The more, the merrier, isn’t it? Polyglot Indonesia Chapter Yogyakarta (PI Jogja) proudly held the second meetup this year on the 7th of April at PondokCabe Bistro, just a few days after 30 new members had been recruited through an interview process. This monthly meetup gathering, with “Our Sports Icon” as the theme, has become a platform for both new and old members to acquaint themselves with each other, to meet the regional coordinator, the team of coordinators, and, most importantly, be informed about the programmes PI Jogja has, such as language exchange during Mingling (Minggu Lingo), meetups, and so on. Currently we have as many as 117 active members who are divided into 12 language tables based on the language they are proficient in: French, German, Norwegian, Dutch, Korean, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic, Italian, and English.

In order to ‘showcase’ how sophisticated one would sound like when speaking in those languages, the meetup team prepared a small task for the members of each language table to complete as a group. The task was to discuss and, later, to deliver a five-minutes presentation in front of the other PI Jogja members about the most popular sports from the country in which each respective language originated. The results were varied. Presenters from the German table predictably talked about football (or as they say in German, Fußball), whereas the Japanese table brought up sumo and MotoGP. The Mandarin Chinese table made an interesting and elaborative presentation on wushu (武术) and tai chi (太極), which are Chinese martial arts. Last but not least, the French table presented la pelotebasque, a court game from south-western French area of Navarre and north-eastern Spanish area of Basque Country, hence the name. In the end, it was a challenging but fun task to do as members of each table were encouraged to find out more about the language’s country of origin, help each other on difficult vocabularies, andorganise their presentation in an interesting manner whilst staying concise.

The event was closed with a photo session (correct that, it was more like a dozen of photo sessions!), during which the table leaders were holding the flags of their own tables and members were flashing happy smiles. In conclusion, it was not only a chance for the members to bond as a group, but also as a family. Truly looking forward to PI Jogja’s further offers for the rest of the year!