Xi From China: Language

Vocabulary

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:05:24 GMT

How Anglophones remember so many words? I never know. Well, it's their mother tongue. How many Chinese characters do I know? 3,000? 5,000? I don't know. My Chinese is above the average level I think. Those characters integrate each other and further form much more words. I bet there are hundreds of thousands of them.

I tested myself last year and I had ~8,000 vacabulary in English. It might be a little bit more now, but not much. I'm still working on it, getting progress, slowly. There are just too many English words beyond my knowledge. When I try to memorize new words, some old ones are forgotten. It's OK. I believe I am forgetting Chinese as well. All you need to do is outlearning forgetting by memorizing. I've read a paper said educated Anglophones know ~20,000 vacabulary, which is 2.5 times of mine. It's not bad, considering the words I don't know are basically rarely used ones like "brochure" something. (This word is randomly picked from my new word database.) They don't likely come up in daily conversation. What's really holding me back is the phrase. With simple words interacting with each other, they become new ones by which you cannot conclude the original meaning literally. For example, what does "swell time" mean? The specific expanding period? No, it means happy time. You see, that's the problem. The phrase "swell time" should be counted as a distinct word for me to learn. I guess the real vocabulary of Anglophones in this sense is at least 10 times bigger than me.

Something else, on another hand, is really easy to pick up, which is "swear word" and slangs. Swear words are the words used when expressing strong emotional feelings, while may offend others, like the F word. It's not hard to speak like a punk because those people have pretty limited vocabulary and repeat the same thing again and again. Their way of talking lacks diversity. Everybody can say something like "dude what's up dude". It is not my suggestion that a foreign speaker should take this.

First, it's offending. You never know whose feeling you are hurting. When you say "God" or "damn", you offend Christians. When you say "that's so gay", you offend real gays. Not to mention those sexual-related words which almost offend everyone.

Second, you can always find a replacement. My friend taught me a phrase the first week I came to Canada, "bad ass". He was referring a statuary of an angry-look first-nation hunter. I said does that mean "tough guy"? He said yes. This is a replacement. You don't have to mention the word "ass". I heard certain professor said these words in class tough. Well, some hearsay tells us that professors use swear words to win respect from undergrads, by giving them the own-kind-feeling. I cannot make sure the context is right if I'm the one using it. If I use other words wrongfully, that's fine. No big deal. But, if I use slangs in the wrong place, it could cause issues.

Last but not the least, use euphemism. For me I do believe swear words possess irreplaceable functions, like for exclamation. However, even if you really wanna use it and you are sure about the correctness, please do not say it directly. Certain euphemism makes it smoother, like:

hell --> heck
god --> gosh
shit --> shoot
damn --> darn

The words on the left are those you should never say.

Anyhow, speaking in a street way makes you being instinctively evaluated as undereducated. All I am doing is trying to talk like an educated people, gracefully and politely. It is not the best way of talking tough. It sounds hypocritical. I'm not doing this in Chinese. No talking like writing. I'm still doing my Beijing style dialect. Time to time, you gotta need the punch lines to perform your jokes, and academic language somewhat lacks the flexibility to do so. But in English, I'm just trying not to become a joke myself.

PS: Of course Christians use the word "God". IMO, they want the word to refer to THE God only, not for exclamation.

Main Force

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:01:24 GMT

I was recruiting a tour guide for Yan's supervisor in Beijing. A guy sent a resume lists his advantages. One of them is "main force of university basketball team". It's not English. It's Chinese English.

We were working in the consultant office by then. A Canadian kid saw the resume too. He got confused and asked: "What's main force?"

"It's starter." I answered. The meaning of the Chinese word is either starter or star. I just happened to know the word because I am a NBA fan. But, if I didn't know the word, I wouldn't call myself "main force" neither, no matter how important I think I am to the team. ^_^ Instinct would tell something amiss.

Start A Chinese Blog?

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:31:17 GMT

I was thinking about starting a Chinese blog, especially when I got the TOEFL score. I like writing. It's fun. In writing, the more skillful you are, the more pleasure you have. It's because you can address yourself better. And my Chinese is like 10 times better than English.

