Can you say what you mean?
Disclaimer: The author here is not a language master herself (she is still learning) and she is merely trying to express her concern over the lack of initiative of the mass public to better their language skills.
Most of my peers think I have changed. One of them thought that the change was so abrupt, so sudden, resulting in “so much difference”, that they thought that I went through “plastic surgery”.
I’m not kidding. I did quote them. Some of them, anyway.
I beg to differ. Then again, they do speak half the truth, minus the cosmetic surgery bit. I’m not that vain, thank you. And I don’t have balloons for boobies. (Hopefully that scared fucktarded Shallow Hals away 
Maybe it’s just some Ugly Duckling Syndrome. The natural sort of Extreme Makeover. But my case wasn’t extreme. They just didn’t bother noticing the subtle physical changes in me.
Would ditching the glasses and growing out the hair be considered extreme anyway? Oh, well.
I did change. It’s evident in my English. I did not use to write or type like this. Like any other normal people in the world, I had grammatical errors and had the vocabulary of a Peter & Jane book. Like your typical Western culture-inclined adolescent, I read Enid Blyton, R.L. Stine, and was a bigger fan of Sweet Valley Twins and Friends. Books like Sweet Valley were your typical girly books that introduced girls to the Hollywood love stories of ridiculous happily-ever-afters. The main theme was your typical American high school of parties and fashion and oh-my-gawd-he’s-so-cute-do-you-think-he’ll-ask-me-to-the-prom-?-whine-whine-whine-what-?-?-?
-ask-him-out-?-no-way-I’m-butt-ugly-that-I’m-not-surprised-if-he-pukes-when-he-sees-me-whine- whine-whine-oh-no-he’s-coming-but-he-doesn’t-even-notice-me-I’m-such-a-loser-what-am-I- supposed-to-do-whine-whine-whine.
Books like this are as evil as Barbie Dolls as they can morph girls into sad romantics with low self-esteems.
But, I have to thank Sweet Valley Twins and Friends for my English today.
Surprise, surprise. For starters, it got me interested in the American culture. It got me interested in English. Like any typical reader, I was lazy to look up the dictionary for bombastic-sounding words like “cynical” and “oblivious”. It was Sweet Valley that introduced to me words like “obvious” and “intentional”! And so, I assumed the meanings of bombastic words which were often used.
I even attempted my own version of Sweet Valley. I also submitted a story about a monkey who saved a bunch of kids from burglary, to the school yearbook. I felt very accomplished, thinking that I had good grasp of the English language and heck, I was in one of the top 3 classes.
When the yearbook came out, I was greatly surprised. Wtf man, my masterpiece didn’t show up and 90% of the compositions in there were goddam boring, I thought. My ego plummeted. I was deeply hurt. Then, my English teacher explained to me. “Your ideas were absolutely fantabulous but your grammar was fucked. Your sentence structure suxx0rz too.”
Of course, she didn’t say that. You get my drift.
That was when I noticed that the content of a writing piece didn’t matter as much as the grammatical correctness. It was much nicer to read “I have a dog named Fluffy. He hates cats” than “My dog are Fluffy he like kick you cat ass”. It was also lovelier to read “I love animals. They taste good” than “I feel affection for my canine Fluffy because of the exquisite taste that animals possess.”
But then again, language usage always depends on how appropriate it is for a situation. A friend of mine provided this example of word confusion:
Rina lopez: dah kawin??? (Ready maried???)
neutron81: kawin? whats dat?
imagin if 1 simpli gos arund shotenin evry single vocab in a languag. Wnder wat wil hapen if I go arun writin lik dis. Funky eh?
Somebody I know: Eh, you siao wan ah? Liddat oso can taruh bet.
To the very literate* people: I’m sorry to have caused brain damage.
Personally, I never really liked mixing a language with another in a single sentence. Nor do I like submitting any composition without proof reading it. If you intentionally ignore the grammatical correctness and spellings of words, you’re killing the culture of that language. This issue may be insignificant and redundant to you, and you may claim that you’re just being laidback and those errors doesn’t really mean much, think about this: Your choice of diction reflects on your personal culture.
Yes, your culture. Your language use represents your thoughts, your intelligence, your self-expression, your upbringings and most importantly, your self-awareness.
Think about the last time you thought of something. Maybe even now. How do you think? What do you use to think? Most of the time, you think using words. Even when you only feel an emotion or atmosphere, how do you express that feeling? You use language. And it doesn’t even have to be in words.
Your body movements and facial expressions can reveal a lot more than what you can say or write or draw.
Words can only say so much. And because of that, everybody judges one another based on both verbal and non-verbal language. It reveals your personality and characteristics, pros and cons, needs and wants, and your communication skills. It is your only mean of communication. You can die if you never knew how to communicate with the society.
Language is your sense of identity with your culture.
We all have prejudices. It’s a lie if anybody claims that they’re not racist or prejudice against anybody in this world. You may not discriminate but it is quite impossible that you like every single asshole in the world. It’s only how prejudice you are against another. With that in mind, we easily assume that a person of a different culture wouldn’t be able to speak our language. When he or she does speak our language, we would look on with that :O look, and think that he or she must have studied real hard (or at least harder than we would have) to be as good as us in our language.
