THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 20, 1996 TAG: 9609190044
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: COMMENT
SOURCE: BY CHRISTINA HU
LENGTH: 48 lines
``F, MOM!'' I got more and more nervous as I saw our lane of people waiting to check out of the supermarket get longer and longer. No, ``F'' wasn't an abbreviation for profanity - it was me telling my mother how to spell ``Farm Fresh'' when she was used to spelling ``Phar-Mor.''
After printing ``Farm'' on her check, she was not expecting another ``F.'' When I told her that ``F'' comes after ``Farm'' for the spelling of ``Farm Fresh,'' she just stopped printing.
As you might have guessed, English is not my mother's first language. Mandarin is her native tongue. My family moved her from Taiwan when I was in the fifth grade, consequently English is not the first language I learned either. In fact, it was only five years ago that I started to learn English - well, American English.
In the first conversation I had with an American, I used hand gestures and head motions - a type of body language. It was lunch time. I was at school and I had forgotten my lunch money. When the girl who was responsible for taking me to lunch came to fetch me, I shook my head continuously while pointing toward my pocket.
After staring at me for about 10 minutes she realized that the pocket gesture meant money and that head shaking meant ``no.''
Another way to communicate when there is a difference in language is to draw your intended message. A friend of my father visited Thailand two summers ago. He did not speak the language.
When it came time for lunch, he searched for words. Fortunately, the man remembered the Thai word for fried rice. Then he drew a picture of a cow on a napkin. When the waiter came for his order, he blurted out the word and showed the drawing of the cow on the napkin. A few days later when he started to grow tired of beef fried rice, he drew a chicken, for he thought it was time for a variation: chicken fried rice.
Differences in language can cause difficulties, but conquering such difficulties can be very rewarding. Sure, it might be easier to have a translator or never travel past the boundary to a land where another language is spoken. But language is so central to a country's culture that one cannot fully experience a land or understand the people without knowing something about the language.
Nothing could ever beat the sensation of increasing your understanding of humanity by learning a new language. MEMO: Christina Hu is a junior at Cox High School. by CNB