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Featured FLAS Fellow: Katriese DeLeon

October 11, 2021

Featured FLAS Fellow: Katriese DeLeon

Katriese DeLeon

Katriese DeLeon is a 2021-2022 undergraduate FLAS fellow studying Portuguese.

"My interest in Portuguese began in 2016 when I was an exchange student in Tabasco, Mexico. Dozens of my fellow exchange students there were from Brazil, and my clearest memories of our trips together are a combination of funk music blaring from portable speakers, listening intently to Brazilian friends’ speech, trying to understand it, and, of course, these friends’ unique generosity and openness that made everyone feel at home. I returned to Ohio with a few disjointed Portuguese phrases in my head, determined to start studying the language. I had no idea that, beyond allowing me to communicate and connect with a huge portion of the world’s population, Portuguese would be something I could reference while studying linguistics and how community and language inform each other.

After graduation, I plan to teach English for one or two years, most likely in Spain, and then return to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies in Hispanic linguistics with a focus on sociolinguistics."