Language

I went with a group from CityU to a meeting at Chinese University of Hong Kong where they presented their progress on the development of their general education program. CUHK is "the Harvard" of Hong Kong. The students come in with strong English skills and a growing number come from mainland China. CUHK is somewhat unique in that they use both English and Cantonese--the students often get to vote on which language they want to be used in class and they have the choice in terms of what language they use to write exams, etc. The exception to this would be a professor who only spoke English. I gave a seminar at CUHK last week and a faculty member, whose first language is Manderin, told me she was going to be teaching a course for the first time the next year where it was going to be in English one term and in Cantonese the other--imagine having to master abstract concepts in two languages, neither which is your first--in order to teach two linguistic versions of a course.

At this meeting to report of their GE program, two young women were the MCs (it is always young women...). They did the greetings and introductions in first Cantonese, and then English. But all the reports were in Cantonese so we had on headphones with simultaneous translation. During the Q and A section, questions could be asked in Manderin (someone would say--I'm going to ask this in Manderin) with the answer in Cantonese. Or everyone could stay in Cantonese. Or if someone asked a question in English, then everyone switched to English so the answer was in English as well.

Afterward I asked someone who had gone to CUHK how mainland Chinese did with the Cantonese if they ended up in a class where people voted to use Cantonese, and it appeared that the students had to quickly pick it up--at least the reading of Cantonese and Manderin are the same, and the students are quite bright.

The core GE courses that all students will take are really 2 "great books" types of courses. Yet it has to span western and eastern thought. So they will have to read Plato in English, for example, but also have Chinese translations of Plato recommended. And class may be in either English or Cantonese--probably English will drawn mainland Chinese and Cantonese for the locals. It will be interesting to see if this divide grows with these two core courses.

And here I can't even practice my Cantonese because whenever I put on my CD and try out the sounds my daughter tells me to stop!

Practically speaking, I got directions to staff quarters of Baptist U where I meet a hiking group. The American who lives there told me to take minibus 69K, and say "sooksay um gai" to get them to stop at the right place. The Taiwanese faculty member agreed I should take minibus 69K but said I should say: "Su Xia lou qia." Mmmmmm.

This week I had an assistant at the university type up my address in Chinese. I take it with me everywhere I go.