Contact: Ralph Derickson

The program for the 2005 Kentucky World Language Association Festival features a drawing by Kendall Smith, a 16-year-old sophomore student at Walton Verona High School who died just four days before the 2004 Northern Kentucky Foreign Language Festival in which she would have been honored for her winning artwork.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 13, 2005) -- Conducting a “language ambush” at the University of Kentucky Saturday May 14 may not yield the amusing answers which have been produced in similar ambushes in which people on the street are asked such simple questions as “What time is it?” in a foreign language.

On that day, some 1,500 to 2,000 middle- and high school students from all around Kentucky who probably COULD answer the question – in such languages as Spanish, German, Latin, French, Japanese and Russian, will be on campus. The students will be participating in the 30th anniversary of the Kentucky Foreign Language Festival which has always been hosted by UK.

Among the organizers of the 2005 festival, being conducted during the international “Year of Languages,” are Nels Jeffrey Rogers, a UK German professor, and Christi Elkins-Gabbard, a graduate student in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

Rogers said the UK festival format has been changed for 2005 and the awards ceremony, set to begin at 3 p.m. that Saturday in Memorial Hall, will include performances by eight winning competitors in dance and song competition.

The program for the 2005 Kentucky World Language Association Festival features a drawing by Kendall Smith, a 16-year-old sophomore student at Walton Verona High School who died just four days before the 2004 Northern Kentucky Foreign Language Festival in which she would have been honored for her winning artwork.

The awards ceremony is free and open to the public, said Rogers. For more details about the conference go to the Web site .