However, I'm not gonna do that.

Writing is a way of practice of language in the same time. I think my Chinese is good enough, which doesn't need to be improved anymore, or at least not for now. Besides, I have more important things to do than simply having fun.

So, no more Chinese.

Still, with my unqualified English, I cannot represent myself well. Writing is much easier than speaking for you can lookup in dictionary, and you have time to think it through. But it's still hard. It's really hard for me when I try to cite some famous words or poems from Chinese culture. I haven't read enough Shakespeares to support my ideas in English, not yet. And my way of thinking, my personal philosophy is kinda Chinese. Some concepts don't have counterparts in English.

Maybe I should start a Chinese blog only for writing proses or poems, and leave this place for narration and argumentation. But ... anyway, I don't feel like writing poems now. As I said, other things are more important.

OK, I've decided I'm gonna continue to write my formal articles in English, and try to represent Chinese philosophy in English way as much as I can.

Yes!

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:18:51 GMT

Reading	Listening	Speaking	Writing	Total
30	28	23	27	108

Presentation By A Poor ESLer

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:45:33 GMT

This was taken in my seminar course. It was the professor's idea to tape us so we can learn from our mistakes.

I kindda good at public speaking, in Chinese. So when I do some presentation things, I always trend to improvise instead of get well prepared. Maybe this is just an excuse cuz I'm lazy to prepare. But unfortunately, with my poor English, improvisation seems not a good idea.

I only spent like half an hour on this presentation, cuz things were running crazy last week so that I don't have time. Apparently, it was not enough.

I look stupid. But I still decided to share it with your guys before I kill myself. Enjoy it!

To my international friends: I really appreciate if you can tell me how difficult is my speaking to you. Please Please Be strainghtforward. Frankly speaking, I cannot totally understand myself when I saw my video. :)

Graceful As A Native Speaker

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 01:54:28 GMT

An interesting phenomenon I observed:

The ability of learning English varies between foreigners. Excellent ones can speak fluent English within 3 month after they come to Canada, while most of us are still struggling to speak coherently after years. Those fast learners really surprise me, because From a forienger's point of view, some of them are as good as native speakers. However, after I have more experience of being with them, I find out that they are not really speaking better. They just seem to be like that. The information conveys in the conversation is still poor.

I know this sounds like jealous though.

Language is for exchanging information. According to Information Theory, the less a word is used, the more information it has. That's why people need to talk gracefully. They want to include more information in a given time. Altough some foreign speakers are quite fluent, they are not the same meaningful. While others might get stuck when they are talking, but they are still understandable. For example, when talking about favorite food,(say dumpling), one foreigner may say:

Speaker A: "It is...kinda like, you know, meat and vegetable inside. like the, I dun know, maybe stuffing? Something like that. And... I am sure about this, butta covering? Yeah, it's made of flour."

Another one may say:

Speaker B: "It has meat and vegetable ... errr ... inside as ...errr... stuffing, with ...er... covering ...er... made of flour."

By the first impression, you may say A is a much better speaker than B. However, if you think about it, the information conveys in it, which is the orange part, is almost the same. It says that A's speaking is no more meaningful than B. I obeserved this phenomenon recently. Some newcomers appear to speak very good English in short time, which is amazing. In fact, they are not. They just memorize some phrases and use them repeatly when they are speaking, like "you know what?" and so on.

This reminds me that lazy Chinese student on English often use the "American peasants only know 1000 words" as the excuse for their poor vocabulary. A-type people above is an analogy to "American peasants". Their English is fluent and barely no accent to me, which is good. But if you want them to explain some complex idea or concept, they'll be stuck immediately. On the other hand, B-type people may have stronger accent and are not so fluid, but they can represent theirselves better, like my professor.

In other words, they only speak fluidly when talking nonsense.

The reason is, if you want to describe some complicated concept, you need to know the nuance between similar words. Native speakers learn this by reading numerous literatures and having conversations when they grow up. They take 20 years or more to pick up their mother tongue. And this takes a foreigner forever. For me, I cannot distinguish the words "simmer" and "stew", and so far as I know, their usages are not exactly the same. Although we have much more words about cooking in Chinese, I still cannot tell the difference. And what's the difference between "lawless" and "illegal"? Again, I've no idea.

