I speak Chinese! (also: an announcement)

我的朋友，Chandler, 写一点。 Here is my response as a blog from another website.

 

As for the attitude, I took a similar attitude long ago.  In 1970 I started college and had to study German.  I enjoyed it but I was afriad to death of foreign languages because I had never studied one before.  I did poorly because I had poor study habits, but discovered I was better than average at learning languages. 

 

In 1982 I moved to south Texas.  Spanish is widely spoken.  I owned  a home remodeling business and hired 4-5 Spanish speaking employees.  I did not have time for studying in college.  But I decided "I speak Spanish."  I knew I didn't speak it well.  But I knew I could say a few words.  I decided to just play with it and learn it as I had time.  Today I speak enough Spanish that I could lead a construction crew in only Spanish.  But my use of Spanish is not very good.

 

In 2003, I decided "I speak Chinese."  I knew no Chinese words.  But I quickly learned to say "你好" and I then said "I speak Chinese!"  现在我不会很好。可是“我会中文说。” It is not that I have mastered Chinese.  My point is that I'm confident that I can speak it, even if I am not fluent. 

 

Who cares about fluency?  I am more fluent than 99% of all Americans because 99% of Americans cannot say or read "你好".  My goal is to become completely fluent.  I have been studying Chinese for six years and I have still only managed to learn a little.  But I have the rest of my life. 

I look at it this way.  When I was six years old, I could only write a few English words.  So I like to say "I'm six year old in Chinese!"   I can read like a six year old person in China!  I hope to continue to grow.  Perhaps by the time I'm 20 (in Chinese!  HA!) I can start re-writing my autobiography into Chinese from English.

 

Remember, as you have said "speaking a language is an attitude, not a skill."  Once you tell yourself "I speak English" not only have you already succeeded, you have given yourself the confidence to improve.  And also remember, most Americans never really learn to write.  Sure, they can write a sentence or a letter.  But they often mispell words and make many grammatical mistakes.  They can speak well, but they write poorly.  Should you master WRITING English fluently, you will write better than most Americans.  Even at age 30 I mispelled these words on a regular basis (all are spelled wrong): mountian, seperate, receive, cheif.  You can probably already do better than I did AFTER I was speaking English for 30 years!

 

pH