We wouldn’t like to think that a person of another culture is better than us in our own language now, would we?
One example would be one of my many similar international chats in Yahoo! Chat:
Me: Nice chatroom, huh?
Random American: Heh, I guess
Me: How is Bush?
Random American: lol hes ok I guess. Being the usual ass
Me: How patriotic of you
Random American: where you frm
Me: Malaysia
Random American: Wow you serious
Me: Why
Random American: are you like some writer or somethin? becuz your English is good
Another example is when I went to Actors Studio Bangsar a few weeks ago with my friend, Tony, to watch a multimedia comedy by Fritz Donnelly. Fritz is a New Yorker and was brilliant with his act of four completely different characters. It was a one man show. What we didn’t expect from this maestro was that he played a Chinese-speaking rap star-wannabe chef from Penang. This American gwai lou* spoke Mandarin to such perfection that he put my SPM Chinese grade (I got a B) to shame. Fritz also didn’t speak like those spastic-sounding Western actors in Bruce Lee movies.
Come to think of it, those kung fu movies seem to degrade Westerners when they try to speak Chinese, like how western movies seem to indirectly degrade people of colour.
Anyway, after the comedy skit, Tony was abashed by his high banana* skills. Tony recalled bypassing so many chances of taking up Chinese classes, because it seemed cooler to speak English, an alien culture to the mother tongue, instead. I recall hating Chinese so much because it was a much harder language to master than English, that I almost quit my Form 4 POL class. (Up till now, nobody managed to explain to me why they can’t just call it Chinese class instead)
But why do I hate Chinese so much back then? Why do I still prefer English to Chinese? After all, I studied in a Chinese primary school, didn’t I? I think I can blame the media. Blame Power Rangers, Barney, Sesame Street, Peter & Jane, and Barbie Doll for my interest in English. Blame Enid Blyton, R.L.Stine, and Sweet Valley for my addiction to English.
What about other people who still prefer conversing and cursing in Chinese? They share the same national TV programmes, don’t they? Well, here, your family upbringing comes into question. My mum strictly believed in the importance of mastering the English language because it is the tool of the international trade. Also, she only started learning English when she was in college and now called her impotency in English her handicap.
Handicapped. Because her English wasn’t fluent enough for her to be very competent in her job of global interest. Hence, her children should start mastering the language from young.
It’s true, folks, that you learn best from young. All habits start young; old habits die hard. It’s also never too late to start. Better late than never. And when you’re very used to a particular language, it is hard to adapt to another language equally as much.
Slowly but surely, my interest in English grew. For a while back in high school, from the transition of an uncertain language user to a more certain one, I had this peculiar liking towards dictionary-reading. Yes, it sounds rather sad but true, I like reading the dictionary. You can find that statement in my space’s profile too.
I found it interesting to be able to express many things in few words. New words also meant new power. I knew things an ignorant one did not. I could express what he or she could not. I could curse in ways he or she couldn’t. Words can control a person’s emotion and feelings. Sir Francis Bacon didn’t coin the quote “Knowledge is power” for nothing.
Language is probably the most powerful tool of human control.
Because of my overwhelming interest in English, many Chinese assumed that I don’t speak my mother tongue. There was the debate on mother tongue as to whether it is the language of your original culture/race, or the language you first learned to speak in. I feel that Chinese is the mother language of my race and English is my preferred tongue.
I did not forget my own roots but I do have my right of choice, don’t I?
Whilst doing our past Sociology project, my Korean friend gave an interesting insight. She told me that even if Korean was an international language which would make life simpler for Koreans, many Koreans wouldn’t want it that way. She said that a widespread mastery of the Korean language would mean that Koreans lose their secret language. That would also mean that they can’t bitch behind people’s back in Korean anymore. Their mother tongue is their culture’s personal identity. It’s their cultural pride which they wouldn’t give up for anything in the world.
How patriotic. Unlike Malaysians who have this overzealous Western pride. Being xenocentric and all that. Even a piece of “Buatan USA” crap is seen superior to any competent “Buatan Malaysia” crap. (This also applies to any other foreign culture, not just USA) Ironically, they secretly feel hurt when they get dissed for not being able to master their own mother tongues. Amusingly enough, these people aren’t very competent in their preferred languages as well.
Despite the emphasis on how one should master ones mother tongue, some failed to acknowledge the fundamental significance of it all: Language is important. We all have to master at least one language if we want to survive in the human society.
Be it English, Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, Hindi, Bangla, etc. As long as people can understand the message you try to convey, the kind of human language does not matter. And for today’s society business purposes, English is the ultimate language for success. Chinese is catching up real quick, thanks to China’s economic progress and its status of being the most widely used language.
Whatever it is, language is a symbol of your culture. It shows who you are. If you don’t master any single language, where do you really belong to?
The other day, my 17-year-old Chinese brother asked me how to spell “Chinese”. Imagine the sadness I felt.
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* literate: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines a literate person as someone who can, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life.
gwai lou: Literally means ghost/monster guy in Chinese of the Cantonese dialect. Often referred to Western foreigners.
banana: A Chinese-illiterate Chinese. Yellow on the outside, white on the inside.
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Some examples of language miscommunication:
