凡凡留學記(Dear Diary-30/12/2008)

I remember it was three years ago, which was the second year of Junior High School, when my classmates were all excited and busy chattering about me coming to New Zealand. Even though I wasn't the kind of person who liked to draw people's attention , I still answered my classmates' questions."So why are you going to New Zealand?" they asked."To study and learn English." I said."Aren't you really good at it?" they asked curiously."Not as good as people there."I replied.

Not only my classmates asked me these questions, but even my teachers, other friends and family asked the same things. So I ended up repeating myself again and again. It did become quite annoying having to repeat things so many times, and made me feel like asking them "what do you think?" sometimes. Maybe it's too polite to say only "sometimes", but I always had the urge to do so, though never did. Is it really possible? That no one actually thought about the reason why parents in Taiwan, send their children to places like America, England, Canada, Australia and so on? Isn't there just one answer? Isn't it because parents want their children to have a better chance of getting a job; to have more opportunities and advantages than other people in the working force? Like what people say, English has become an International language, there are so many countries and people that can speak English. So being able to speak two languages has become really normal, and being able to speak English has also become a basic knowledge. On the other hand, people who can speak over two or three languages fluently, are the ones that stand at the head of the line. Of course, it is impossible to learn a language in one night, not to mention without any rest. In this case, even a person who is hopeless at Maths, has a better chance of memorising a bunch of difficult formulas in a night's time. The problem is that you can't learn a language just by memorising things from books.

You simply just can't, because there are just so much too learn. Like us, for example, we've been learning mandarin for nearly all our lives, but have we really learnt those forty thousand Chinese characters that are said to be used "commonly"? In my opinion, just even scanning through all those characters, one by one through the dictionary is a big challenge. And don't even mention about those ancient Chinese characters from even ages ago, because the amount of them are also in the ten thousand unit range.

However, our ancestors still think that that's not enough for us to learn, so decided to invent the famous idioms. Much to our surprise, we might not have even seen some of those Chinese characters, and of course have no idea what that single one character in the idiom means. Even worse, those four Chinese characters grouped together makes another story.

Even more surprising, the story has an inner meaning to it. How much more complicated can it be? Surely, Junior High School students would be all yelling out "That...that...that's just cruel! Now you want us to make our own sentence with idioms?" Well, this used to be my problem too. Unfortunately, our ancestors still said that we need more homework. So now we have to learn more about classical Chinese, and we are to know it, understand it, write it, recite it, and to know it as well as possible. Even the author and which clique he comes from is important. I meam, how much more can you ask for? To make it into a song? Ha, no jokes, there are actually ones that you can sing to. Therefore, learning Mandarin is like walking in circles that have endless Chinese characters. Worst of all, there are even more circles inside the circumference; even more mysteries underneath the mysteries that are still waiting to be solved or I should say even discovered(so much to know that it might not even be looked at). So our one, mysterious language leaves us likelost ants, being swirled into the black and white nightmare like whirlpool. It might sound really dramatic, but you would have to admit, that since then, Mandarin Chinese had become one of the most difficult languages on planet Earth.
All from the help of our ancestors and their perfectly "complexed" minds. No wonder why white people find it extremely difficult(and I mean "extremely" difficult) learning our language. So what is the problem?
The problem is that "we", supposedly the "native people" of our "native language" don't even know the "language"! How can white people know? Unless they've got superior genes than us, and have the ability to do what our idiom says of being able to "read ten lines at a glance".
That is, if they've got the patience to study our language. One time, one of my Kiwi* classmates was so amazed, that she asked me how we recognise the Chinese characters, when there are so many tiny strokes in each character. If someone asked you the same question, how would you answer? Anyway, I said that we knew the general shape of the Chinese character.

Can you believe it? Does she think that we have to carefully look at every single stroke in a character to recognise it? Instantly, I wanted to ask her "Do you know the number of Chinese characters that exist?""And the number of strokes each character has?"At that same moment, I also realized that if it was true, every kid in Taiwan will have a perfectly reasonable excuse to retort their parents- it is because of studying too many Mandarin books that made them short sighted, but not the video and computer games.(Haha, it seems so funny, I can almost imagine the parents' speechless faces) At the end, we don't even realize how much we really know about our own language; how many tricks and unique skills we've absorbed from our ancient masters.

Furthermore white people are still like juniors who try to learn our language, they aren't really capable of learning the whole language,nor can they steal it. There's just no chance, because even us, the "native birds", have not learnt every trick yet. What? Haven't you heard of just learning half a trick? Or heard of birds that can only "half fly"? (jokes) But the truth is the truth, we haven't even learnt half of our language. It does seem a bit funny. Is it our "complex minded" ancestors, that we should be thankful of setting up so many traps and Da Vinci codes, to make both ourselves and white people confused? Or should we be resentful of being Taiwanese, having to learn so much? And still call ourselves people who know Mandarin, even though not quite. Just something to think about before I completely go off topic. What I'm trying to say is that you cannot learn a language simply by memorising books, because there's just too much. English is just the same, there's lots to know so it's important to learn useful things.
Which leads to the next point, being able to find the environment that allows you to learn the language- meaning an environment that only English is spoken.
This is one thing I am very positive about, and is why so many parents in Taiwan send their children overseas.

備註:*kiwi classmates-Kiwi 是一種只有紐西籣才有的稀有鳥類(比較龐大所以不會飛)，也因為這樣我們都直接稱紐西蘭人為 Kiwi. Kiwi classmate意思則是紐西蘭同學v