Phoenix!

. . .Ew, not the American city. Just woke up from a lil' 5-minute nap. Amazing how refreshing a few minutes of rest'll do for your conciousness. ^_^ so yah.
. . .So yersterday after class, I camped out at "Daan Park" (大安森林公園) for a few hours, reading that Chinese novel. (I'm now at page 95. How sad is that, eh??) So while feeling slightly frustrated at my slow reading speed of Chinese (even though I know it's both a combination of not knowing enough words as well as familiarity of simply reading in a different 'medium' as it were, from English.
. . .Anyways, at around 1:00pm, I headed back to the University to sit in to my teacher's beginners' class, to try to pick up some teaching techniques for kiddies. It was sooo slow. But I guess they're supposed to start off slow, right? I got some strange looks from the British student (he looked about 56 years old), and some from the Indonesian boys, but that was about it.
. . .A 48-ish American man seemed to be getting really lost, so I offered to help. But he didn't really want any. And the teacher didn't understand English, so she couldn't really communicate with him. So after getting impatient at the constant miscommunication (it's quite interesting, being fluent in both languages and seeing them not being able to get their points across), I intervened and resolved the issue in like, 2 minutes.
. . .Afterwards, I was asked to help translate some short dialogues for the school -- it was apparently a lesson plan introducing the concept of "best". I did that, and also acted as interpreter for the American... He was apparently quite frustrated and almost angry at the speed of the class, feeling that he wasn't able to catch up to the rest of the class. Anyways, eventually, a sort of extra-help thing was set up so I hope that goes well. It's funny though. He was saying how he was already getting help from someone with a PhD... ...but that person had a PhD in math.. And I think it's pretty universal how linguistics tie with mathematics. (see previous entry.)
. . .I'd offer to help, but I don't think he feels he needs any more.. Since he says he already has a lot of native speakers helping him. Though, of course, the more seasoned reader of my blog should already know my opinion of just getting any random native speaker as a substitutionary teacher. As I already said to him, although the native speaker will be able to tell what sounds right and what doesn't, it doesn't mean that they'll be able to grammatically (and nay, linguistically) quantify why something is valid or not. Though from what I've seen in the university, those people don't really know English either, so I question their ability to cater to the needs of the English-speaking true beginner.
. . .This sorta just made me think about learning in general -- is it better to start from many sources and sorta go through a filter process, ending with only the best sources, or is it better to start with one source, at least getting consistency in education, and later finding later sources to perhaps verify or correct past flaws in one's initial education?
. . .Run-on sentence, I know. Ahaha. But seriously. Come to think of it, I've largely relied on myself for learning mostly anything, which a dear friend of mine says is an admirable quality (something about having the supposed self-discipline to stick to something)... ...and something about being "always so dedicated to whatever [I'm] into at the moment".
. . .Yay for me, I suppose, but gives me a horrible basis to figure out how exactly to be a good teacher. Since I've basically been my own teacher. heh. Though I find that a lot of it has to do with personality and humour. My Writer's Craft teacher was always fun, but my OAC English teacher was ... ... well, she's been described as an 80-year old, hemorrhoid lesbian. ... .. with a nasty, scaly hide. I know, I'm not too generous when it comes to describing people I don't like. but you've gotta appreciate the diction, no?
. . .I mean, the ability to articulate one's thoughts into real words instead of a combination of sounds and actions is what I find to be a true sign of fluency in a language.
. . .So by following that definition, I'd most definately be fluent in English (which my Writers Craft teacher said too. "Very fluent, I'd say!" he said. But in Chinese... I'd have to say I'm merely 'proficient'. Most people are like, "just being able to be understood is good enough" as if I'm supposed to take comfort in knowing that my Chinese isn't perfect. But just give me 5 years of uninterrupted study and I can almost guarentee I'll easily surpass at least 70% of the Mandarin-speaking population.
. . .What I actually find most entertaining is people whose native language is English, who don't know English very thoroughly, and are already trying to becoming something totally different. (A certain classmate in my Japanese class comes to mind...) He had amazing Japanese diction (pure dictionary work, in my opinion), but he couldn't hope to properly speak, both because he didn't have enough practice, and also because he hadn't properly grasped the differing concepts of time in either language. (e.g. the difference between "I have eaten an apple" and "I ate an apple")
. . .Not that I'm criticizing him or anything... ... learning another language is already an admirable act, regardless of one's abiltiy and adaptability to alternate linguistic modes of thinking. (If that term doesn't already exist, I'm sooo making it one when I get my PhD in Linguistics.) =P
. . .In a linguistics book I picked up once, it said that everything is translatable from one language to another, with varying degrees of literary elegance and effeciency. Which is very often why words are 'borrowed' from one language to another. (though it's not like they're ever gonna return them....)
. . .For me, a word should only properly be termed as borrowed if it's used in place of a native word, while they're trying to make their own word for it. E.g. In Japanese, "Baseball" can be considered a borrowed word, because now they've tossed it back to English; they have their own word for it now. (Yakyuu -- 野球)
. . .Otherwise, I think a more appropriate term is "assimilated" or "adapted", though I suppose the former sounds too intimiating. (As if "accusative" doesn't to describe Latin grammar.)
. . .Aaaaanyways, back to my point. So yah, learning languages is a real challenge, no matter who you are. (Unless you're me. In which case it's just expected. lol)
. . .So after my tedious literal translation of that short dialogue (which is so wrong for so many different reasons), I went back to reading that Chinese novel... (at page 95/377... I have like, another few months to go... Man, I feel so... .... normal. Ew... make that feeling go away!!!)
. . .I'm feeling pretty happy. Both friends finally received my letters. ^_^ One of them, Alison, showed it to her roommate, who was apparently, absolutely shocked at the umm... non-conformist standards I had from most males' penmanship. (If indeed most males can be said to possess any form of penmanship at all.)
. . .And my conversation with her ended up with both of us trying to figure out what the antonym of personification is. Poly-something-morphism. yess.. lol.. help me out here, anybody... Anybody??? =D