A-type speaking isn't that difficult. All you need to do is do some replacements, like using "sweet" instead of "nice", or "intense" instead of "great". These 2 words are used frequently here among young people, I don't know if it's a local thing or universal in all English speaking countries. This part is actually easy to pick up. But I just wouldn't say a word unless I'm sure I know what it means. (However, in most cases, I still have to use unknown words.) What I really want to pick up is the ability of those foreign professors who can convey their thoughts precisely.

The bottom line is: I've never talked to any peasants yet since I came to Canada.

Way To English

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:03:59 GMT

I forgot this in my previous article. I also hate when people say "Your English is good." People never say this to whose English is really good. They say this means they know you are an ESL learner. If I need your opinion, I'll ask. My Chinese is good, and my English is not. I know it, thank you.

But... It seems that I'm the only one who thinks like this, and most people actually love it when you say so. So, it's still good way of flattering.

In my humble opinion, factors of English speaking is as follows:

Speak Slowly

First thing first, speak slowly. Because of my poor pronunciation, if I speak fast, nobody will ever understand. Sometimes, foreigner speakers like speak fast (including me) becauue they think that's the right way. The reason is, from our points of view, native speaking is fast and unclear. But... actually, they are unclear in a specific way. So if you try to do the same thing, you do nothing but get people confused.

In fact, I've seen many foreigners try to pretend to be good speakers by speaking fast, which actually makes they look bad. I gotta confess that I do it sometimes. It's shame. However, you never know if you never try. If you wanna speak well, eventually it has to be fast. But I guess it's not for now, maybe years later, I will.

Accent

It's ironic to me, cuz when I was in Beijing, people try to copy my accent. That's because Beijing is the culture centre of China. And official language of China based on Beijing speaking. So I never care my Chinese accent, if not proud.

Accent is definitely not a problem if you can be understood by people. I have a friend when I was in China. He keeps speaking in North East accent in Universty. He knows how to speak Mandarine, but he just insists doing it. Maybe he is proud of his own accent as well. I think it's super cool. But if somebody from south Mandarine speaking provinces like Sichuan speak in their own accent, that's not cool, cuz I can't understand them. So same thing in English. Chinese accent to Enlgish is like Sichuan accent to Mandarine. My accent abslutely need to be improved.

However, whatever how much you try, you can never speak like a Canadian. As I said, my Chinese university friends tried to do Beijing accent. But still, I can easily tell who is local and who is not. Accent is not something you can't copy. So, try to speak like a English speaker, but don't narrow your mind. Wanna speak excactly like a Canadian? It's impossible.

Slang

My attitude to slang is: get to know them, but don't use them. Needless to say, more slangs you konw, the better understanding you have. But why not use them?

From my observation, slang is another thing you can't copy. Some accent could be considered as slang as well. For example, in Beijing, people like to add the syllable "er" after most of words. So when people from other provinces try to imitate it, problems come. Actually, we do add "er" to some of words, but not all of them. And to some words, with "er" and without "er" are totally different meanings. But there is no rule you can follow or explain. We just do it instinctually. So I saw people make many jokes while they don't realize it. Further more, I got confused when people do the strange accent invented by themselves. I can understand Beijing local speaking, as well as I can understand standard Mandarine. But please, don't do the midst way.

You see, Beijing speaking is not even a dialect. It's only a accent. But still, people make jokes when they try to do accent. I don't wanna make the same mistake in English.

liaison

Liaison is like accent, but tougher to me. Native people omit syllables or even words when they speak, like "Tell'em what'u told'em." Again, like the accent and slang, I need to know them, but not use them.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary and grammar, they seemed not important to speaking. Well, you should talk to the guy Bill in my department. His speaking is just like writing. I guess native speakers would consider his speaking as good, but not me. It's too hard to me. So first, I guess I need vocabulary to understand people.

