On My English & General State of Communication

It is about 3 hours more to my final examination paper of the year, and till 2010 as well! In my boredom as I wait for the clock to tick down, I have decided to pen down some thoughts that floated through my mind as I was doing my previous paper. It has nothing to do with the content of the questions or how I think I did, but rather, my standard of English. As I was writing, I could not help but notice that my English was getting quite atrocious, my grammar was flying all over the place, and I was trying to camouflage bad spelling by writing in cursive. Yet, my main concern was not write in good English, but to convey my ideas on the paper. My sentences were long, punctuation was bad etcetc. If it were a report, I probably would have failed.

On reflection now though, I wonder why I couldnt be bothered with my English in the exam. I am not trying to make excuses though! But besides the lack of time, I think my main reason would be that I knew that the marker of my script, who is obviously well versed in the topic, would know what I was saying. This brings me to the purpose of language. Why were languages invented? It must have been for communication. And what is communication? Communication is the ability for two or parties to understand the intentions of each or one another. Moving on...

Last week, my Portugese teacher asked me if I had taken Portugese before, as she found my Portugese to be rather good for a beginner, especially someone whose basic language was Chinese. Obviously, she is quite mistaken as if anything at all, my first language would be English, which would explain my comparative ease at the pronounciation of the other Latin languages as compared to the Mainland Chinese. However, also important is my desire to communicate. Actually, thus far in life, I have attempted to learn Japanese, Thai, and now Portugese, I have tried to speak Hainanese, Cantonese, Hokkien, and maybe even Malay. However, none of these have I managed to do with any decency at all. That is probably because I am a slow learner, and without a chance to read and speak these languages, I am unable to improve at all. That is why, I am quite thankful for the strong foundation in English & Chinese my parents and aunts forced into me when I was young. Yet, despite my repeated failures, why do I continue to learn languages?

Not that I think its cool to be able to speak many languages! But because I hope I can communicte better with other people! It is with proper communication that we can empathize and view the opinions of others fully. Some concepts can never be translated correctly, a some words are non-existent in different languages. Therefore, I really am determined to get this Portugese well learnt, with all the grammar and vocabularly. Thereafter, maybe re-visit the other languages I attempted earlier!