Leo M. Shiner ’20

Leo M. Shiner ’20, of Hamilton, N.Y.; Sept. 8. At the time of his passing he was enrolled in a master’s program in Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii. While at Brown, he studied for a semester in Yaroslavl, Russia, concentrated in linguistics and Slavic studies, and was involved in Tech House and Brown’s Catholic community. He cared deeply about political issues because of his concern for all marginalized people and started a chapter of Amnesty International in high school. In subsequent years he tutored children, taught English to immigrants, and registered young people and people of color to vote. He enjoyed music and played cello and sang. He was passionate about the preservation of endangered languages and the well-being of the Indigenous people who speak them. He taught himself multiple languages and had been working on designing an innovative language-learning video game that he hoped would make language learning accessible to all people. He shared his humor and knowledge of languages on his linguistics meme pages, the most popular of which, Etymology Memes for Reconstructed Phonemes on Facebook is followed by over 100,000 people around the world. He is survived by his parents, a sister, grandparents, and an uncle.