There is a common Chinese sound that most American newspapers spell "zhang" (pronounced sort of like "jong"), under the standard pinyin romanization system used in China. Chao spelled that sound four ways: jang if it were first tone, jarng if it were second tone, jaang for third tone and janq for fourth tone. Different words required different spelling changes. Good old "wu," thankfully spelled that way in nearly every system, was u for first tone, wu for second tone, wuu for third tone and wuh for fourth tone.
Once I practiced it, it became second nature. By the time I got to the chapter where Chao, a huge Lewis Carroll fan, asked us to memorize his translation of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" in Chinese, I was admiring the professor's sense of the ridiculous.
But Chao and Pian had no happy way to learn the written characters. We just had to sit down and do it. My girlfriend began to tell our friends I was bringing my Chinese flashcards on dates. This was malicious slander, but she continues to spread this myth 38 years into our marriage, and I am not allowed to forget this most difficult part of my education.
The Asia Society report says it takes "an educated English speaker 1,300 hours to achieve the native-proficiency of an educated native speaker of Chinese, while it would only take about 480 hours to achieve the same level in French or Spanish." In Sunday's edition of The Washington Post Magazine , my Post colleague Elizabeth Chang quotes another source saying that it actually takes 2,200 class hours to achieve full proficiency.
Chang's magazine article was not really about learning Chinese. It was about learning Arabic. She visited a class at the International Language Institute in Northwest Washington and watched several people working with teacher Mustafa Alhashimi. Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean each takes 2,200 class hours -- or about four years even if you attended a very tough school that had you in language class three hours a day every weekday for nine months a year.
That helps explain why, according to the Asia Society, a 1998 survey of college language instruction showed 656,590 students taking Spanish, but only 28,456 taking Chinese and 5,505 taking Arabic. In that survey, Spanish was in first place, followed by French (199,064), German (89,020), Italian (49,287) and Japanese (43,141). Chinese was in sixth place, followed by Russian, Arabic and Korean in that order.
The number of students taking Chinese and Arabic has increased substantially since, but we don't know how well they are doing in those classes, and even great strides forward are going to seem very modest. The Asia Society report asks this question: "What would it take to have 5 percent of high school students learning Chinese by 2015?" It estimates about 24,000 students in Chinese classes in K-12 schools, plus 150,000 in what it calls heritage schools -- private after-school or Saturday programs that my ethnic Chinese friends remember their parents forcing them to attend. Even if we counted all those 175,000 students, that would be only about 1 percent of American high school students.
The Asia Society suggests many ways to increase these numbers: encourage the new Advanced Placement Chinese program, promote a new Chinese-designed online game and teaching program called CHENGO, give qualified Chinese teachers shortcuts to jobs in our schools, help the 2,400 high schools who have indicated they would like to add Chinese, improve teaching materials and look for federal money, like the National Defense Education Act that funded language instruction in the 1960s and 1970s, including some of my graduate school study.
I applaud the Asia Society's plan. I have seen how Chinese culture blossoms in free societies. I want to bring the United States and China closer. Since the Chinese are spending so much time and effort learning our language, we should try to return the compliment. Chang said neither she nor her husband speak Chinese, but they are happy their sixth grade daughter will be starting a class in that language this fall at Hoover Middle School in Montgomery County.
The mental exercise is good, and China is going to be an increasingly vital part of our world. Our Chinese may never be perfect. Mine certainly never was, but I am glad I tried.
The 100 Best High Schools in America: The goal: Never has high school had to do so much for so many. Newsweek unveils the top schools across the country and suggests what others can do to make the grade.
