Asian language courses preferred by students globally as K-pop culture steers interest away from ‘dead white men’
- Students are turning away from European languages to study Korean, Chinese and Japanese
- This reflects the cultural interest in South Korea and the growing economic importance of Asian countries
Yumeng Zhuang fell in love with physics and philosophy as a high school student in China. That passion led her to Albert Einstein and Immanuel Kant – and then to a desire to study German so she could read their works as originally written. But her parents weren’t thrilled, pushing her to perfect her English instead.
“They said German is not a useful language because not many people speak it,” says Zhuang, a physics major at the University of California at Los Angeles. “So I started studying it secretly.”
Derided as the study of “dead white men” by some critics, European language and culture programmes have seen better days. In the economic turmoil of the pandemic, universities everywhere are turning to science and technology studies and cutting funding for many so-called liberal arts courses, including languages.
In Australia, a number of financially troubled universities, hit hard by a shortage of fee-paying international students during the Covid-19 pandemic, have considered dropping Asian and European languages thought to be both expensive and unpopular. La Trobe University in Melbourne pondered dropping Hindi and Bahasa Indonesia; Swinburne, also in Melbourne, thought about dropping all foreign languages. Murdoch University in Perth and Western Sydney University considered shutting down their Bahasa Indonesia courses.
Worldwide, European languages have been hit even harder than Asian languages, with Asian nations widely seen as the economic powerhouses of the future. Students are more likely to choose to study Korean, Japanese or Mandarin Chinese, despite their difficulty, than French, Italian or German.
Hong Kong, though, is bucking the global trend, and students at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) are continuing to study foreign languages. “The demand for language study at HKU remains very high, and has remained very stable over the years,” says Sylvain Holtermann, deputy head of HKU’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures and director of the university’s French programme.
Real-life learning the key to mastering a second language
There was a large spike in interest in studying Korean about a decade ago, he adds, but not at the expense of languages traditionally studied such as French, German and Spanish.
Other languages, including Swedish, Russian and Portuguese, have proven popular enough to justify new courses and updates to the curriculum.
In total, more than 1,000 HKU students study foreign languages every year, says Holtermann. “With today’s very high degree of transnational migration, our students are very likely to work abroad at some point, where they have to work and compete with people from many different cultures and backgrounds. Having an expertise in a foreign language and culture is really a key asset, especially for Hongkongers.”
Structural reforms are under way at HKU to integrate language learning with regional or cultural studies. “There is definitely a trend across the world today to create this kind of integrated global studies programme, which better reflects the nature of the world today and the challenges it poses,” says Holtermann.
Korean lessons are flourishing on Duolingo, an education app with more than 500 million users around the world. “What makes the growth of Korean so impressive is how diverse Korean learners are,” says Cindy Blanco, Duolingo’s senior learning scientist.
“We see Korean as one of the most popular languages to study in seven countries in Asia and the Pacific. It’s the fastest-growing language in Mexico, and it’s topping the charts in the US as well. There isn’t just one kind of Korean learner in one kind of place – instead, Korean culture, media and entertainment seem to attract learners from all backgrounds.”
Although a lack of student interest has closed down many European language programmes in US universities, UCLA is doubling down on its commitment to European studies by redefining it with a 2021 twist. German, French, Italian and Scandinavian languages are being merged into a single department with a transcultural bent.
Perspectives from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America – areas touched by Europe’s colonial legacies – will be injected into a new way of studying foreign languages.
What’s important is that what we teach is more relevant to the world that we live in and reflective of the world through its diversity of subject and geography and people than in the past, where, let’s face it, these departments taught … dead white men
“Paying families are looking for students to do training that provides them with jobs,” says Dominic Thomas, a UCLA professor of French and francophone studies. He says students are often asked by their parents what they are going to do with a French degree.
The new European languages and transcultural studies department will delve more deeply into issues such as immigration, racism and human rights. New curricular tracks will offer specialities – and marketable skills – in digital technology, the environment, urban affairs and medical and health issues.
An earlier generation of Italian majors might have confined their scholarship to the language, history and culture of Italy, primarily through the printed word. But under the new direction, Thomas says, students may study the migration and refugee crisis that hit Europe in 2015 through films in English, French, German and Italian and compare Germany’s welcoming response, Britain’s Brexit, and the Trump administration’s restrictive actions.
“What’s important is that what we teach is more relevant to the world that we live in and reflective of the world through its diversity of subject and geography and people than in the past, where, let’s face it, these departments taught … dead white men,” says Thomas, who has been named chair of the new department.
US colleges and universities cut 651 foreign language programmes between 2013 and 2016, with the biggest falls in French, Spanish, German and Italian, according to the association’s 2019 study. Enrolments in French courses declined by nearly 36 per cent and in German by 40 per cent between 1990 and 2016.
But student numbers rocketed for Asian languages, with increases of more than 8,000 per cent for Japanese and Chinese – and more than 53,000 per cent for Korean – over the same time period.
Korean Wave rising: hallyu and K-pop will propel economy
Spanish remains by far the most commonly taught language in US colleges and universities, with more than 712,000 enrolments in 2016, an increase of 33 per cent since 1990, according to the Paula Krebs, executive director of the Modern Language Association in New York. Krebs says the colleges that respond to student interests and needs have managed to keep their European language programmes afloat.
Interest in languages usually follows global politics, economics and culture, Thomas says. The study of Russian blossomed after the then-Soviet Union opened up. Arabic enrolments began to grow after the 9/11 attacks. The rising economic might of Japan and China fuelled interest in both those Asian languages, while the current mania to learn Korean is thought to be driven by the popularity of K-pop and K-dramas, Thomas says.
Recently, white supremacy in the United States has ignited curiosity among students about Europe, where fascism exploded a century ago, says Todd Presner, a UCLA professor of Germanic languages and comparative literature.
Rhea Shetty, studying at UCLA, says she is excited about the new approach: “There’s so much potential for collaboration.”
Shetty, the daughter of Indian immigrants, was enthralled when she began studying German, thanks to an excellent instructor and a high school study-abroad session in Berlin.
Both Shetty and Zhuang say that studying the language has opened their eyes to a new culture, trained their minds as they mastered the intricacies of a new language, and highlighted their shared humanity with people an ocean away.
“We have an ethnocentric view of who we can learn from,” Shetty says about Americans, “but we can learn so much from other countries.”
Additional reporting by Ethan Paul
