spew chunks!
By tuck 12 Mar 2002
ive recently begun to realize that learning a foreign language is another area of brain saturation where chunking (alla Douglas R. Hofstadter) seems to be the best way of obtaining proficiency. you could learn the meaning of each and every word and then try to fit them together in descriptive ways which you feel best portray the message you are trying to transmit, however, unless you already know the typical patterns in which these words and the resultant phrases are used and understood by the listeners youll encounter, these literal word-meaning-organizations and the descriptive phrases you create may be either misunderstood or completely un-understood due the reigning power of linguistic conventionalism.
<p>the following rant will make people agitated with me. i accept this before hand hehe. </p>
<p>at this point it seems much easier to stop trying to express myself through the preferred word-meaning-based attempts ive made in chinese (which are grammatically correct, just to mention) and instead simply repeat the various phrases ive heard used around me. i dont speak another language as well as i speak and write in english, so there is a good chance this is just ignorance, but it <b>seems </b> like if you deviate from priorly constructed phrases in chinese, even if your deviation is made with words which, as individuals, hold the right meaning, and even if they are placed in a grammatically correct pattern, it is still wrong. however, im certain that if they thought about the words chosen before considering their usage mistaken by way of novel creation, theyd understand what you were saying. </p>
<p>increasingly, it seems as though fluency here is merely an ability to say what everyone else says in the exact same way that they say it. if i ask a chinese person a question in chinese, for example, i can pretty much guess in 5-6 tries what the answer will be. now, if i was merely talking about guessing the meaning of their response, or the topic or whatever, then that would be understandable. there are only so many answers to certain questions. but what im saying here is that it is not topic-based accuracy, but word-for-word with few exeptions. unfortunately, its not resultant of attempts to simplify things for me because im a foreigner. ill be damned if i dont hear the same sorts of identical comments/questions/answers/point-outs etc. in verbal correspondence all around me all the time. whats more disturbing is that even when the response given by the chinese-answerer to the chinese-asker is one of the set word-for-word choices, the asker still gasps in surprise as if the response was all original. its like everyone may as well just pick a number which represents one of the set verbal correspondence patterns that are allowed to be used. It would save lots of time… thus a dialogue could follow as such:</p>
<p>26.</p>
<p>79! (actually, use of the ! would probably be part of the code 79 already…)</p>
<p>03.</p>
<p>44.</p>
<p>46. (end.)</p>
<p>maybe i should just memorize 400 chinese phrases instead of lists of words. chunking the words like this would also erase the odd little pauses or unconventional stresses that the foreign student of any foreign language inevitably must reckon with. instead of taking the time to form sentences which could possibly be misunderstoodingly (hehe) original, ill just pick and choose the nearest-in-meaning accepted phrase and make everyone here happy.</p>
<p>they often say that words in Japanese or Chinese have no translation or have no english equivalent because they are so profound and beautiful- which they are. but id like to point out that in english, my evolving native language, the creative constructionism through the poetic license granted to all english speakers of able mind and vocabulary is rawly unlimited. i agree that written Altaic (sp?)or chinese language has had great creative-author jurisdiction. but the spoken word is largely bound by laws of speech which is cause for much frowning if ever violated. in both asiatic languages in which i now have some experience (Chinese being the better of the two by far) im gaining confidence in my thinking that there are culturally-spawned linguistic inhibitions which set definitive boundaries in the usage of understood words. in both cultures, it seems as though their whole verbal interaction with anyone concerning anything not deeply personal could be split up into about 400 phrases and/or particular sounds which carry either genuine or (as is often the case) faked emotive response. (im exaggerating only mildly.) i mean, even the very noises made seem to be under some sort of control… some sort of learned natural response. but in english, however, there is a spoken-word stylistic freedom . for one thing, it seems as though the creative power of written word is given due power verbally as well. it seems like people take apart what you say, if interested, and often make sense of it despite its occasional novelty and occassionally actually appreciate your descriptive efforts. for another thing, people-noises are amazingly diverse in america. a sigh from one guy is <span class="caps">NOT</span> required to sound the same from another. a sigh is a sigh. its like a yawn. its physiological… a dispelling of air, a relaxation of the diaphram. but over here, it seems that there are only a few allowable kinds of sighs, or gasps of surprise or whatever. i find this very weird.</p>
<p>to explain how im feeling, if asked, i have to say what Wang said when he felt kind of this way, who had to say what Lei felt when she felt kind of this way etc. i cant use more precise adjectives- you know, the emotive ones, because emotional-sensorial adjectives here seem restricted to either ones that have already been declared allowable to be used in a more general way (which means they are used all the time to mean many different things which of course devalues their specific meaning for why i would use them), or that are limited to describing certain things only and can never be moved around. </p>
<p>i realize that this seeming is most likely resultant of my lack of fluency. but until i lock on to whatever these rules i keep violating are, for simplicity and convenience and efficiency, i guess ill stick to the phrases ive encountered and forgo these attempts at trying to answer in a voice which is actually mine instead of merely using standards to represent me. i know the chinese teacher would probably live longer without the 160/90 blood pressure i seem to give her. </p>
<p>(practically laying in wait for kam to give me a lashing here hehe)</p>
<p>(or jp)</p>
<p>(or anders)</p>
<p>(or anyone.) </p>
<p>(actually, i know im just being foolish with this rant. but thus is the tucker-state of dejection at the hands of ms. chinese teacher. which occured about 12 minutes ago. i havent healed yet. )</p>
<p>two grunts, head lowered, back to the cave. </p>
<p>try again tomorrow.</p>