My third month in Latin America was about to begin, and I was supposed to return home at the end of February, but due to the circuit break of the flight and the interruption of the Russian-Ukrainian campaign, the current flight could only be postponed until the beginning of April.
If you have friends who often look at my circle of friends or social platforms, you may be able to see me share my life experience and thinking in Latin America every day, and my life in Peru and Panama for more than two months has made me think and inspire a lot about life.
However, there are many stories I want to share, and today I would like to share some of my conversations and reflections about language learning and my Spanish teacher.
1
Today is my first day of learning Spanish.
Yes, I have embarked on a new language learning journey. The original plan was disrupted, for no reason for an extra month, I thought how can not be wasted, just want to seize every minute and second to use the local resources to do something that will help their own growth, so I decided to return to Lima, looking for a local language school, learn Spanish for a month.
If you know my Japanese learning ability, you may know that I am not a master of language talent, and I learned Japanese in the same way, arriving in Tokyo, forcing myself with the environment, and violently solving language problems.
I had failed to teach myself Japanese before, and after several months of self-study in China, I finally couldn't even memorize the basic fifty tones, not to mention the mastery of advanced knowledge such as verb deformation and grammar.
It is precisely because I see clearly that I do not have a strong ability to learn my own language, so I have no motivation to actively learn a language in China. Taking Japanese as an example, before going to Japan, I didn't really have much feeling about Japanese anime and Japanese dramas, not a two-dimensional fan, let alone watching dramas to learn Japanese, because I didn't think I needed to learn Japanese as a language.
However, by chance, it was also a trip to Japan that I had the idea of going deep into the local area to find out, and then I had a follow-up path to learn Japanese.
My way of learning is rough and clumsy— "poisoning poison", allowing myself to simply immerse myself in a set environment, and a lot of specific information every day, so as to accelerate my learning and memory ability.
After arriving in Japan, I thought there would be Chinese and Japanese classes, but my Japanese teacher would only speak Japanese, which led to my real discomfort at the beginning, just imagine a person speaking a language you don't understand every day in a lecture, that painful feeling I still remember deeply, completely refreshed my understanding of language learning,
However, you may not imagine that my language skills have improved very quickly in this kind of teaching. I didn't need to deliberately recite fifty tones at all, and in less than half a month, I mastered the fifty tones that I had not been familiar with for several months on my own, and I also understood the deformation of many verbs.
At that time, I thought how could Japanese become so simple? Because I couldn't even learn the most basic pronunciation in China, I couldn't remember it, and when I arrived in Japan, I easily crossed that hurdle in a short time.
If you have taught yourself Japanese and can quickly master fifty tones, then I think you are definitely gifted in language, at least much stronger and smarter than me, after all, I am not a language learning master, my way of learning is as mentioned earlier, put yourself in that big environment, immersive input, edification, learning.
Panama Canal Museum
As a result, with the experience and experience of learning a third language as an adult, my fear and pain in the face of Spanish was much less, and on the contrary, the novelty and excitement increased greatly.
When I was in Japan, I also met a Japanese friend who did the same thing as me, he told me that he was originally a cinematographer for a film production company, and then he was not willing to work only in Japan, and wanted to go to the outside world to see, so he chose to go to Australia.
At that time, his English level was very bad, but in a year of study and life in Australia, his English level improved very quickly, when I met him, he was already in an American film and television company, many of his colleagues were foreigners, communicating in English every day, and he took me to a barbarecue party, a room was almost full of foreigners from all over the world, and even professors from American universities, during the banquet his English communication and listening seemed to me to be quite excellent.
For the language learning thing, I can't roughly summarize it with the six words "listen more, read more and talk more", because in my opinion it is indeed the right nonsense, but if I teach myself in China, I may still be competing with fifty tones for more than half a year.
In addition, I also said before that it is best to have the conditions to study abroad, but many people think too much about the cost of going abroad. Generally, the cost gap will be very large in different countries.
Prepare a few tens of thousands of dollars, really want to live in the local language learning is completely no problem, but I know that tens of thousands for some people may not be a small number, of course, you have to go to the part-time travel visa there is no problem, Australia has a lot of similar projects and opportunities to apply, to work in the local area to earn money to travel, contact with different cultures.
In short, you really want to go out to study and live for a while, it is not difficult to work hard at all, and the difficulty is to persuade yourself to quit in the end.
Tell me about my experience at a restaurant in Cusco City (Peru). At that time, Ai and I had no intention of passing by a Chinese restaurant in Cusco city after our trip from Machu Picchu, the hostess was a Chinese, we arrived at the restaurant at almost 9 o'clock, almost no one, so I talked directly to the hostess,
She told me that she was a native of Putian, Fujian Province, who had come to Peru in 2005, and that her husband had arrived six months ahead of her, and then brought her with her and her sister. How did she get here?
In 2005, she paid the snake head 70,000 yuan, took a labor service visa, did not have any money in the first half of the year, was taken away by the snake head, told her that you came to learn the language in half a year, while working while learning, until after half a year of doing it for people, she began to make money.
