Newsletter No. 95

CUHK Newsletter No. 95 19th October 1996 3 Getting Their Tongue Round Cantonese and Putonghua Prof. John Jamieson I f an expatriate staff of the University approaches you in Park'N Shop and asks you, 'Keh tsup sar deen yu hai been doe?' 1 , or if a colleague from overseas asks you in the cafeteria, ' Zum more jiao y in yang soo me go tsan?' 2 and you can't make out what they are saying — assuming y ou no rma l ly understand Cantonese and Putonghua —the man to tell is John Jamieson. Prof. Jamieson is director of the New Asia Yale-in-China Chinese Language Centre wh i ch runs Cantonese and Putonghua courses for staff of the University. Guided by the principle that people living in a community should be able to speak the community language, the centre has been running Cantonese and Putonghua courses for staff and their spouses for over a decade. Amo ng expatriate staff, Cantonese has always been more popular since it is what gets one a table in a crowded restaurant and relative compliance from taxi-drivers, so to speak. Besides, Cantonese is one of the two most prevalent dialects in Ch i na t own communities, the other being Fukienese. According to Mr. Ho Cheuk-sang, assistant director of the centre, many overseas staff of Chinese descent learn Cantonese so that they can better serve their community when they return home. The preference for learning Cantonese among expatriates has not changed even w i t h the approach of 1997, although the number of local staff learning Putonghua has grown significantly. Classes last two hours each, and take place twice a week after working hours. Officially speaking, they fall into three levels: elementary, intermediate and advanced, but in reality, coverage of syllabus and rate of progress are determined to a large extent by the ability of a particular class. Being a self- sustaining unit in the University, the centre charges HK$5,640 for each course. The University subsidizes 40 per cent of this basic tuition fee for all full-time staff and their spouses who are expected to be w i th the University for at least two years and who are not receiving any other language subsidy. The cut-off number for starting a class is six but Prof. Jamieson points out that exceptions are sometimes made for an enthusiastic group of four. As these are evening courses, finding instructors can be a problem. Prof. Jamieson jokingly says that he often has to 'browbeat' instructors into teaching them as they would rather go home. For the same reason student dropout rate is high. After the gruelling nine-to-five routine, most people would rather go for a d r i nk than do oral acrobatics with tricky phonemes. Senior Putonghua instructor Mrs. C. N. Han Wong says that there are on the average three dropouts among 15 students each semester. And students are often late or absent due to work pressures, or they may be present but tired, according to Mr s. N. C. Wong Mi l l e r, senior Cantonese instructor. With all these setbacks, classes naturally proceed very slowly. Yet despite the challenge to patience and w i l l power, there are students who have faithfully stayed semester after semester and who now boast a decent command of the dialect of their choice. Helen Wise is one such student. Prof. Wise of the Pharmacology Depa r tment has taken Cantonese classes at the centre off and on for four years. She says she tries to use Cantonese as much as she can when she dines out or goes shopping, since everyday communication was her reason for learning in the first place. However, to her disappointment. many locals prefer to 'use their English and let [her] use [her] Cantonese'. Prof. Wise says the best t h i ng about the course is that instructors work hard at encouraging students to try out what they know in class. However she also feels that practical vocabulary should be taught earlier in the course to enable students to put into practice what they have learnt. Speaking w i th the weight of a Veteran' Cantonese learner. Prof. Wise observes that the best way to practise is to live w i th someone who speaks Cantonese. Incidentally, Prof. Wise's husband has also been learning Cantonese at the centre. So do they practise it with each other? 'Yes, we do,' she says, 'but no one would understand us and there's no one to correct us.' K im Cheng of the Internal Aud it Office started taking Cantonese courses on campus last term and is already at i n t e rmed i a te level. This is p a r t ly because she had taken a six-week course before coming to the University, and partly because she is familiar w i th another Asian language, Vietnamese. Mr s. Cheng also practises ve ry frequently wi th her colleagues. In fact improving professional interaction is her p r ima ry reason for t ak i ng the course. Like Prof. Wise, she finds the teachers and classmates ve ry encouraging. When asked if there's anything she wo u ld like to change about the course, Mrs. Cheng says she wo u l d prefer to have classes more frequently, perhaps three times a week, but — and she stresses this — w i th no homework. This is because her busy schedule does not allow her much time for homework, but nonetheless like all conscientious students, she 'feels guilty' for not having done it. Mrs. Cheng also finds listening to the tape more effective for her than studying the textbook, because she has yet to get used to t r ans l a t i ng the r oman i zed pronunciation of Cantonese into actual sounds. Hearing the words spoken saves her the trouble of having to link sight to sound. Mrs. Cheng's difficulty should be far less pertinent to the Putonghua course since it teaches Chinese characters in addition to oral Chinese, unlike the Cantonese course which is orally-oriented. And this is one of the reasons why Ms. Eleanor Holroyd of the Nursing Department chose to take Putonghua. Ms. Holroyd also believes that while Cantonese may have greater ' sho r t - t e rm' use i n h e l p i ng her commun i ca te w i t h students, Putonghua has ' w i der application' since it is the 'official language of mainland China and Taiwan, and w i ll be that of Hong Kong after 1997'. A more personal reason is that her children are learning Putonghua and she wants to be able to practise w i th them. Wh i le the expatriate staff interviewed by the CUHK Newsletter offer different reasons for taking the language courses. Prof. Jamieson points out that a g r ow i ng number of both locals and expatriates are taking them for professional reasons. Most of them are staff from the Faculty of Medicine who have f r equent contact w i t h patients. In anticipation of increased dealings w i th institutions in mainland China, many departments in the faculty have also requested the centre to run courses for their staff. For the last one and a half years, for example, the centre has been teaching staff f r om the Department of Medicine a Putonghua course. The course begins, like regular courses, w i th the fundamentals such as pronunciation, and then proceeds to teach the list of medical terminology specified by the depa r tmen t. For instance, the department may want the course to teach the different ways of saying ' Do y ou have a fever?' i n Putonghua. Other departments and administrative units, i nc l ud i ng the Department of Management and the Office of Student Affairs, have inquired about such courses for their staff. Expatriate staff learning Chinese at the University may lack time, but they are fortunate to have the benefit of the Language Centre, the University's support, and an environment that abounds w i t h oppo r t un i t i es for practice. Trying to learn a language part-time has never been easy — the m i l l i ons of H o ng Ko ng students s t r ugg l i ng f u l l - t i me w i t h English through the years can probably vouch for it. Piera Chen The en r o lment o f Un i ve r s i ty s t a ff and t he ir spouses i n Pu t onghua and Cantonese courses f r om 1987 to 1996 Academic Year Putonghua Cantonese 87/88 13 26 88/89 10 29 89/90 20 27 90/91 18 14 91/92 19 37 92/93 9 51 93/94 13 56 94/95 16 39 95/96 29 31 96/97 (1st term only) 16 14 1 '咖汁沙甸魚喺邊度?' or 'Where are the sardines in ketchup?' 2 '甚麼叫鴛鴦粟米狗餐?' or 'What's a "yin-yeung and corn-dog meal"?' Yin-yeung: a popular drink in Hong Kong-style cafes, consisting essentially of half tea and half coffee.