With Dutch, I felt terribly uncomfortable with the harsh sounds and no-nonsense aspects of the language--I don't think I really had time to develop a personality, and it would have taken extra time. In Japanese at first my voice went several decibels higher, and I sounded daintier with my careful enunciation like some sort of very feminine anime character (not my comparison). I still have problems expressing myself in Japanese--I can't make as many off-hand quirky comments that would normally round out my personality in English.
I think my personality with Chinese has been developing for a long time now--I've marked this personality of mine in the past as being awkward, terse, less specific, less expressive. Perhaps these characteristics seem obvious for someone with limited control over a language, although I'm sure that they are also tied in with the difficulties of my childhood growing up with parents fluent only in Mandarin.
After this summer, I feel that my personality in Chinese has [thankfully] become more confident and thoughtful. I have less of a problem with occasionally making mistakes, and I am also more aware of my usage of grammar and various problem areas. I used to take it really personally whenever I made any sort of mistake in Chinese, but being surrounded by other students who were all being constantly corrected was actually quite healthy for me. I ended up being in classes with other Chinese Americans, some of whom were more advanced in certain areas but had also taken more Chinese language classes before attending IUP. My rough edges have become more smoothed out in Chinese as I've grown to be capable of a wider range of emotions and thoughts. While I wonder how much actual grammar & vocabulary I've picked up (that's stuck), I feel more confident in general about Chinese, although we'll see how long that lasts once I start taking a graduate seminar in Sinophone literature this fall.
In the end, I never feel fully comfortable in any one language. Even when I speak English, there are always bits of Chinese and Japanese floating around the edges. When I'm with other students in the East Asian Languages & Literatures Department at Yale, I'm indulged because frequently I can move freely between languages according to my own sense of what the sentence or situation requires. It's really not to be obnoxious or some sort of East Asianist pretentious--sometimes another word just feels right. I could never be fully expressed in English, because I've been with these other languages too long. It would be interesting to try learning a new language now, while I'm already in my mid-twenties, to see whether or not I could grow into it in the same way.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Thinking about the teachers at IUP
Sorry about the retrospective entries...I just left Taipei to return to Yale--maybe I will write a Taipei vs. Beijing entry soon.
For inspiration, I looked through the topic suggestions from the Light Fellowship--I thought about one related to contact with local Chinese people. Frankly speaking, IUP kept me too busy to meet that many local Chinese, so I couldn't answer the Light questions perfectly, but I'll talk a bit about what I did learn from associating with my teachers at the program on a daily basis, since they were the Chinese I had the most contact with.
In language class, you generally don't end up having full-fledged discussions about politics or anything else, although Bush and the war in Iraq seemed to frequently come up. My teachers were always quite tactful & careful not to assert their own assumptions when phrasing their questions asking us to talk about the education system, etc. in the U.S. I did have classmates mention teachers who frequently made comments such as, "Aren't all Americans really wealthy?" So, what do they really think about Americans after all? I'm not sure.
Almost all of the teachers were young and female, and the age/gender factor made it easy to feel comfortable having classes with my teachers. Although I never spent time with any of the teachers outside of class, I was quite chatty especially with my morning one-on-one teacher, who I saw for an hour everyday.
While we didn't have in-depth conversations, I felt that my teachers formed a truly helpful contrast to the Beijingers who I encountered outside of IUP. On the street, everyone comes off as aggressive and rude. People never apologize when they bump into you; if they see you coming from the other direction, they never move to the side; and bus & car drivers really don't seem to be concerned about whether or not they come within an inch of running you over. But as one of my teachers said, Chinese people may be willing to be rude & cheat you if they don't you, but once you know them & are considered a friend, they will suddenly be incredibly kind and generous.
I highly doubt any of my Chinese teachers would cheat anyone, whether or not they knew them, but their kindness was definitely a sort of soothing balm on the general hectic craziness of Beijing. Since I saw three of my teachers everyday, when I started to get sick & miss class, they were the most concerned. I spent all of my spring semester at Yale being afraid that my professors thought that I was lazy, and I had the same worries at first when I started missing school at IUP. But instead, they were the ones to urge me to take care of myself and try seeing a doctor. I still remember the hugs they gave me before I left! In any case, it's good to know that there are good people there for you in a foreign country when you're having a hard time.
For inspiration, I looked through the topic suggestions from the Light Fellowship--I thought about one related to contact with local Chinese people. Frankly speaking, IUP kept me too busy to meet that many local Chinese, so I couldn't answer the Light questions perfectly, but I'll talk a bit about what I did learn from associating with my teachers at the program on a daily basis, since they were the Chinese I had the most contact with.
In language class, you generally don't end up having full-fledged discussions about politics or anything else, although Bush and the war in Iraq seemed to frequently come up. My teachers were always quite tactful & careful not to assert their own assumptions when phrasing their questions asking us to talk about the education system, etc. in the U.S. I did have classmates mention teachers who frequently made comments such as, "Aren't all Americans really wealthy?" So, what do they really think about Americans after all? I'm not sure.
Almost all of the teachers were young and female, and the age/gender factor made it easy to feel comfortable having classes with my teachers. Although I never spent time with any of the teachers outside of class, I was quite chatty especially with my morning one-on-one teacher, who I saw for an hour everyday.
While we didn't have in-depth conversations, I felt that my teachers formed a truly helpful contrast to the Beijingers who I encountered outside of IUP. On the street, everyone comes off as aggressive and rude. People never apologize when they bump into you; if they see you coming from the other direction, they never move to the side; and bus & car drivers really don't seem to be concerned about whether or not they come within an inch of running you over. But as one of my teachers said, Chinese people may be willing to be rude & cheat you if they don't you, but once you know them & are considered a friend, they will suddenly be incredibly kind and generous.
I highly doubt any of my Chinese teachers would cheat anyone, whether or not they knew them, but their kindness was definitely a sort of soothing balm on the general hectic craziness of Beijing. Since I saw three of my teachers everyday, when I started to get sick & miss class, they were the most concerned. I spent all of my spring semester at Yale being afraid that my professors thought that I was lazy, and I had the same worries at first when I started missing school at IUP. But instead, they were the ones to urge me to take care of myself and try seeing a doctor. I still remember the hugs they gave me before I left! In any case, it's good to know that there are good people there for you in a foreign country when you're having a hard time.
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