Our Biggest Enemy

Posted by Shiny

Living in the UK, one of the biggest enemies is language.  If you don’t solve this problem, it will become a barrier to your life, just like the sands inside your shoes which makes you inconvenient and uncomfortable to move.

Undeniably, linguistic problems are really inevitable.  Having problems is not scary, because you can learn something from that.  But the thing is, sometimes we won’t learn things until we become a “clown”.

Just before Christmas, my housemate August caught a cold, so he went to a pharmacy to buy some medicine since he has almost eaten up the pills I had given to him.  He asked the shop assistant to get some medicine for him.  The shop assistant showed him a bottle of liquid, but August didn’t trust that kind of medicine.  So he told the assistant to get some other sorts of medicine.  Unfortunately he didn’t know how to say, so he asked, “Have you got something like candies?” “Can candy cure your cough?” asked the assistant.  August said, “No, I mean something you put into your mouth.”  The assistant said angrily, “Your mouth! Not my mouth!”  “OK!”  Finally August learnt a new word which is “oral administration.”

Experience must be bought and you will never know how to walk without tumbling.  To reduce the probability of being a clown, we enjoy discussing with our teacher.  For instance, in one of our Further Maths class, we did some revision. But indeed we’ve made the lesson into a linguistic lesson.

I asked Dr. Butcher many questions about English and we both show great interests in it which attracted other students to join us.  Virtually the questions I raised were partially in the high school syllabus of English in China, yet the thing is I have forgotten about it.  In order not to get into communication trouble in future, I tried to find out the truth and make it less ambiguous.

The first question I asked is about how to use a word “doubt”:

- I doubt it will rain. (As in, I am not sure but I think it won’t rain.)

- I doubt it won’t rain. (I wondered whether there is a sentence like this. Dr. Butcher told me that it does exist and it may be regarded as a double negative sentence.  Most people will agree that this means I am not sure but I think it will rain.  “But it is sometimes confusing to say this since the British people can’t deal with double negative”, said Dr. Butcher.  Moreover, there are some special meanings for people of different cultures.  Some people will say the double negative sentence solely to emphasize that he thinks it won’t rain.)

Another example is what August usually says, “I didn’t do nothing.”  It seems to be a wrong sentence, but August claims that it is used by some people in the game GTA.

As for the second question, it is about the understanding of a dialogue.

A: I hope it won’t rain.

B: I hope so. (This is a confusing answer and it is merely not a proper sentence.)

I hope not. (This is far more reasonable.)

I hope it does. (Nonetheless, this answer can appear.  It is the correct version for saying the meaning of “I hope so” assuming that B does wish it to rain.  Maybe B is a farmer who has been working hard in a field suffering from drought for ages… who knows?) 

The last but not least question is a case which occurs extremely frequently in our life. Although I am pretty sure that we have learnt that in senior school or even junior school, some students are still confused about it.  The conversation below happens very often:

Teacher: We have learnt this topic, have we?

Asian student: Yes yeah.

Some Asian students say “yes” to mean that “Yes, we have learnt it.”  On the other hand, some other student may mean that “Yes, I agree with you.”  Whilst the former mind demonstrates the fact that the students still use their Asian mind to talk in English, the latter one shows us that you have understood this part of British linguistic habit or even culture.  Many British teachers who teach in an international school don’t notice this, even the experienced.  So if students just say “yes” or “no” instead of repeating the whole sentence, the teacher may misunderstand.  And even if one Asian student is able to distinguish between them, he or she may still find it hard to communicate with other students who got confused about this since you don’t know whether they are saying an Asian “yes” or a British “yes”. That barrier of communication is kinda inevitable.

On the other hand, we will see the power of language. We once shared this: 

1. An English teacher wrote these words on the whiteboard: "woman without her man is nothing". The teacher then asked the students to punctuate the words correctly.

The men wrote: "Woman, without her man, is nothing."

The women wrote: "Woman! Without her, man is nothing."   

2. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Groucho Marx, US comedian with Marx Brothers (1890 - 1977)

(The second flies can be understood as a noun or a verb, magical!)

Anyway, it is said that British people do confuse each other sometimes.  The more you practice, the less likely you are going to make a mistake.  Practice makes perfect, isn’t it?  The enemy helps you learn and grow.  How is that?  Use it or lose it?  That is a question!