According to the Virginia Department of Education, 43.3% of HCPS students are English Language Learners or students who are in a language class. With that statistic, it’s not hard to imagine that many students at HHS are bilingual. However, some students take it one step further and are trilingual. One of these students is freshman Jafar Mansoor.

Mansoor speaks English, Arabic and French. Mansoor originally learned Arabic as he was born in Baghdad, Iraq. He moved to the United States in 2008 and learned English, and Mansoor began to learn French just this previous semester.

Mansoor has many reasons for deciding to learn English and French after knowing how to speak Arabic.

“I learned English because it is basically essential if I wanted to have a good life here, and I am learning French because I want to live in Switzerland after college. The part of Switzerland I want to live in speaks French,” Mansoor said.

Mansoor sees many benefits to being trilingual, like being able to communicate with many other individuals.

“I can talk to a lot of people that I might otherwise not be able to. Also, if I don’t know one word in a language, I just say it in the other and translate it so everything works out,” Mansoor said.

Mansoor also aspires to learn different languages later in his life due to his future plans.

“I do want to learn German as well because Switzerland also has German-speaking areas, and also just because it’s always great to learn new things,” Mansoor said.

Mansoor states that learning languages can be difficult due to all of the practice and memorization that comes with trying to learn a language.

“It was hard to get used to speaking one of them at a time. I have trouble sometimes sticking to one language when I talk to say, my parents or family members,” Mansoor said.

Mansoor also thinks that English was the hardest language for him to learn.

“English [was the most difficult], because it was so different from what I had already known, which was Arabic. [English is written in] different directions than Arabic and it had less letters,” Mansoor said.

Mansoor is not the only one in his family who is trilingual. Mansoor also has a sister who is trilingual.

“My sister speaks Spanish, Arabic and English. She learned Spanish in high school,” Mansoor said.

Mansoor has even selected a favorite language

“My favorite language to speak is probably Arabic or French. I don’t know why, but English seems just a bit boring. I do talk mostly in English, but sometimes I like just saying random words in Arabic or French to myself,” Mansoor said.

Another student at Harrisonburg High School who is trilingual is freshman Jordan Perez. Perez speaks English and French as well as Mansoor, but Perez’s third language is Spanish. Perez learn English before he learned French and Spanish.

“I learned Spanish pretty soon after I learned English, and I learned French at the beginning of freshman year,” Perez said.

Perez’s family speaks Spanish, which contributed to him learning the language.

“My whole family speaks Spanish, so I just kind of learned it as I grew up, and French has always sounded really cool to me,” Perez said.

Perez also stated some benefits of being trilingual.

“I can communicate with most people I come across, and switching between languages is really cool.”

Perez still sometimes struggles when it comes to speaking three languages.

“The thing that always messes me up is that Spanish and French are so similar that I get them mixed up in my head,” Perez said.
Perez also stated that French was the hardest language to learn for him, but it’s his favorite

“French was definitely the hardest since I learned later in life. It had been a while since I learned a new language. [It was] my favorite to speak [though], the words are just so fun to say, but it’s a really weird language so it’s easy to mess up.”