The Ineffectiveness of English

I have interacted with English since kindergarten, and for the last four years I have been living in the US, using solely English for daily communications. Despite my effort of continual self-improving, I can’t quite understand the language. There have been explanations, of course, such as how it’s not my first language, how cultures and traditions get in place… Only recently, it strikes me with a more understandable reason: English is an ineffective language.

There are so many disadvantages of English. First of all is the way one person talks to another. You can only use “I” and “you” no matter if the person you’re talking to is an earthworm or a high king. The same with “he”, “she”, “it”, and “they”. All the languages that I have ever associated with, which are French, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Cantonese, they have different words to address different people. I believe this should be the way to talk, since each person requires to be treated with respect, order, and love. Calling everyone the same is one step toward having a barcode on each of our foreheads.

If the efficiency of addressing others are a bit debatable for a language, let me talk about some basic stuffs, like spelling and pronouncing. I understand that the ultimate role of spelling is to help with reading, i. e. pronouncing. That’s why when we meet someone with a strange name, you would ask “How do you spell it?” English doesn’t do a good job on that. Words like “women” and “read” can be read in two ways, depends on the context. “Stephen” sounds like “Steven” sometimes, and you pronounce “Christian” as if it was “Kristian” instead. And there are problems another the way around too: when hearing an English word, you can’t be 100% sure how to write it down! There is always a risk when one decides to use certain innocent words such as “beach” or “in fact”. This gives birth to another linguistic disaster: spelling manipulation. Since there is inappropriateness when saying undesirable things, I have started seeing stuffs like this: “I’ll keel you!” “Your daed.”

In his fantastic book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explains why Asian people tend to be good at math. Asian people are not any smarter than the others, and the reason for their superior Math abilities is their numerical vocabularies. The way a Japanese or Vietnamese word expresses a number also provides a meaning to that number. For example, 20 is pronounced “two tens”, and people who say that word innately understand that twenty is equal to two tens. Little things like this give confidence and comfort to the language users, making them think better of Math, and thereby perform better. Objectively concluded, English numerical vocabulary is much less efficient than several other languages’, and it has quite possibly restrained English-using mathematicians from greater achievements.

I took GMAT recently, which is a required exam for master degrees’ admission in Business fields. A good portion of this 4-hour exam is Grammar Corrections and Reading Comprehension. While preparing for GMAT, I found these two sections having the potential of being extremely challenging. It’s hard to believe that in any other language, a native speaker, when looking at five similar sentences, knows not which one of them is correct immediately. Yet in English this can get really debatable. You can successfully confuse any reader by using deliberately complicated grammar. Why, transferring one’s ideas to another in a clearest possible way should always come before achieving a more sophisticated expression. What good would a genius’s book do, if absolutely no one else can understand it? Would a children’s book not more valuable than it? There really are problems with English’ structures and grammars.

I am not an English hater. Showing the incompleteness of someone or something in an honest and constructive way is also to express the love. Nonetheless, if one day things change and the Chinese raise their power over the world in a surprising level, it’d not be too strange for their language to take over.

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Related post(s):
That Joe Roelle Guy

"You Want to See Miracles?"

(This post was finished last year, and I forgot to post it.)

How often do I truly seek God? I don’t know. But I know that every time I do, He will answer me in so many ways, and any of them is just so amazing. My life doesn’t seem to be so attractive these days, as I am struggling (still) will study and people. I knew that I wasn’t the most unfortunate person as now I have God and my girlfriend (sorry if the way I put “my girlfriend” next to “God” annoys you, it’s just a way to say it). I knew that but I couldn’t really feel that. My girlfriend is at the other end of this Earth, and God’s image is still not easy to… anticipate. I felt lonely and my joy left me. So I decided to watch the movie “Bruce Almighty”.

After I watched "Evan Almighty" two years ago and greatly appreciated it, I thought this “Bruce” one should be good too. And it was awesome, surprisingly awesome. The main character Bruce thought his life was terrible and he complained about God a lot. The way he said it was interesting, “He ignored me, when he can actually fix my life in five minutes!” He was beaten while trying to help a blind man; his car got broken; and he got fired right after he was offered a chance to be promoted. But he had an amazing girlfriend who always with him and supported him. It’s funny how I saw a part of myself just right in front of my eyes. I feel watching the movie is like when some friend of mine just randomly opened the Bible and saw the exact verse he needed. This movie was for me to watch and the timing was perfect. 

