Asian Languages Popular Study

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30533, 31 August 1964, Page 12

Asian Languages Popular Study

The teaching of Asian languages was now a regular and increasingly popular feature of the arts faculties at a number of the major Australian universities, said Professor R. T. Sussex, professor of modern languages at the University of Canterbury, last evening.

Professor Sussex, together with eight other members of the university's staff, has been attending the ninth congress of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association in Melbourne.

He said he was greatly impressed by the interest

being shown in Asian languages. Students were learning Indonesian, Japanese and Chinese and plans were under way for the introduction of Hindi—the most widely spoken language in India.

Professor Sussex said that it was generally believed in Australia that because it was a nation with a European history and an Asian geography, Australians should have the opportunity to learn languages of both areas.

There were now suggestions that Asian languages should be taught in schools, putting Japanese, Chinese and Malay on the same footing as French, Latin and German, he said.

One private school had already introduced standard Chinese into its. curriculum. In spite of the problem of learning thousands of Chinese characters which required considerable self-discipline and application, the language, he said, was not intellectually harder than European languages.

Professor Sussex said that the educated Australian of the future would probably have one Asian language and one European language. The congress covered ancient and modern languages and included for the first time, Oriental, and Semitic and Islamic languages and linguistics.

The tenth congress will be held in Auckland in January, 1966.