LAWYER Katharina Byrne has always had a love of languages.

Born in Germany and raised in England, she was fluent in both tongues. Spanish and French soon followed but, for her, they weren't enough. At Oxford University, she decided to pursue Chinese.

"I'd learned several European languages and decided that university would be a good time to learn something that was quite alien and unusual," she explained. "I'd be able to devote all my time to it and the course at Oxford happened to be very good."

According to Ms Byrne, her degree covered "everything" from Classical Chinese to literature, but what truly held her interest were the Chinese characters and their development as an art form.

"I was absolutely fascinated," she admitted.

Next week, she hopes others will be as well. Ms Byrne is to deliver a talk on Chinese writing as part of the Bermuda National Gallery's weekly lunchtime lecture series.

"Ever since my student days, I have been fascinated by Chinese characters, which form part of one of the oldest writing systems in the world. I am delighted to have this opportunity to share my interest with others."

The talk, she explained, will provide a brief overview of the development of Chinese characters "from pictures on oracle bones to the present day simplified script introduced by the Communist government of China in the 1950s".

strong was her love for the language, that Ms Byrne considered pursuing it to a higher degree of academia once she graduated from Oxford in 1987. She spent a year studying Chinese law at Beijing University following graduation but then fate intervened.

"I considered doing a Phd, actually becoming an academic in the field," she explained. "But then a law firm basically offered to pay all my expenses to become a lawyer ? to study and qualify. And I thought: 'Well, I'll try that. I can always go back to the Chinese or at least be able to use the Chinese and other languages in a job'. That never actually happened but I maintained the interest."

After qualifying as a lawyer in England, Ms Byrne practised in Hong Kong and Vancouver before relocating to Bermuda in 2002. She made several return trips to China while in Hong Kong and maintains contact with the friends she met while living there. Today, unable to use her Chinese skills professionally, she was thrilled when the BNG asked her to share some of her knowledge.

"I try and go to the Wednesday talks and any other lectures they put on and Judy Wong, the education director there, found out I'd studied Chinese and lived there and so on," Ms Byrne explained.

"I think it was just a chance conversation where I told her about my interest in Chinese writing and calligraphy. I think she said then that they might want me to speak about it but that was some months ago. And then she called me (only recently) and said they were still interested."

Ms Byrne said she knew of one resident who had studied Chinese. She assumed there were others but was only certain of an instructor on the island who offered basic Chinese conversation courses through Government's Community Education & Development Programme.

"The talk is going to address, principally, the origins of Chinese writing," she said. "How it started off as a picture-perfect script but is much more complex than that. I'm also going to talk a little bit about the elements of a character.

"There are about 12 strokes in all that you have to learn, but each character is made so you can break it down to it's basic components. It's fascinating."

Although her fascination with the characters may have pushed Ms Byrne over any stumbling blocks encountered in her aim to become fluent, she is convinced the only way to learn the language is through persistence.

"I never found the characters difficult to learn," she said, "but you do have to learn them one by one and there's no easy way of doing it. It's basically a process of memorisation. What I tell people is if you can see a picture in them, that helps. Frequent reading and practice helps. It's easier to learn to recognise a character than it is to write it. I can say that."

Still, she said, writing Chinese need not be a laborious task.

"When I was in China and Hong Kong I knew people who were calligraphers. In some cases, I actually witnessed them pick up the brush. It's not just writing. It is actually an art form (especially) when they pick up a brush and they have a moment of inspiration.

"Calligraphy usually involves writing one character that often has a very enlightening or energising sense to it ? a word like determination. You can look at the character and you can see the strength and the energy behind it.

"But if you become proficient enough, there is a form of, not shorthand, but a cursive script. You do not need to laboriously write each character the way it is printed."

According to Ms Byrne, the Chinese and English languages are not totally disparate. Our proverbs are very much in keeping with what the Chinese describe as "character phrases".

"The Chinese often have what they call four-character phrases which are a little bit like our proverbs in English," she said.

"They usually come from classical literature and they're, as I said, four characters that convey universal truth.

"Very often, those are the subject of a piece of calligraphy. So what the Chinese have actually done is give it a didactic purpose ? it's conveying some universal meaning but it's also creating a form of art at the same time.

"I suppose you could draw a comparison with great works ? manuscript volumes of the Middle Ages where the monks who were copying the religious works would also decorate their texts with little pictures and illuminate the first letters on the page with very intricate drawings. That to me is a form of art as well, Western calligraphy."

in Chinese, English, German, French and Spanish, Ms Byrne has also learned Russian, Italian and Japanese and believes there is much to be gained from learning more than one language.

"I've always found you get much more out of travelling if you can communicate with indigenous people," she explained. "If you can speak with them, you can interact with them much more closely.

"I've found if I'm just with other English speakers, we tend to stick together and then you don't have much to do with the locals.

"Also, if you're reading literature as a foreign language, I know from experience, a translation, however good it is, is not going to be the same as the original work.

"You have to be able to appreciate, if it was written in French, the use of the French language as opposed to the translation in English.

"Even if the (translation) is very good, (the translator) has actually created something separate, rather than conveying what the original text said."

Ms Byrne will speak at the Bermuda National Gallery on Wednesday, November 3 between 12.30 p.m. and 1.30 p.m. For more information, telephone 295-9428. Admission is free.