Mother's Tongue

To new immigration, language may be the first problem that need to be fixed. In general, it is so challenge to learn a new language when people are at adult age, becuause they are not borned in the environment with this second language. In the US, some of my friends, who are new immigrants, have very limited English skill, just like the writer's mother. However, their next generation have better English skill than their parents', but is also not well enough, compare to Americans who's family live here for centuries.

I think living in English environment in a period of time is helpful to improve English, because my English skill is improved when I have lived in the US since fall 2007. At the beginning I even could not speak a complete sentence, but now I can clearly speak some simple sentence, such as a request or questions, which is because I am listening what native speakers say, and try to imitate them.

Nevertheless, I don't think I will have same English skill like native speakers, whatever how long I live in the US, because English is not breaking into my blood to be part of my body. In my mind, I unconsciously think Chinese first, and then translate into English. what I can do is reduce the translation time, but I cannot competely absorb English.

capacity inventory

sports
football
basketball
soccer
ice hockey
hiking
camping
volleyball
tennis
badminton
table tennis
swimming
language
Chinese
Spanish
Japanese
Korean
French
German
study
thinking
communication
computer
check e-mail
reply e-mail
forward e-mail
log-in ANGEl
log-in LON-CAPA
check news ( CNN, BBC,SOHU,SINA,etc)
chat by IM messager
play online game
watch video on Youtube
make a payment online
write text in blog
cook
research
cooperation( team work)
planning

what's the relationship between language and how you peceive the world?

I like to visualize what I see and what I know about the world, and I think the relationship between languages and visualization is that they have adverse effects to each other that describe in different perspectives.
Languages can detailed describe what you want to explain. People can point out one thing explicitly by languages, and then can use words to describe this thing. In the case of illustration, people usually write down a paper in mechanical way, which can illustrate clearly.
Compared to languages, visualization is a way that is difficult to describe a specific thing, but give you a whole scene, so that people can consider a question or a issue completely. To me, it is faster to receive information by visualizing a picture than writing down few sentences.

There is another idea about languages and visualization. I consider them as a sort of media that help information stay in human's brain, and languages is more moden than visualization. Just like trade in economics, at the beginning people trade by substantial goods, and then developed money as universal equivalent, using it to trade products. Same thing, before languages invented, people record information by picture, which is what they see and imagine, then they found out it is more convenient to communicate if all of stuffs are recognized in the same sounds and writing, so languages came out.

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