Story republished with permission from The Bemidji Pioneer. Written by Daltyn Lofstrom with photos from Madelyn Haasken.
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TURTLE RIVER TOWNSHIP, Minnesota — Tucked inside the Northwoods of Minnesota, proves to be an appropriate place for a British polyglot to visit.
A speaker of at least eight languages — including French, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese and Indonesian — this polyglot’s name is Dave Huxtable, a YouTuber with a lifelong passion for language.
With nearly 40,000 subscribers, Huxtable has long crafted videos focusing on the rich variety of languages, pronunciations and accents from around the world. His most recent visit brought him to the Bemidji area, a prime opportunity to share Concordia Language Villages with his audience.
“I was on Google Flights and happened to see that there were some cheap flights to Fargo,” Huxtable said. “From the Orange County Airport to Fargo, there was a return for $150, so I thought, ‘Let’s go.’”
Currently residing in Southern California, Huxtable was familiar with the depiction of Bemidji in the TV series “Fargo,” as well as the iconic Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues.
“I decided I would fly to Fargo, rent a car and drive to Bemidji,” he said. “Then I started thinking, ‘Well, what am I going to do in Bemidji?’ That’s when I discovered that (Concordia Language Villages) are here.”
Huxtable got in touch with Candace Harmon, communications director for Concordia Language Villages and Å·ÃÀÊÓƵ in Moorhead, to plan a visit once he arrived on Monday. With his camera phone in tow, Huxtable embarked on his tour alongside Associate Director of Programs Marty Fankhanel and Senior Program Director Martin Graefe.
The trio visited several sites, detailing the history and development of each specifically as well as the property generally.
“There was a professor of education at Concordia in the late 1950s, Gerhard Haukebo, who had just come back from being a principal at an army-dependent school in Germany,” Graefe said. “He was living there with his family, and his kids were picking up the language by playing with German kids, very naturally through play and in a natural setting.
“He came back to (Concordia) and approached the president of the college at the time, asking if they could start a camp for kids to learn languages. Because through play, it was much easier for the kids to learn German than he and his wife trying to learn German as adults. That’s how this concept started.”
Currently boasting 875 acres, the villages’ first permanent site, the Norwegian Language Village, “Skogfjorden,” — also the first site of Monday’s visit — began construction in 1969, and soon afterward, sites would crop up for the German Language Village, “Waldsee,” and the French Language Village, “Lac du Bois.”
The most recent addition to the site is the
With each site simulating their respective country’s culture, Graefe doubled down on the importance of language immersion as a means to truly retain what they learn.
“What we try to do is bring the culture and the language to life,” he added. “In the program here, there’s no ‘homework.’ It’s all through meaningful contact and the daily activities that the kids like to do.”
“We create a simulation here at the villages, but it’s a simulation that we try to make as real as possible,” Fankhanel said. “We’re bringing in staff from overseas, connecting young people to them. … We’re just one way in which the world is becoming more interconnected in a meaningful way.”
In a three-way agreement, Huxtable commended the villages for their language immersion techniques — a key takeaway from his visit.
“I’ve loved finding out about the teaching philosophy, and it very much gels with my idea of how people successfully learn language,” he said. “The fact that it’s successful creates a path for future learning.”
Fankhanel expressed appreciation for Huxtable’s visit and the opportunity to raise collective awareness of Concordia Language Villages even more than before.
“It’s brilliant to be able to tell more people about the ways in which one can access languages and culture,” he added. “We want people to connect more in this world that we live in and build those bridges.”
Alongside an upcoming visit with Bemidji State Ojibwe professor Anton Treuer, Huxtable would return to Southern California with a bit more knowledge to share with his subscriber base about the diversity of language in northern Minnesota.
“Before I came here, (Bemidji) was just that place with the statue. I then find out that there’s this rich history, rich relationship with language — both Ojibwe language and those at the villages,” Huxtable said. “It’s just fascinating.”
Huxtable’s video will become available at .
More information on Concordia Language Villages can be found at .
