With the advent of internet and social networking, it’s possible to share ideas with the world at the click of a mouse. Despite this, there’s still a roadblock sitting firmly between all people trying to communicate efficiently from across the globe — the language barrier.
Professor Yen-ling von Meister dreams of breaking down that barrier, one young person at a time. She is fulfilling her dream by teaching Mandarin here at Eastern Michigan University.
“I find being a language teacher is a very rewarding profession. The fact that I can see students progress from zero to however far they can go — that’s very, very rewarding.”
Von Meister, who has been teaching for more than 30 years, is an advocate for the learning of foreign languages, insisting that every student studies at least one in their lifetime. She feels that language is an important tool for communicating with other people and in learning the languages of others, you gain a greater appreciation for their culture.
“Language and culture go hand-in-hand. If I appreciate the culture, I should spend a little effort to learn about the language. And if I have a little bit of the language, I will appreciate the culture more.”
Born and raised around Taipei, Taiwan and growing up in a family with four children, von Meister has been interested in world languages since she was very young. She has studied both Japanese and German, and graduated from the TESOL (teaching English as a second language) program at EMU.
“What got me really interested in languages was my first year English teacher when I was in junior high. She really helped me to appreciate a foreign language.”
Learning another language can be very demanding, as anyone who has attempted to do so will probably admit. Von Meister encourages her students to apply all of the skills they have been taught through the years into her Chinese courses, which can be taken to fulfill a humanities general education requirement. Of course, for native English speakers, Chinese isn’t the simplest language to pick up, as it presents some rather unique challenges.
“I think for English speakers, the most commonly encountered challenges are the tones,” says von Meister.
“The language itself is a tonal language. Some people in the old days would categorize Chinese as a ‘sing-song’ language, so it has its different pitches. I can compare that with the English intonation — you have that rise-and-fall as well. Just in Chinese, these tones, these different pitches, play an important role in the meaning of the language. So if you have a tone pronounced incorrectly, you could totally mess up the meaning.”
Von Meister explained that by simply stressing the wrong syllable in the Chinese language, you can change the meaning of a word from “read” to “chop down a tree.” But it’s not a one-way street — picking up English isn’t an easy task for native Chinese speakers either. She explained one of the more common problems.
“I think for Chinese speakers, one very obvious challenge is the difference between ‘he’ and ‘she,’ because in Chinese, in the third person, there is no difference.”
Besides teaching, von Meister enjoys listening to music — everything from jazz and bluegrass to Lionel Richie and Lady Gaga. She is currently learning to play the erhu, a bowed, two-stringed instrument from China that, according to von Meister, “sounds like a viola.” She loves reading mystery novels and cookbooks and cites “Dream of the Red Chamber” as a favorite book.
She’s also a seasoned traveler, having traveled to France, England, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Turkey, Japan, Malaysia and Thailand. Her love of traveling is shared by her husband and two grown children, who are also proficient in the Chinese language.
“My children are bilingual because I think it’s very important. I spoke only Chinese with my children growing up. At one point, they didn’t even realize I could speak English.”
It’s plain to see that von Meister’s passion for language is something that she is eager to share with the world around her.
“Because I benefited from learning foreign languages, I just think that students should take the opportunity to explore and learn a foreign language — any foreign language.”
She admits she still has much to learn herself.
“I still have this goal. I would like to be able to, at least, use the phrase to greet people in all world languages, that I could say ‘hello’ to people in their own language.”
As an instructor who cares deeply about her student’s well being, she is both wise and encouraging, sharing a few short words of advice.
“You can’t expect yourself to be perfect, but you can make yourself a better person.”
Her final words of advice, in both learning language and in life, was this simple Chinese phrase she uses with her students, “Lian xi, lian xi, lian xi!”
“Practice, practice, practice!”
