Chinese language requirement

[Guest guest]

Five Branches currently requires Chinese language as a requirement

for graduation. It's taught the first semester of school.

Unfortunately it's only a one hour a week course (16 hours total).

The professor gave us plenty of homework, however, like writing

characters over and over. It was a good class to pick up the basics.

We focused on pronunciation, how to look up characters, basic

sentence structures and vocabulary and characters found in TCM

literature. He also taught basic conversation. The tricky thing with

Chinese is the number of dialects in the country. Our teacher taught

us the national Beijing dialect, but our sister school in China is

closer to Shanghai and supposedly he can hardly understand them down

there. Then there is the option to learn Cantonese instead, so we can

communicate more with the Chinese population in American Chinatowns.

Kind of frustrating.

 

They tried offering a part 2 to the class and I signed up but the

enrollment was too low and they had to cancel it. My class was, as a

whole, interested in learning Chinese, but when it came down to it,

very lazy about studying it. It would be good to make it a

prerequisite because as a first semester student your learning the

TCM foundations which is overwhelming as it is- to try and learn a

complex language at the same time was intense. However, the class was

extremely helpful at sparking my desire to continue practicing and

learning the language...the only question is which dialect should I

study? Luckily written Chinese is universal- right?

 

Dave Russell

[Guest guest]

I'd say for personal TCM studies, studying Mandarin (Beijing dialect) is the number 1 choice. However since the Beijing dialect has a lot of "R's", many people from Shanghai do not pronounce that and they also speak their own dialect. In the USA, the general Chinese population speaks Cantonese or Toishan, but they can generally understand Mandarin. Speaking Chinese is easier than you'd think, but I agree the reading and writing is more difficult. Written Chinese is hardly universal. There are Cantonese phrases that do not translate into Mandarin and vice versa. Also Mainland Chinese tend to use simplified characters which people from Hong Kong and Taiwan do not use. Japanese and Korean would also be hard pressed to read the simplified stuff.

 

Robert Chu, L.Ac., QMEchusauli

 

See my webpages at: http://www.chusaulei.com

 

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seacell1

Friday, July 18, 2003 5:51 PM

Chinese language requirement

Five Branches currently requires Chinese language as a requirement for graduation. It's taught the first semester of school. Unfortunately it's only a one hour a week course (16 hours total). The professor gave us plenty of homework, however, like writing characters over and over. It was a good class to pick up the basics. We focused on pronunciation, how to look up characters, basic sentence structures and vocabulary and characters found in TCM literature. He also taught basic conversation. The tricky thing with Chinese is the number of dialects in the country. Our teacher taught us the national Beijing dialect, but our sister school in China is closer to Shanghai and supposedly he can hardly understand them down there. Then there is the option to learn Cantonese instead, so we can communicate more with the Chinese population in American Chinatowns. Kind of frustrating.They tried offering a part 2 to the class and I signed up but the enrollment was too low and they had to cancel it. My class was, as a whole, interested in learning Chinese, but when it came down to it, very lazy about studying it. It would be good to make it a prerequisite because as a first semester student your learning the TCM foundations which is overwhelming as it is- to try and learn a complex language at the same time was intense. However, the class was extremely helpful at sparking my desire to continue practicing and learning the language...the only question is which dialect should I study? Luckily written Chinese is universal- right?Dave Russell Chinese Herbal Medicine, a voluntary organization of licensed healthcare practitioners, matriculated students and postgraduate academics specializing in Chinese Herbal Medicine, provides a variety of professional services, including board approved online continuing education.