Chinese Quick

A soldier with a curious job was on his way to the China-Burma theater last week. His job is to help a party of officers learn Chinese. He knows no Chinese himself.

But the soldier has with him 30 little Army manuals and four sets of 25 phonograph records. These are a presentation on paper and wax of the Army's top-flight Chinese-teaching team: Charles Francis Hockett, ex-University of Michigan teacher, and Fang Chaoying, ex-Library of Congress aide. The story of their experiences suggests that the soldier's strange job may make sense in any language.

Charlie Hockett had done a little teaching (freshman composition, English for foreigners) before the Army took him early in 1942. Corporal Hockett was raking leaves in a Virginia camp almost a year later when the Army decided to teach Chinese to 224 officers en route to China. Hackett, who knew no Chinese but had a Yale Ph.D. in the science of languages, got the job. He was still a corporal when he got back three months later. But he had done so well that he soon got his gold bars. Here is how he did it :

Yale Sweater. He had four weeks before sailing. He went back to Yale, sweated for two days over the structure of the Chinese language, got it down to ele ments that could be written on a small sheet of paper. Next Hockett listened to two Chinese civilian assistants, Fang and Chew Hong, talk Chinese for three and a half weeks. The simplest and clearest remarks were cut on wax. Then Hockett, Fang, Hong and the officers sailed for China with lesson books, a few records, some hand-wind phonographs.

The officers got morning and afternoon classes. Fang and Hong made Chinese noises in front of the classes ; Hockett told the officers how to adjust their vocal equipment to reproduce the noises, ex plained meanings, corrected errors.

The officers drilled another two hours daily with phonographs in place of Fang and Hong.

When the group broke up, almost every officer knew 200 words of Kuo-yu, or Man darin, and most had fair accents. They still could not read a single Chinese character. But to learn to read Chinese is a separate and infinitely laborious job.

Hoclcett on Paper. When Hockett got back to Washington he and Fang were assigned to produce a book which would do the job they had done on the pioneering voyage. Spoken Chinese is one of the Army's 23 basic language manuals.* It teaches 750 words and Hockett thinks they can be learned in a month by drilling with the book and listening to the records. The disks give an English word or phrase, then the Chinese equivalent, then are silent so the student can imitate the Chinese, then reiterate the Chinese. The set of 25 records covers most fundamental situations. They should help soldiers to obey a Chinese maxim which Fang loves: Chien shih-mo jen shuo shih-mo hua (Whomever you see, talk his language).

* The book is published by the Linguistic Society of America and the American Council of Learned Societies for the U.S. Armed Forces Institute.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.