PCAL Modern Languages

Dr. Grainger Lanneau （Chinese name Gao Lanjie 高览杰）is a native speaker of English who learned Chinese later in life. He loves the Chinese language and wants to show students that he was also once a student in Chinese and that it is certainly possible to become fluent in the language. Grainger formerly taught Chinese at the College of Charleston and the University of Washington. He is a specialist in East Asian linguistics and wants to use his knowledge in comparative languages as well as phonology to help students increase their listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities in Chinese.

In addition to Chinese pedagogy, Grainger is also interested in how Chinese interacted with other languages such as Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean. He also speaks Japanese and Vietnamese and wrote his PhD dissertation on multi-layered historical and linguistic influences behind Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations. Furthermore, he is also interested in how Chinese characters Hàn zì 漢字/汉字 are pronounced in Japanese, Korean and other varieties of Chinese fāng yán 方言.

Grainger also enjoys cooking. He loves all kinds of Chinese food from across mainland China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. His favorite foods are from Sichuan province, Taiwan, Shaanxi province, Guangdong province, Malaysia and Vietnam.