About
PAAL
Why Study an African or Asian Language?
Knowledge
of an African or Asian language offers entry into
rich and complex cultures that are both fascinating
and useful to understand. Moreover, training in one
of these languages provides an outstanding dimension
into one's job qualifications in virtually any field.
Business and government are in need of men and women
who are familiar with the languages and cultures of
Africa and Asia. More generally, familiarity with an
African or Asian language provides an informed
perspective on parts of the world that are
economically and politically important to all
Americans.
In
the past, American international experiences were
largely with Europe, Canada, and Latin America. That
is no longer true. Today the nations and cultures of
Africa and Asia have a great influence on our daily
lives: American businesses emulate Japanese
technology and organization, while American consumers
use a host of Japanese products; American firms are
exploring for Chinese oil and digging for Chinese
coal; the oil spigots in the Middle East and Africa
shape living standards in rural and urban America;
African and Asian cultures are influencing American
religion,art, philosophy, architecture and other
aspects of our lives.
These
close and expanding interrelationships have prompted
Africans and Asians to study English very vigorously.
Americans, however, have been slow to reciprocate,
and the United States does not now have enough people
who can communicate with Africans and Asians in their
own languages. American government and American
businesses are therefore at a disadvantage, and the
American public generally has an inadequate
appreciation of the rich cultures that populate 50%
of the world's land surface and embrace 70% of the
world's population.
A
student need not major in a language area, of course,
for study of the language to be important and useful.
Business, law, and other professional graduate
schools are now beginning to offer programs that
include, for example, Japanese and Arabic, as our
trade and political relations become more closely
interconnected. The student who has combined study of
one of the languages in the Program of African and
Asian Languages (PAAL) with a major in such
departments as anthropology, history, economics,
political science, or sociology will be a
well-prepared and desirable candidate for such
graduate programs and for a future career in
international business, trade, law or diplomacy. Even
in the sciences and engineering fields there are now
exchange programs where knowledge of one of the
non-Western languages is useful.
Are African and Asian Languages Hard to Learn?
Many
sub-Saharan African languages employ the Roman
alphabet, but the other major languages of Africa and
Asia do not; Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi,
Japanese, and Korean each have their own writing
systems. Americans tend to exaggerate the
difficulties involved in learning a non-Western
language that employs a non-alphabetic writing
system, or an alphabet other than the Roman alphabet
generally used in the West. American students can and
do acquire practical competence in these languages
within a reasonable time.
African
and Asian languages may be initially more
time-consuming for Americans to learn than are
French, Spanish or Italian, but they are not
inherently more difficult. Most Americans find the
vocabulary and structure of Western European
languages so similar to English that they can be
learned rather quickly, even with a minimum of formal
instruction. Formal instruction is more important in
African and Asian languages, at least until the
student acquires a firm grasp of the fundamentals of
the language. Also, more time is required to develop
a solid mastery of the language, especially where a
different writing system is involved.
Do PAAL languages satisfy language requirements?
Any
of the languages offered by PAAL can be used to
fulfill the language requirement of the Weinberg
College of Arts and Sciences (requires proficiency in
a foreign language equivalent to two years'/six
quarters' college-level study) or of the School of
Speech's Department of Radio, Television and Film
(equivalent of four quarters of college-level study).
PAAL offers courses through the second-year level in
the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew,
Hindi, Japanese, Korean, and Swahili. Both WCAS and
RTVF requirements may be satisfied by taking language
courses only if they are not done on a P/N
(pass/fail) basis. If you do not intend to study a
PAAL language for the purpose of satisfying the
foreign language proficiency requirement, you are
welcome to enroll on a P/N basis with instructor
consent.
Is the Program of African & Asian Languages a
department?
Strictly speaking, PAAL is not a department,
primarily because it does not currently offer majors
in its seven language programs.--there are no
undergraduate or graduate degrees offered under the
aegis of the Program or its individual component
languages. Nevertheless, PAAL has been a program, and
as such, a whole greater than the sum of its parts,
for nearly thirty years. It is the natural home of
the non-western languages and
literatures-in-the-languages at the University. The
Program faculty have much in common as language
instructors despite the great differences in the
individual languages they teach. They traditionally
have worked together to help each other confront the
challenges of offering instruction in the non-western
languages, particularly in adapting the latest in
pedagogical theory and practice to second-language
acquistion, and to the computer age and multimedia
instructional methods and tools.
What enables PAAL to continue this
unity-in-diversity approach to its mission?
Over the years, PAAL has received strong support from
the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences as an
important resource for most of its other member
departments and programs, and PAAL has traditionally
also served undergrad and grad students from all six
colleges and schools for NU undergrads and grads, as
well as the professional schools--the School of Law,
the School of Medicine, and the Kellogg Graduate
School of Management.
Additionally, PAAL has received continued competitive
grant funding, over many years, from the Alumnae of Northwestern
University,
both for individual faculty or language program
projects, and for the Program as a whole,
particularly in information technology support. The
Jaharis Family Foundation, in the name of long-time
PAAL program assistant Bess Kondelis, has also in
recent years made significant contributions to the
Program for improvement of the quality of working
conditions for all the faculty, staff, and students
just as Bess did until her recent retirement after
many years of service at NU. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, through a grant to the
University of Michigan with a subcontract to PAAL at
NU, has also supported a project in web-based
instruction of less-commonly-taught languages, and
the Committee on Institutional
Cooperation
has assisted PAAL's Japanese program with funding on
a cooperative project with Purdue University for the
design and implementation of computer-aided
instruction.
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