once she graduates.