By Chelsea Hennessy ’11
When Mary Catherine Bowden ’12 told her parents that she wanted to take Chinese they replied, “Good luck!” Marquis Cunningham’s ’12 parents asked, “Really?”
The Modern Language department at Rhodes was as stunned as these parents when they noticed a dramatic rise in the number of students enrolled in Chinese. So why are these students opting for a less conventional language?
Each student had a personal reason for signing up for the course. Bowden says, “I took a history class last year on the Chinese cultural revolution that sparked an interest. The class solidified my wanting to be able to read the language.” Kaleb Yaniger ’13 replies, “I’m really interested in Eastern religion and philosophy. I plan on doing a lot of traveling there when I graduate.” Drew Wagstaff ’11 has career aspirations in mind, “I want to work for the military or government and that helps you stand out.” Each started out afresh with Chinese 101.
So where does one begin with a language that doesn’t even use letters? Drew informed me that it’s not as complicated as it first seems. It’s just a different way of organizing sounds. Each symbol represents one syllable. “They have a phonetic alphabet to help you learn the characters called pinyin and you learn that first. Then you start associating pinyin with the characters. There are also four tones. So you can pronounce the same word four different ways and it will have four different meanings. There are also radicals, which are parts of characters and if you start learning radicals you can start putting it together.” At least there’s no conjugating!
The students have discovered a variety of methods to study Chinese elocution. One way is simply to talk with the Chinese students on campus. “They are extremely easy to talk to. They are just as eager to learn about our culture as we are of theirs,” Mary Catherine says. Kaleb adds, “We also have an audio file to help us practice and two tutors.” The most fun way to learn pronunciation, though, is by listening to You Tube videos. Regardless of the technique it’s clear that each student is making considerable progress.
To be considered literate in Mandarin, one has to study at least 3000 symbols. But these students can already communicate on a basic level and being able to converse is the best reward of all. Drew says, “The Chinese students are always so surprised; they freak out when they hear ni hao.”
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