Tag → culture

Conversations

One of the most unexpectedly different facets of life during my internship has been the meals.

I’m not talking about the food; it’s certainly different in a fantastic way (Dropbox’s food (link to Facebook page) is like something out of a high-end restaurant), but I knew that before coming already. Also of note is the way I started eating ∞% more ramen over the weekends than I did over the entire school year at MIT, because here I can’t buy that many groceries without them spoiling and am amazingly lazy in this new environment.

No, this (deadlined, so not that well-thought-out, but whatever) post is about conversations at meals, which happen basically every lunch and some dinners when my team eats together.

I’ve never had any regular experience like it. Of course I’ve had many meals at home with family, but they feel different because, well, it’s family and we have so many topics in common. I went to the same school for twelve years and we didn’t generally use a cafeteria; we just ate at our desks in our classrooms, or while doing things like attending club meetings or taking makeup tests. Sometimes if people felt like it they would push desks together to eat, but eating by oneself was totally normal. (At last, I feel like that was what it was. It seems so far away now that I don’t trust my memory, which is pretty sad… I faintly suspect I would have this experience in a more stereotypical American high school. But this is mostly just based off the cafeteria in Mean Girls, a movie I only watched in its entirety on the flight here, which is weird because I know I’ve seen the “The limit does not exist!” part much much earlier. /aside)

And at MIT? “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

I am glad for these conversations over lunch because I get to know my team more personally (and don’t have to awkwardly eat alone in the bathroom), but they’ve also given me a lot of time to ponder my (lack of) conversation skills.

Bilingualism II

我本來還想把這一篇用英文跟中文各打一次來實際比較看看,但這已經被困在草稿匣夠久了。一直做重複、吹毛求疵、沒有效率的修改本來就是我寫心情文時的弊病,如果再要求修改時要保持兩種語言版本的同步的話,大概寫到天荒地老都寫不完。(如果讀者沒有讀過我最近亂發的文章,故事都是這樣的:我覺得我在草稿匣累積了太多寫一半的文章,所以在畢業後,我在六月十一號決定從那天開始每天發文,直到我出國,目的是強迫自己把那些草稿寫完,中間還亂發很多其他我本來大概不會寫下來的東西。其實還滿有成就感的。另外,如果你的中文沒有很爛的話,如果你在任何地方認為我寫的中文不流暢或是可以寫得更好,請毫不留情的留言批評。這也是一件我發現我在寫中文方面很缺乏的經驗,我會很感謝。當然,根據以往經驗,懇求讀者留言沒什麼機會成功。)

If you came to this blog or this post hoping to read English, sorry not sorry. It’s only fair, really, given how many people on Facebook can’t read the massive English textwall posts I’ve spammed them with for so long.

常常有人訝異我的英文這麼好。有時候這些人還會問我怎麼學的--碰到這種問題我都不知道要怎麼回答。喔,很簡單啊,只要選擇在一個主要說英文的國家出生,然後跟一群從國外回來的同學一起讀有80%的課是用英文上的學校連續讀十二年就好了。

偶爾也有人知道我是雙語部的或在不同的情況下認識我,反而會覺得我的中文比他們預期的好,例如我的駕訓班教練。其實我在雙語部還是上了十二年的國文課,進度理論上跟其他學校一樣(「理論上」三個字要強調),我也跟身旁很多親戚朋友用中文溝通了更久。比奧林匹亞競賽的經驗應該也讓我認識的上普通國語教學學校的學生,比其他雙語部同學認識的多。所以這應該也不奇怪吧。

但是。其實我對這兩個語言的精熟度其實還是差很多。日常對話沒問題,不過我對英文細枝末節的部分瞭解的比中文多太多太多了。家裡有不止一本「常見英語錯誤」類的書,我小時候會當小說讀--我是一個很奇怪的人。在學校課程中,我編輯自己或他人的英文文章是一天到晚的事情,什麼奇怪的句子跟構造都碰過、想過、修理過。還有些時候,我會很自然的寫出一個英文單字,然後發現我不知道為什麼自己會知道這個單字的意思,但就是有一種感覺告訴我,對,subsist的意思就是「存活於只有最基本的需求被滿足的情況」。跟中文比較:有時候,直覺也會告訴我有某一個成語是可以用的,但我只能清楚想到這個成語的兩、三個字。聽起來很「對」,不過我就是想不到第四個字是什麼,或是怕前三個字換成錯別字,再加上懷疑整個成語意思根本不是我模糊腦袋裡現在浮現的,因為我認得這些字字面上的意思,但無法說服自己為什麼它們合在一起可以解釋成這種意思,最後只好放棄,用國小白話文的措詞就好了。

「總覺得,我在用任何偏離國小程度的白話文的詞彙的時候都是假裝的。」

我在舊一點的草稿寫出了這個句子,不過那一串「的」字讓我覺得怪怪的,現在想想,沒有人跟我討論過寫出這種或其他奇怪的句子時應該怎麼辦。哪一些「的」可以省略?有辦法把句子重寫(recast)避開嗎?還是不管它,我覺得它聽起來很奇怪純粹是錯覺,多讀一點中文就會發現根本沒什麼大不了的?

使用兩種語言的方法也差很多。看看這個部落格就知道了。我相信我在學校雙語部外的大部分台灣朋友不會試著去理解我關於自己長篇大論的英文作文,但長篇大論的文章還是我最認真表達自己的地方。反觀我的中文短文,都通常是那種搞笑、釣讚、裝弱的文。(不,我真的很弱。)我不時會發現自己在網上逛到一個陌生人的心情文,看得津津有味。我們之間的關係頂多是朋友的朋友的朋友,我只知道我跟他應該都喜歡數學這個共同點罷了,但因為語言,我在那些瞬間覺得自己瞭解他勝於瞭解幾乎所有在我身邊講中文的朋友。我自己怎麼看這件事都覺得不合理,有點慚愧。

我回去讀了我第一次寫的關於雙語的文章,可能有一點過火:後來證實,在我的朋友中似乎真的有會純粹為了抒發感情而寫七言律詩的人。而且,我講中文的朋友圈裡,文學類佔的比例本來就應該比他們在整個社會裡佔的比例少很多。在學校跟在生活裡,吸收英文多於中文(而且數學多於英文)是我做的選擇,只是我自己不知道選擇的中介點好不好罷了。是否,我花在跟講中文的親戚朋友互動的力氣不夠?