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I hope it's okay to expand on this topic. Presumably the language of instruction (at least at the early levels) for Chinese at the University of Nairobi and Egerton University is English, but are the courses taught more or less as they would be to an American or British student? What about elsewhere? Has there been to anyone's knowledge any effort to (a) begin instruction in an African language spoken by the students or (b) to actively use references to local language grammar, tone, lexicon, etc. in introducing and explaining Chinese? Either of these would imply a third question, (c) whether there are any reference or learning materials linking Chinese and any African languages. Presumably there are some good Chinese and Arabic materials. And given the fact that Swahili and Hausa are taught in Beijing (possibly the only African languages other than Arabic taught in China?), there are probably some materials in Chinese for learners of these languages. But is there anything else, beginning with any kind of lexical material (Chinese <-> African languages) that could be used in teaching Chinese in Africa? All of this in turn implies another set of questions: To what extent is there research or instruction directly between Chinese and African languages, either in Africa, in China, or in collaboration among scholars or institutions in both? And does any of this relate to teaching of Chinese in Africa or of African languages in China? Part of my reason for bringing this up is some experience learning Chinese in which previous learning of Bambara, and in one instance Fulfulde, served as a very useful points of reference for features of Chinese. Previous study of French or German was not helpful for me in this way, and in fact I found some explanations of aspects of Chinese in English (my L1) wanting, given my previous experience with Bambara. It occurred to me that African students of Chinese would be done a disservice to have to learn the language entirely from English, French, or Portuguese (usually a second language, and very different in structure from Chinese), without at least some systematic reference to or use of their first languages. Don Osborn
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