So the “God” appeared (Morgan Freeman again, and he did another great job), and let Bruce to be… all powerful, with only two rules: keep it a secret, and mess not with free will. I like how the second rule is so American. /This entry is sadly a spoiler, so if you didn’t watch it and plan to enjoy the movie fully, then please stop reading this and save it for later/ 

So Bruce got the power, enjoyed himself for a while until the whole society was messed up. He finally understood the lessons and he gave up his power. The idea of God letting someone to try His role is really interesting, and I was thinking that I would do a much better job than Bruce did (but oh well, I will surely screw up in some way or another too). Wonder what kind of miracle I would try first if I got the power, maybe creating some food ‘cause I am hungry :’D. What Bruce did first was… dividing his tomato soup like Moses did with the Red Sea (lol!!!) But later on, God told him, “Parting your soup is not a miracle, it’s a magic trick. A single mom who’s working two jobs and still finds time to take her kid to soccer practice, that’s a miracle. A teenager who says no to drug and yes to an education, that’s a miracle.” This is so nice! It means we all can do miracles! God does give us great powers and we sometimes just can’t realize it! So the movie made me think back, and reminded me of the great things I had accomplished. They were truly amazing and I couldn’t ever have done them by myself. 

Another nice thing about the movie is Bruce’s girlfriend, Grace. She reminded me of my girlfriend so much that I couldn’t bare it but cried. She reminded of her when she looked at Bruce, when she hugged him, when she had her smiles and her tears. I realized what Bruce did, that without his love everything else seems wrong: Grace was the one to help him find the way back. What An Amazing Grace Bruce received from God! All of this made me miss my girlfriend even much more, but at the same time comforted me, and gave me strength to carry on, for the bright future of ours is yet to come. 

I am so thankful for the movie. I will stop being depressed now (for a while at least), and continue to do what I am supposed to. I now can see miracles everywhere, because in the movie God tells Bruce this:

“You want to see miracles? Be a miracle!”

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

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Related topic(s):

A.R.K.

The Countless Worlds

Have you ever noticed, even though we are walking on the same plain and breathing the same air, we actually are in different worlds? I am not talking about social castes: those are old, debatably integrated. I am not talking about the Matrix or the fourth dimension: I know nothing about them. The pig Wilbur’s world is the barn, the little girl, his life, and the web of Charlotte – I am talking about this kind of world. Maybe.

Whenever I walk among a stream of people, I would see about one third of them using MP3’s, one third talking on cellphones, one sixth worrying about life issues, and the rest having some combination of the three. I can’t help but feeling so distinctively that there are walls around and among them, wrapping each individual so neatly and wittily, yet quite strong and noise/vision/sense-proved so that no one can really tell if there are people around them. They walk so closely, may even touch each other, yet they are not to be concerned even the slightest: a touch has become as irrelevant as a leaf falling in a forest. 

The last time I went back to MT to visit, there were so many things going on and the time was joyful. However, what I would remember the clearest is that my brother Holden was texting his friend Daniel and giggling the entire time. Hey bro, you too have gone to your own world and left this dusty old brother of yours behind too far!

When I started writing this post (about two weeks ago), my Vietnamese mother and I were staying in her friend’s house in CA for several days. The friend and his wife were out, and only their daughter was home with us. Because of the structure of the house, whatever one did could be heard by others, so I was aware that my mother was talking to my brother in Vietnam, and the girl was chatting with her boyfriend on phone also. There were three people in the house, and two of them were conversing with the people who were not there, and the third person (me) was posting a blog to be read later by another set of people!

What do you think about all of these? I believe that we are misusing what we are blessed with. Thomas Edison and Alexander Bell, when they first succeeded in inventing the first recorder and telephone, would hope to get people more connected – to be closer to one another. And how do we do it? We use the very same technologies to push others away from our individual worlds. We are to think of our acquaintances who are NOT around and neglect the very people standing right in front of us. What is the point of being physically together anymore? My guess is, there might be the day that everyone would avoid being with anyone – totally alone – with the sole purpose of being “connected”; and the only way to get to know someone better is to be away from that person: the notion of getting closer via avoidance. What kind of notion is that?    

After moving in my current apartment for more than a week without knowing anyone, I decided to knock the door right next to mine. ”Yeah?” -  A guy came out, looking at me in a totally unfriendly way. “Excuse me, I want to ask you something. Are you busy?” – I asked. “I am on the phone.” “Oh, okay. Never mind then.”

If there were only three worlds it’d be great.