In the beginning, her life was extremely difficult, the dirty work in the back kitchen had to be done, and the first time she began to learn the language was to communicate with the Peruvians in the restaurant, a little bit of study, and the first month of her salary was 400 US dollars (more than 2,000 yuan).
When she went abroad, she was in her 30s, and she still had children, until she worked for almost ten years, saved enough money, opened her own Chinese restaurant, and the business was doing well, and there were three stores in Cusco.
Chicken made of Inca Cola
Nearly twenty years of hard life in a foreign country, she did offer her son to graduate from college, bought five or six million villas for her hometown, and asked her aunt to take care of her little daughter and the elderly, while she was still desperately guarding the store in this City of Cusco to make money, and wanted to earn a little more and return to China to enjoy the second half of her life.
Her Spanish level is beyond doubt, after all, she has lived in Cusco for nearly twenty years, and the staff and chefs are all Peruvian, she makes calls and drinks in Spanish, and the banquet is close to closing, I listen to her at the table next to her calling her husband in her hometown dialect to inquire about the situation, and tell me about the hard work of the road.
At that time, I looked at her with only admiration in my eyes. A woman with a primary school diploma and a child in her 30s can have the courage to follow the snakehead to the distant Latin America, work from scratch to make money, and finally do her own business, and provide her children with college.
Auntie's old home villa
Later, I thought that many friends around me, who are at the level of dragons and phoenixes in many fields, tend to be conservative rather than risky in the face of changes in the environment.
Of course, there is no right or wrong choice, there are their own considerations, but most of the time, perhaps those at the bottom will have to venture in because they don't have a choice, and no one can say whether "holding a good hand/bad card" is a pro or a disadvantage.
Not far from it, just back to the language thing, I wonder if an aunt with a primary school diploma in her thirties can have the ability to learn a new language from scratch, what about younger people? Why do you think it's too late or impossible to relearn?
2
Today is my first day of class.
My alarm clock is set at 7:30 a.m., and the class time is from 9:00 to 13:00 in Miraflores, a local wealthy area of Lima.
In the morning, Ai (boyfriend) got up at about 6 o'clock, first drove his sister to school, then came back to help me sort out my school bag, and prepared a bento for me to eat during recess, so I got up and basically didn't have to worry about anything and went straight to the car.
I am extremely grateful for his care for me for this period of time, and I see it in my eyes, at least he and his family have refreshed many of the prejudices and stereotypes I once had about Latin Americans.
When I was in Spanish class, my Spanish teacher and I talked about two interesting cultural differences and wanted to share them.
The first topic is marriage.
At that time, the old lady asked me: "I heard that there are many conditions for marriage in China?" Do girls have to marry before a certain age? ”
I was surprised, but I was also expected. When I was in Japan before, Japanese people talked to me about what they knew about the conditions of marriage in China.
Later, when I met Ai, he once jokingly said to me:
"I know that when I get married in China, I will ask for a house and a car, but fortunately I have a second-hand Nissan car and can make up the conditions." Mom will take it. ”
At that time, I almost rolled my eyes to the sky, but at that time I knew that "negotiating conditional marriage" was a typical Chinese marriage in the eyes of most foreigners.
I replied to her:
"In China, in most cases, if the two parties want to enter the stage of marriage and love, the basic woman or family will assess the other party's family situation, such as whether there is a significant house or not. Do you have a car? What is the annual salary? Etc. Money is a very important measure, of course, there are exceptions, but this is a general, including the dating market will be more mature and standardized, this information is basically at a glance. ”
She said to me in surprise, "Isn't this business?" ”
I smiled helplessly, "Almost." I have too many excellent women around me, they have bright jobs and good salaries, but sometimes they still can't escape the pressure from the family side, and no matter how successful the career is, if there is no marriage and childbearing, they will still be pointed out, and it is not outsiders who exert pressure, but their relatives. “
The old lady had a sad expression on her face and said to me:
"In our place (in Latin America), what parents value most is whether the other person loves you and whether the other person respects you. If your significant other can respect you, that's an important condition for marriage. ”
When I heard her say that, the cute Ai came to mind, and he really showed the trait of "respect" in our relationship.
The second topic is intimate (physical) contact.
When I first came to Latin America, I was once very unaccustomed to meeting and greeting in the way of "hugging and kissing", and I was a little reluctant to be physically touched by strangers, after all, in China, everyone greeted, or nodded, waved, and even shook hands very little, basically keeping a distance and respecting each other.
When I come here, sometimes when I meet people who are slightly more familiar, I basically have to hug and kiss, and the influence of this environment has been from the beginning of not adapting, to the later actual adaptation, and will feel very friendly and kind.
I shared this mental transformation with her, and the old lady smiled and said to me:
"I have a nephew who is studying and working in Korea, and once he went to work in a shop, and his colleague was Korean, and he went up to say hello and put his hand on the shoulder of the other person, and the girl shouted at once, which startled him, and he didn't know that he couldn't say hello like this in Asia."