And using big words is efficient way to speaking. According to information theory, the rarer the word is used, the more information it conveys. But...once again, you should use it when you are sure about its meaning. You don't wanna be a joke, do you?

Oral English

Oral English less focus on grammar. I bet my English grammar is better than many native speakers. Every time I speak, it's like writing in my head and read them out. It's exhausting. I need more speaking than writing, so I will write this blog more like orally thereafter. I will use abbreviations like:

cuz= Because

gotta = have got to

wanna = want to

gonna = going to

And so on.

Be Actived

The strange thing is, I speak better when I speak publicly. For example, when I speak at senimar or teach in labs. I guess it doesn't happen to everyone. I think the reason is, when I talk in front of people, I'm excited. Also, I speak better in parties or when I'm drunk. Actually, for the last one, I'm not sure... you know... I was drunk.

So I think I gotta be actived when I speak.

Talk To People

The best way of learning is by doing it. You wanna talk better? Talk to people! But... just one thing. Canadian are friendly, only when they have right reasons. There is a club, AICS, Association of International and Canadian Students. I go there to practice my English. There are Canadian students and international students in it. Every week, it holds coffee meeting and other stuff. Native students embracing outcomers as families, what a warm scene! But... hold on a minute...

Why all the Canadian over there are male?

If you're not stupid, it's not difficult to figure out. Is there eaiser girls to hit on than those who need talking to improve their English? They come for girls!

This always reminds me that when I was in China, how boys love to be volunteers of the new students' orientation. They don't do any other volunteer work except this one. It's because they'd have better chance to meet hot girls than others. You know, people talk about culture difference all the time. But there's always something universal in all countires. Base on this, I see internationalism is not empty cheque anymore.

Thing need to be clarified: I don't wanna be too cynical. Still, there are nice people do good things by kindness. But for most of us, "no free lunch" ever holds.

You see, it's difficult for a person like me to start a conversation in coffee meeting. I can't provide neither sex, social networking nor Enlgish practice. So I gotta have a thick skin on this. Just be someone small, someone less important for a while, by applying the wisdom from traditional culture.

Update This Blog

Blog writing is a really good way to practise. But I wouldn't do it if nobody is reading. Writing diary is boring, but publishing my little articles is fun. So I wanna thank you all guys who insist reading my boring blog. Thanks a lot!

I hate it

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:44:12 GMT

I hate it when people talk that I don't undertand.

I hate it when people tell jokes that I don't get it.

I hate it when I talk I can't find the right word or structure.

I hate it when I talk I pronounce wrong.

I hate it when I think I talk well but people don't understand.

I especially hate it when I talk that people don't understand, but they pretend to be understand. It means they assume my English is always poor so that they don't even bother to ask a "Pardon"?

That's my problem. English is so frustrating.

My pronunciation need to be polished. Since I learned English in China, I have some bad habits. My accent need to be diminished.

My vocabulary need to be improved. From my observation, I found out that 10$ words are the key point to understand jokes and humors. Further more, they are important when you want to talk elegantly like a well-educated person.

My liaison need to be improved. This's paramount to speak fast as well as comprehend fast speaking.

I don't even know how to do it. Time is limited, native speakers are unwillingly to talk to a foreigner like me. Unfortunately, I really really need it. My English is good for shopping in supermarkets, but that's not enough.

I need to be conversable to make people hire me.

I need to be impressive to make people fund me.

I need to be persuasive to make people work for me.

I need to be compelling to make people remember me. Unlike others, I don't need the feeling of liked by people, but I need social networking for my future.

I need to be able to flatter people so finely that they don't even notice I am flattering.

English is everything!

I don't know how, but I know I will. Eventually, I will make it, no matter the cost, no matter what it takes.

European Languages, Chinese Languages

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 23:10:43 GMT

My friend Mora, he is trilingual. He is capable of Japanese, English and Chinese, in which Japanese is mother tongue. We speak Chinese while hanging out. It is interesting experience. For that in Victoria, usually, I am the foreign language speaker. It is a fresh new point of view to be the native one in a conversation.

