lenty of students at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) volunteered to attend the elective courses, “Introducing Latin” and “A History of the English Language”, delivered by Dr. Zhu Lei, the Vice Director of SISU’s Institute of Linguistics.

Dr. Zhu masters more than ten modern and medieval languages, including English, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Persian, Korean, Thai, Latin, Greek, Turkish and so on. He also did research on Tibetan as a visiting fellow in the Endangered Languages and Cultures Group at the University of Cambridge. However, his charisma is not so much in his knowledge as personality.

In Tu Chenyu’s memory, Dr. Zhu usually begins his class with an ordinary textbook and extends to its etymology in ancient Nordic language, Latin and French. Besides, he uses various kinds of materials to introduce the origin of a language. For example, in order to make Indo-European languages to be easily understood, he recited "Cowboy song" in Sanskrit, "Iliad" in ancient Greek and "the Anglo Saxon Chronicle" in the Old English.

The Middle English songs, which played before the classes in a Vitoria style, allured students into a feeling that they were praying in the medieval churches. Undoubtedly, students are moved by the temperament of the language.

Zhu has a pure passion for languages. His research interests lie in the history and philosophy of linguistics, language comparison, historical linguistics, phonetics and phonology. "Langauge is not only a means of communication. It is a primary instrument of culture and thought, with which we could see a different world," He said. 

Zhu feeds the students’ sight on, so that they can seek deeper in their self-studying. As a matter of fact, there are already quite a few students who have showed greater interest in foreign languages other than English, even classical ones. That may be the keystone of Zhu’s teaching and he has made it.