I also laughed and shared with her:
"My boyfriend used to be in front of me, hugging and kissing female friends, when the picture was burned in my eyes, the whole person was very uncomfortable, the key girl was still very beautiful, and then I was sullen because of this, he ran to ask me why I ignored him, I thought about it or chose to tell him honestly, at that time he laughed and told me this, this is their culture in itself, does not mean that he is flirting with each other.
Although I can gradually understand, I think asians themselves are more traditional and reserved, we do not like to get too close to physical contact, many times this kind of physical expression will be easy to misunderstand, such as thinking that it is a hint or harassment. ”
The old lady laughed and said to me:
"In fact, here (Peru) we have the same confusion, we will feel why Asians are so indifferent? In our eyes, if the way of greeting with a hug and kiss is an expression of love, if there is no hug and kiss, then we will default to whether the other party does not like me.
However, because I can contact foreigners and there are many Japanese people who take classes here, I can understand the cultural habits of Asians, so I will also explain to my friends who think Asians are indifferent that "not touching does not mean that they are indifferent", which can be observed through their eyes and expressions.
But the locals may be like your local Chinese, but what they find difficult to understand is "why don't you want to be close to each other?"
After all, in our culture, "touch" is a very important thing. ”
The old lady's words actually gave me a lot of thought, and I replied to her:
"It is precisely because of our cultural differences that we have caused a lot of incomprehension and misunderstanding. The reality is that not so many people have the opportunity to go to the outside world to see, to contact foreign cultures, to communicate with local people in depth. Most of the time, people can only see the translated media or other people's information, so there will be some deviation of the information.
And whether in China or Latin America, many people do not speak English, let alone Spanish, or Chinese, which adds a huge obstacle to cultural communication. Of course, I have seen some people who are more absurd, who hate and hate him Chinese words, and can put the matter of Chinese learning foreign languages on the line, and insult them as a betrayal of their own culture.
It is precisely the more such thoughts are, the more nature will imprison itself, the more it cannot see more possibilities, and the easier it is to cocoon itself. ”
3
I know that many of the readers are about the same age as me, basically distributed around 25 to 30, and there are also many students who have not yet graduated or newcomers to the workplace who have just graduated, and occasionally I will receive some private messages and confusion from you.
My narrative type of text has a strong arbitrariness, thinking of where to write, rarely using a clear framework and logic to divide their own views, as an essay.
But I believe that these fragmentary thoughts and observations, full of a lot of real experiences and stories, as well as my own thinking, will be helpful to some of my friends.
Unlike the previous large amount of knowledge and wisdom that I had acquired from books, during this time in Latin America, I was more likely to observe and talk to local people, trying to integrate into their way of life to examine whether there was a difference in my thinking and whether it could be updated and iterated.
After all, whenever I encounter different cultures colliding and repulsing each other in my body, I used to have pain and discomfort, but now this feeling is much less, but the sense of tolerance is gradually increasing.
Behind each culture, there is its own character and accumulation, learning and understanding the culture of other countries, does not mean that you turn your back on your own culture, on the contrary, I think it can help you understand your own culture more deeply, and then pass on and share this culture with other countries.
In fact, when I learn Spanish, I think it is precisely because I have mastered the three languages of Japanese, English, Chinese that understanding Spanish has become interesting and integrated.
In Japanese, the order of verbs is reversed, the word order of "eating" in Japanese is "rice eating", while in Spanish, the word order of nouns and adjectives is reversed, the order of "red skirt" in Spanish is "skirt red", and the R pronunciation in Both Japanese and Spanish is L.
The pronunciation of the A, B, C, D, and E letters in Spanish is very similar to the abcde of Chinese pinyin, and many words in Spanish and English look similar.
And my Spanish teacher told me that if you know French, Portuguese, Italian, then learning Spanish is very fast, because these languages are almost derived from the same type of structure and pronunciation.
It's like the grammar of Korean and Japanese is so similar that, leaving aside the Kanji part, Koreans learn Japanese, essentially, much faster than Chinese, and I did observe in a Korean friend that his listening and speaking skills are much faster than foreigners at the same level. When I asked, I learned that their grammar structure was similar.
There are a great deal of similarities and compatibilities in language itself, not to mention the culture itself?
Therefore, I personally hear things like "What is the use of learning a foreign language?" I can't use it" or "learn foreign language, two devils" and the like, in fact, I will feel helpless in my heart.
It is precisely because you have never understood and been in contact, and have obtained a large number of second-hand and not necessarily correct interpretation of information, there will be many misunderstandings, and misunderstandings will arise, unwilling to empty yourself, it is more difficult to make adjustments and changes, and in the end, the loss must not be those who are attacked by you, but yourself.
Saying so much, it may not advocate that everyone has to learn a language, there is a willingness to naturally be very good, to contact first-hand information to verify the information seen in books and the Internet, naturally need a certain language ability, but I think to contact more good information sources, maintain an open mind, but also can help their own growth, language is ultimately a tool.
What matters is how you see different languages and cultures, how you understand the differences and similarities between them and your culture.
Finally, these life experiences have made me more and more aware of some of the most reasonable quotes of my ancestors:
Read thousands of books, travel thousands of miles.
On paper, I finally realized that I had to do something about it.
Never think it's too late to do something.