Learning a New Language
English class has been mandatory in China for many years. In the Ted Talk “4 reasons to learn a new language”, John McWhorter explains why people need to study a foreign language.
He believes that different language speakers will have different thinking method. For example, in a French or a Spanish speaker’s opinion, if a table would speak, “it would talk with a high and feminine voice”, and be regarded as “kind of girl”. But for an English speaker, it is totally different. Therefore, the language we speak can help us to build the worldview we have. In John’s opinion, as language is highly related to culture, it is necessary to “control to some degree the language that the culture happens to be conducted in” while trying to understand a culture. “Bilingualism is healthy.” John concludes that learning a second language early can help us build better minds with ideas from both languages. And in the process of learning, we can get some funny stuff from new language. At the same time, in this era it has been a lot easier to learn a new language.
In my point of view. I have to say that John McWhorter pointed out some great ideas about learning language. In Chinese, there is a word called “Mian zi”. I have been studying English for ten years — maybe not that good but at least it is a long time. Until now I haven’t found an appropriate word in replace in English. “Mian zi” means something we need to care about when we do something in front of the public. It restricts us to behave ourselves and try our best to do everything “appropriately” in a Chinese way. To some degree, “Mian zi” makes Chinese people be more reserved and Chinese culture a different one compared to American culture. For example, Chinese people may think American democracy to be good but hardly agree with the election method. When medias and candidates talk about bad things or kind of informal stuff to each other, they are losing their own “Mian zi” and making their opponents’ “Mian zi”. We Chinese people would not prefer to speak dirty worlds on TV as frequently as American people do. Although we also speak dirty worlds in our daily life, it is supposed to be more private. As “Mian zi” is not part of important part in American culture, it is even hard to find it in English.
Therefore, I strongly agree with John that if we want to understand and participate in a culture, we should learn the corresponding language.
