UNIT – Montium University it brings not only extraordinary opportunities for the communities of the six partner universities in the fields of education and research, but the project itself is imposed by a particular aspect: the issue of safeguarding national languages and supporting linguistic diversity in a united Europe. In this sense, the third work package, UNITA Multilingualism, uses the method of intercomprehension in learning Romance languages, which also establishes equality between languages. Enjoying in Western European countries dedicated academic programs, in the simplest of definitions, intercomprehension "is a phenomenon that happens when two people communicate successfully with each other, each speaking their own language" (EuRom 5: www.eurom5. com). In his 1993 book, In search of the perfect language, Umberto Eco remarks: "A Europe of polyglots is not a Europe of people who speak many languages fluently, but at best of people who can meet each other speaking their own language and understanding the other's".
In this context, the virtual course "Intercomprehension between related languages" debuted, simultaneously in the six universities of the UNITA Alliance, intended for philology students and held between October and December 2020. Under the coordination of Professor Sandra Garbarino, from the Université de Lyon 2, specialist outstanding in this field, vice president of APICAD (Association for the Promotion of Intercomprehension at a Distance), but above all a very charismatic teacher, the same virtual classroom at the University of Turin brought together thirty students from the Università degli Studi di Torino, the Université Savoie -Mont Blanc, Universidad de Zaragoza, Western University of Timisoara, Universidade da Beira Interior and Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour. The course is part of the activities of the project and of the UNITA Alliance dedicated to the training of students and teaching staff in the field of Intercomprehension, with the aim of stimulating inclusion and diversity in a multinational interuniversity campus.
From the Western University of Timișoara, five students from the Faculty of Letters, History and Theology, Languages and Literatures field accepted such a challenge: Alisa Benescu, first year (German-Italian), Maria Giannecchini, first year (French-Italian ), Mihaela Pîrcălăbescu, first year (English-Italian), Ana-Maria Iancu, second year (English-Italian), Simona Rancea, second year (English-Italian). In a multicultural and multilingual setting, French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese were spoken in equal measure.
At the end of the internship, how do you see the experience of Timișoara students? Alisa Benescu declares that "knowing a foreign language is an advantage, and participating in this course meant communication and discoveries: communication, because the entire course was based on transmitting information orally as well as in writing; discoveries, because each time we learned new information, unknown to us". From Alisa's point of view, "integration into the group was a natural one, because Mrs. Garbarino interacted with everyone equally, asked us all questions and involved each of us in the activities she proposed in the course. The rest of the participants were also interested in getting to know our language, to know the similarities and differences between our language and the language of the participants from other countries. I liked the topics covered and the way the teacher explained, for example, what the similarities and differences are between the languages Neo-Latin and I also liked the way the natives of each language intervened to explain to us how a word should be pronounced and what the motivation is".
The intercomprehension course was also an extremely pleasant experience for Mihaela Pîrcălăbescu, because - she lucidly analyzes - "I had the opportunity to communicate with students from different parts of the world and participate in different group activities. What really surprised me was the fact that I was able to communicate with my colleagues, even though everyone spoke a different language. Thanks to this course I realized how many things the Romance languages have in common and how transparent a language that I initially considered incomprehensible can be. It wasn't very easy because the class lasted three hours and Monday was very busy. However, I attended every course with great interest and got involved as much as possible. At the end of each class, the teacher assigned us extremely useful but also fun topics to discuss the following week. It was always a pleasure when others were curious to learn about the language and traditions of my country."
For Simona Rancea, "this experience was beautiful, but it would have been even more beautiful if it had been face to face. I liked the fact that I worked in other languages - some I even studied, but over time I abandoned them -, such as French and Spanish, and the teacher and implicitly participating in this project helped me very much to realize that I still know these languages that I need to study more. I also liked that the emphasis was placed on the Romanian language, and we, the students from Timișoara, always had the opportunity to speak and interact with colleagues from the other universities in the UNITA consortium in Romanian, which by the end of the course they came to no longer consider it the most difficult language, but even to understand it".
"A unique and interesting experience" this course also represented for Ana-Maria Iancu because she confesses: "I had the opportunity to see a different way of teaching in several languages, a fact that helped me a lot to develop my vocabulary and morphological structures -syntactics in the language I chose to study, namely Italian. I also managed to learn French, a language I had not studied at all, and I learned a lot, for example, about the language and civilization of Portugal. To summarize, all this meant for me: interaction in other languages, deepening the linguistic and cultural peculiarities of each language, teamwork with colleagues from other universities of the UNITA consortium."
In this generous framework of intercomprehension that united students speaking Romance languages for a semester, our students had the opportunity to communicate, to learn to express themselves both in writing and orally, in each other's language, but also to reveal them to their colleagues the beauty and the linguistic and cultural peculiarities of the Romanian language - practically an unknown and difficult language for colleagues from other universities. An original aspect, appreciated in unison by the participants from Timişoara, is that of having often invited teachers from outside the course and from various countries, in order to discover in this way particularities of the language and culture of the countries of origin of each guest.
In retrospect, all female students stated that the Turin virtual experience was one they would undoubtedly continue in the XNUMXnd semester, encouraging their peers to participate, with the persuasive force of the practiced and knowledgeable. If at the beginning the fear of the unknown was well anchored in each of the five participants, as the course revealed its multiple facets it gradually faded, being replaced by curiosity, knowledge, communication, teamwork, familiarization with other Romance languages, and, yes!, many friendships connected… online.
