Hindi, Portuguese and Zulu diversify language curriculum

Lois Seffu can finally study Portuguese, a language she has long wanted to learn.

A junior mass communications major, Seffu is enrolled in an introductory section of Portuguese, one of three new language courses the School of World Studies is offering this semester. Hindi, spoken primarily in India, and Zulu, spoken primarily in South Africa, are the other languages the school will begin teaching.

“I’m going to put a lot of time and effort into learning,” said Seffu, whose interest in Portuguese stems from her father, a native speaker from Mozambique.

Seffu said her father gave her tapes to help her learn Portuguese when she was younger, but she never bothered to use them. Now that she has plans to travel to Mozambiquefor the first time to see her father, she wants to develop her language skills to the best of her ability.

R. McKenna Brown, executive director of the School of World Studies, said students like Seffu represent the changing language education landscape.

“One of the things that we’ve learned as language-teaching professionals over the past couple of decades is that language instruction is successful only to the degree that it’s meaningful,” he said. “The days of studying the language in isolation in a classroom as an academic exercise are pretty much over. Now we realize that people are learning a language because they want to put it to use.”

The new language courses were designed specifically for students who want to put their language learning to use. The School of World Studies and the Office of International Education, the latter of which handles incoming and outgoing students, are hoping students who enroll in these courses will use them as a springboard to study abroad at one of VCU’s 15 international partnership universities. They include the Universidade de Sao Paulo in Brazil; the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa; and the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur and the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, both of which are located in India.

With the incorporation of Hindi, Portuguese and Zulu in the foreign language curriculum, VCU now offers foreign language training and coursework in the languages spoken at all of the partnership universities, said Anton Brinckwirth, director of the World Studies Media Center.

The VCU 2020 Strategic Plan, the charter that will guide VCU’s development through 2020, outlines the partnerships, which are effective for five-year terms.

“After five years, if nothing is happening, then obviously there’s not a reason to maintain that relationship,” Brinckwirth said. “So it’s really important for faculty and students to be involved nurturing the partnerships and making it important for their work and their vocation.”

Peter Kirkpatrick, executive director of the Office of International Education, said the partnerships show significant growth potential, based on the number of students and faculty who have taken part in the exchanges. Last academic year, 107 VCU students traveled to partnership universities, and 78 international students came to VCU. Meanwhile, 91 VCU faculty members went to partnership universities, and 60 faculty members from those universities came to VCU.A total of 399 VCU students traveled abroad last year.

A total of 1,128 international students studied at VCU — twice as many students who came to VCU in 2003.

“There’s an internationalization going on here right on campus for those students who for whatever reasons will never be able to travel abroad,” Kirkpatrick said. “There’s more and more international students and scholars, so there’s no excuse for not bumping into one and becoming familiar with different cultures.”

Brinckwirth encourages those who wish to internationalize their academic experiences to consider the assets of language study. Multimedia and social networking technologies make interacting with other languages and cultures easier than ever, he said.

“If students have an interest in developing their career and their life in a global arena, then they will tremendously benefit from knowing other languages,” Brinckwirth said, “because it will not just allow them to communicate with new words, but it will also open up a whole new world for them.

“It’s a very beautiful thing.”

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Hindi

Hindi, an Indo-European language written in Devanagari script, is the native language of about 180 million people in India. Another 300 million Indians regard Hindi as their second language, making it the de facto language that binds Indian society. Hindi speakers also reside in Nepal, the United Kingdom and the United States, among other countries.

Sunita Sharma, an associate professor of special education and elementary education at Virginia Union University and the new Hindi instructor at VCU, hopes to use her class to “clear the fog” of misperception many have of India, her native country. Stereotypes of India as a poor, backwater country still persist, she said, when the country is in reality on the cutting edge of science, technology and education.

Sharma said she is surprised VCU is just now offering Hindi.“

Look around at the population of Indians here. I moved here last year, and I was surprised,” she said. “To me, every other person seems like an Indian.

“There is so much richness of cultural heritage in this part of the country.”

Portuguese

More than 200 million people speak Portuguese, a Romance language, in Portugal, Brazil and a number of former Portuguese territorial possessions in Africa and Asia, including Angola and Macau.

Eduardo Vital, immigration services assistant at the Office of International Education and the new Portuguese instructor at VCU, said his class will focus on Brazilian Portuguese and culture. With a population of about 190 million, rapidly developing Brazil, Vital’s native country, is home to most of the world’s Portuguese speakers.

“I have not met anyone who has learned something about Brazil and not fallen in love with the country,” Vital said. “There’s the music, the dance, the people – that is the best thing Brazil has to offer.”

Zulu

About 10 million people speak Zulu, a Bantu language written with the Roman alphabet, in South Africa, and about 5 million more speak it in the countries that border South Africa. As one of 11 official languages of South Africa, Zulu is increasingly gaining recognition in South African society.

Dingani Mthethwa, a native South African who is a high school teacher in Orange County and the new Zulu instructor at VCU, said Zulu language and culture were marginalized under apartheid, which ethnically divided South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s.

“Since 1994, I think we are transitioning into democracy,” he said. “Part of transitioning into democracy will be recognizing the local languages.”

Zulu, Mthethwa said, is a “language of change.”