The UA hosted the 2010 Southern Arizona Language Fair, a coalescence of language and cultures, for students from kindergarten to college.

Schools from all around southern Arizona came to the UA to participate.

The fair included live music, art, poetry, food and dance.

There were also art contests and oral proficiency exams.

Many UA departments had booths with students and teachers eager to talk about language and culture.

“”I come here every year; I love it,”” said Kelly Lowther Pereira, a UA graduate teaching associate in Portuguese and Spanish. “”I think it is great for kids to learn about different cultures and open their minds.””

The UA classics department put on performances in Latin every hour and wrote people’s names in Greek.

Joshua Lee, a mechanical engineering freshman, passed out photocopies of train tickets from Germany for “”wherever you want to go in Germany.””

“”I like how they do something different for each region, each culture, each language,”” Lee said.

Bill Rice, a member of the board of directors for the Turkish Students Association, said he participated in the fair when he was studying Turkish.

“”That was very helpful learning a poem and reciting (it),”” he said.

Tolan Thornton, a junior majoring in French, Chinese and business, said he knew within his first week at UA that he wanted to major in French.

Thornton said he studied French in middle school and high school and didn’t want to stop.

Thornton said he was also majoring in Chinese because he had always wanted to pick up a third language and plans on studying abroad in China.

This is Thornton’s second year participating in the Language Fair.

“”I think it is a really cool opportunity for the larger Tucson community to interact,”” Thornton said. “”There are many generations coming together.””