Students interested in Asian languages may start club
Joy Pavelski
Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: News
Next summer freshman Madeline Merritt hopes she will complete fourth grade. She has studied Japanese for four years, and now speaks and writes the complex language at third grade competency.
"So if I were in Japan, they would put me in third grade," she said.
Merritt grew up hearing German, Korean, Portuguese, Italian, French, Russian, Hebrew and Latin spoken at home. Her father has an international MBA, and her mother was an opera singer; language is essential to their careers. It was small surprise, then, that Merritt found a Japanese instructor just before ninth grade and has since been devoted to the language.
"Maddie has a real knack for picking up languages and accents," said her mother, Cynthia Merritt. "She's kind of gotten that from her dad and I. This is beyond a hobby for her. It's a real love and a passion she has for the language."
The absence of Asian languages in Hillsdale College's course offerings was nearly the only thing that gave Madeline pause when considering the school, Cynthia said. Madeline has decided to fill that hole by, if possible, starting a Japanese language club to teach other students Japanese next fall.
"My only requirement is that they work hard at it," Madeline said.
Japan has the second largest economy in the world and the third largest language community on the Internet, after English and Chinese. Susan Schmidt, executive director of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, said knowing Japanese is a stellar attribute for students particularly interested in business careers.
"There's a lot of innovation in Japan in science and technology," Schmidt said.
"Knowing Japanese gives you an entry into that."
Madeline owns a set of flashcards imprinted with kanji - 2,000 pictograph characters from the Chinese system which represent Japanese words. To be considered Japanese-literate, she said, a person needs to know all 2,000 characters.
"I know about 10 percent," she said.
Japanese, like many Eastern languages, is more difficult to learn than the typical college array of romance languages. There are three sets of characters: hiragana, katakana and kanji. The first two are characters for separate phonetic alphabets, while the third is a set of characters that, in themselves, stand for whole words.
"In English, because the verb is in the middle, you don't have to listen to someone's entire sentence," Madeline said. "Japanese has the verb at the end, forcing you to listen more closely. I think that's influenced how I listen to people speak."
Madeline said she hopes to find enough interested students to form a club where she can student-teach Japanese using the same textbooks her Japanese tutor used - first, second and third grade textbooks for schoolchildren from Japan whose pages sport characters like talking bananas. She plans to begin putting together materials and an application for club recognition by Student Federation over Christmas break.
Although learning Japanese takes extra effort, language aficionados say it's worth it.
"There's actually neurological research that says learning a language which is not alphabet-based [expands] brain development, using new sections of your brain," Schmidt said. "In terms of a person's personal growth and development, it's important to get outside the social conventions that surround us that we take for granted."
Hillsdale College Collegian, 2007
"So if I were in Japan, they would put me in third grade," she said.
Merritt grew up hearing German, Korean, Portuguese, Italian, French, Russian, Hebrew and Latin spoken at home. Her father has an international MBA, and her mother was an opera singer; language is essential to their careers. It was small surprise, then, that Merritt found a Japanese instructor just before ninth grade and has since been devoted to the language.
"Maddie has a real knack for picking up languages and accents," said her mother, Cynthia Merritt. "She's kind of gotten that from her dad and I. This is beyond a hobby for her. It's a real love and a passion she has for the language."
The absence of Asian languages in Hillsdale College's course offerings was nearly the only thing that gave Madeline pause when considering the school, Cynthia said. Madeline has decided to fill that hole by, if possible, starting a Japanese language club to teach other students Japanese next fall.
"My only requirement is that they work hard at it," Madeline said.
Japan has the second largest economy in the world and the third largest language community on the Internet, after English and Chinese. Susan Schmidt, executive director of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, said knowing Japanese is a stellar attribute for students particularly interested in business careers.
"There's a lot of innovation in Japan in science and technology," Schmidt said.
"Knowing Japanese gives you an entry into that."
Madeline owns a set of flashcards imprinted with kanji - 2,000 pictograph characters from the Chinese system which represent Japanese words. To be considered Japanese-literate, she said, a person needs to know all 2,000 characters.
"I know about 10 percent," she said.
Japanese, like many Eastern languages, is more difficult to learn than the typical college array of romance languages. There are three sets of characters: hiragana, katakana and kanji. The first two are characters for separate phonetic alphabets, while the third is a set of characters that, in themselves, stand for whole words.
"In English, because the verb is in the middle, you don't have to listen to someone's entire sentence," Madeline said. "Japanese has the verb at the end, forcing you to listen more closely. I think that's influenced how I listen to people speak."
Madeline said she hopes to find enough interested students to form a club where she can student-teach Japanese using the same textbooks her Japanese tutor used - first, second and third grade textbooks for schoolchildren from Japan whose pages sport characters like talking bananas. She plans to begin putting together materials and an application for club recognition by Student Federation over Christmas break.
Although learning Japanese takes extra effort, language aficionados say it's worth it.
"There's actually neurological research that says learning a language which is not alphabet-based [expands] brain development, using new sections of your brain," Schmidt said. "In terms of a person's personal growth and development, it's important to get outside the social conventions that surround us that we take for granted."
Hillsdale College Collegian, 2007
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