Mora has been learning English for only 1 year. I think his Chinese is better than my English. That's quite amazing. I have been working on English for like 15 years, and by no means I can speak Japanese like this after 1 year study.

But he says his English is not good too.

Romance languages, like English or Spanish, are way different from Chinese speakers. It is said that people actually use different part of brain when they read Chinese or Romance. "Dyslexia is a common developmental disorder in which people of normal intelligence have difficulty learning to read, spell and master other language skills."[1] According to the MRI result in [1], Dyslexia of Chinese speakers and English speakers is not the same problem because they use different area of brain. Now you can see how different languages are.

In some ways, ancient China is like ancient Europe with a longer history. We have art, architecture, techology, economics, and Empires as great as ancient Rome, if not better. The different part is, China appears as one united country while Europe is many small ones.

Sometimes, I feel it is funny when European people talk about culture difference. They say like: "Oh, I know it. I've been to Spain and France, and they are different." Come on, you really call that culture difference? The difference between 2 Chinese provinces might be bigger than that. When it comes to languages, they call people who speak Spanish and English "bilingual". If so, most of my friends from south China are born bilinguist. "Chinese isn't really a language. It's a group of languages with Mandarin being the most widely used."[2] "Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages."[5] Experts assess that the differences between some of them are even bigger than English and Swedish.[4] Shame on me, I only speak Mandarin.

Well, a survey from American students supports the same idea.[3] Conversely, Chinese is considered as the most difficult language to English speakers.

Unfortunately, once you start working on Chinese or European language, you are not able to use another part of your brain to study another one. People study second language by using the first part. "It does not mean Chinese dyslexics might be able to use different portions of their brain and learn to read English signs and instructions more easily. Once a person learns to read they tend to use the same circuitry regardless of the second language and its alphabet."[1]

It seems that I have good excuse for not speaking good English now.

[1] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5888011/

[2] http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070425204100AAtcI9Z

[3] http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~eagerchm/tutorial/attitudes.html

[4] http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t2316-0.htm

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

Vocabulary

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:09:02 GMT

From an online test, I found my vocabulary is 7,200 ~ 8,800 words. The URL is as following:

http://www.test-your-english-now.net/

The website says 7,000 words is the bottom line to understand courses in college, and I am close to fail it. It's shame. I thought I would be better. It is said that educated native speakers know 20,000 words on average. In China, CET-4 requires 4,000 words, and 6,000 words for CET-6. (CET: College English Test) I am just a bit better than those Chinese college students who never have opportunity to go aboard.

It seems that I should restart to work on my vocabulary.

But you know, as an engineering student, vocabulary is not that important. Academic papers are written in inornate style, and I can easily cover them with my 7,000 words. I don't read any English literatures except several online newspapers. And the newspapers are easy, too.

Well, maybe they are not that easy. There are some words I don't know in each article. So I guess I really should restart to work on my vocabulary now.

I believe vocabulary is paramount to English study, especially when you want to work at higher level. Some students in China, they like ascribing their failure to the environment. They say study English by memorizing words is wrong because "American farmers only know 1,000 words." This statement is a fact, but it doesn't mean anything. I want to tell those cynics that, you, are not a farmer.

[1]http://ryancollins.org/wp/2005/12/19/five-percent-of-american-adults-illiterate/

[2]http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/business/06dyslexia.html?ex=1354856400&en=6fc46f2116d30b6d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Big discovery

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:42:01 GMT

Today, a Bangladeshi told me that Professor Gandi's speaking is good. His course is easy to understand. While another professor, Valerie King, her speaking is diffcult to understand.

It really surprised me. Because I feel the exact opposite way. Professor Gandi is from India, I can hardly understand his words. On the other hand, Professor King is a New Yorker, and her English is just like what I usually hear in Hollywood movies. So although she speaks fast, I can still understand.

Before this, I thought everybody should feel the same way as I do. But now, I realize that people are much easier to understand others who have similar accent. Bangladesh is close to India, so they can understand each other. But for me, I prefer North American accent. It doesn't mean we are close to U.S.. It means I've watched too many piratic American movies.