Dreaming in English
I am an extravert. I became introverted temporarily when I landed in America for my graduate school. The feeling of not being able to express myself was frustrating, to say the least.
When someone talked to me, I would do translation twice.
1️⃣ I translated what people said into my native language to comprehend what they meant. Then
2️⃣I thought of my response in my language and translated it to English.
However, by the time I was ready, people may have already moved on and my response wasn’t relevant anymore. I would repeat this cycle again and again. If I got lucky, I might be able to comment a “yes” or “no” at the end of a conversation. Most of the time, I didn’t bother to think of a response…let me just simply understand what people were talking about.
Gradually, the speed of my translation got faster and faster...until one night I was dreaming in English. That’s when I knew that I have reached a milestone that I didn’t need to do two way translation as much anymore.
To this day, I carry a list of the words that I just learned or I didn’t know how to pronounce correctly. Let me share just a few examples:
✏️ Salmon - the fish we regularly eat for dinner. You notice there is a “L” there? My kids learned how to pronounce •salmon• from me. When they went to school, they were laughed at pronouncing it as “Salmon” instead of “Samon”. I learned the correct pronunciation from my kids. salm·on (săm′ən)
✏️ Receipt - after you check out at the self checkout stations at the store, you will be asked “please take your receipt”. You noticed that is a “p” in the spelling? I have been very busy practicing saying the “p” and “t” skillfully. Until one day, my coworker and a good friend told me “you know it’s ‘recei(p)t’ right?” No! I had no idea! I heard about the pronunciation hundreds of times, but I already “knew” how it’s pronounced - at least I thought I knew, why would I ever need to pay attention to its pronunciation? re·ceipt (rĭ-sēt′)
✏️the list goes on and on.
The moral of the story:
📌mastering another language requires time, patience, intention and work.
📌just because you think you know doesn’t mean you really know: challenge your assumptions.
📌have empathy to the people surrounding you who speak your language as a second language because they are trying really hard.
#englishasasecondlanguage #continuouslearning #nevertoolate #empathy
