Hassall-Free Fridays | Study Chinese or beware in business

The Daily Pennsylvanian reported earlier this week that the vast majority of American students learning a language at the high-school and college levels were studying a major European tongue. French, German, Italian and Spanish dominate the learners pool. The reasons for that are complicated. Major European languages are entrenched in many high schools, and students seek to carry on those studies at college. Many students pursue these kinds of languages out of a desire to be able to use them while visiting countries where they are spoken.

Spanish is particularly useful in the United States. It is widely spoken by members of the rapidly growing Hispanic population. Nursing junior Catherine Dierkes wrote in an e-mail that in medicine “a working knowledge of Spanish is quite useful if not necessary when working in a major city.”

Certainly Spanish is and will remain an important language, and I am supportive of making language-choice decisions based on usefulness. But isn’t there another language, a highly useful one, that Penn students are not giving their due? Yes — that language is Mandarin Chinese, the language I studied at Penn.

Whether or not you believe that the 21st century is going to be one in which China rules the roost, you cannot deny that our futures will be intimately linked to what happens across the Pacific. Chinese economic development has already fundamentally changed the nature of the U.S. economy and will continue to do so. The future careers of Penn students — good preprofessionals that we all are — will be almost certain to involve Chinese partners and Chinese clients. Indeed, the message does seem to have been gaining ground at Penn recently. Chinese Language lecturer Melvin Chih-Jen Lee noted in an e-mail that 10 years ago, the Chinese program’s “total enrollment was about 300 students” and that this fall the number is double that. He added that he expects that enrollment “will continue to grow steadily in the next 10 years,” especially now that Chinese is being offered in more high schools.

But not only is Chinese one of the most useful languages for any person planning on being alive this century to know, it is also relatively easy. Now calm down, I realize that statement just contradicted beliefs held by many students, but bear with me.

Yes, Chinese has tens of thousands of characters in its script, and even native speakers don’t know them all. Yes, Chinese has tones that can radically differentiate words otherwise pronounced the same. Yes, Chinese classes at Penn are comparatively serious and won’t involve setting up a fake Facebook personality and interacting with your classmates through it (as a roommate’s French class once did).

But the language also has significant advantages for learners. Chinese has no tenses, so you will never spend hours painstakingly remembering various different endings to the same verb. Chinese is profoundly syllabic, such that once you learn the basic sounds, it is easy to pronounce. The basic word order is the same as in English, and many grammar structures are relatively simple. Lee noted that the main obstacle for American students is merely that Chinese “is so different from the European languages.” Because so many words are simple combinations of others, building a vocabulary can also be relatively simple.

Fail to learn Chinese at your peril. One day a few decades from now, you may find yourself on a plane crossing the Pacific for a business trip in Shanghai. You’ll flip through a Beginner’s Chinese phrasebook in between watching the in-flight movies, certain that you can quickly learn just enough to impress those new clients you’re trying to court. You’ll get off the plane, head to your first meeting and accidentally call someone’s mother a horse.

Luke Hassall is a College senior from Auckland, New Zealand. His e-mail address is hassall@theDP.com. Hassall-Free Fridays appears on alternate Fridays.

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