Feature: Colombians join in celebrations for UN Chinese Language Day

Through the network of Confucius Institutes in the country, Colombians are joining those in other Latin American countries to celebrate the United Nation's Chinese Language Day on Wednesday.

Colombia has three Confucius Institutes, two in Bogota at the Los Andes and Jorge Tadeo Lozano universities, and one in Medellin, tied to the EAFIT and Antioquia universities.

Marta Ferro, coordinator of the institute at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, told Xinhua that Colombians are increasingly keen on learning Chinese.

"The growth has been incredible in the last three years. We are seeing annual growth of between 80 and 90 percent. Over half of our classes are for students in our university and half for others," explained Ferro.

She also feels that the Confucius Institutes in Colombia have encouraged the country's students to travel to China as "classes also serve to understand Chinese culture, the teachers also discuss history and culture, which creates enthusiasm. Forty-five of our students have already been to China to take part in summer camps."

One of the students in the institute, Karen Marin, who is studying marketing and Chinese, said "it is very enriching to learn Chinese as we are used to learning other languages, like English. At the same time, we also learn a lot about Chinese culture. The most difficult thing until now has been studying characters, but I enjoy it."

"I had planned to go to study English in Australia. However, it is quicker to go to China and I want to deepen my understanding further than what I have learned here," she told Xinhua.

Native Chinese teachers in Colombia have been key in spreading the attraction of the language and responding to the curiosity of the students.

Zhu Danyang, a Chinese language teacher at the Confucius Institute at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota, told Xinhua that Chinese might seem very complicated but had a similar structure to Spanish.

"At first, students had small problems to understand the phonetics. The main characteristics of Chinese are phonetics, tones and characters. Beyond these, its structure is simple, with a subject, verb and object," she explained.

According to the UN, one in seven people in the world speaks Chinese and it is estimated over 1 billion people speak the language as their mother tongue.

The UN Chinese Language Day was created by the UN to pay tribute to Cangjie, a mythical figure who is credited with having invented Chinese characters around 5,000 years ago. It is observed each year on April 20.

In 2010, the UN Department of Public Information introduced Language Days to mark the organization's six official languages - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish - as part of wider efforts to promote cultural diversity and multilingualism at the world body. Endit