It is important to understand that what we mean by language is not merely what coming out of one’s mouth or what we hear. Language helps communicate, but is speaking the only way to convey messages? Same as what the reading noted, language is a huge category that can be divided and subdivided into many subsidiary elements: verbal behaviors vs non-verbal behaviors, monochronic vs polychronic, internal vs external, and other subpoints. One way most people often use to distinguish between native residents and non-native residents is making use of gestures and slangs. These indirect words or signals do a great job telling us if someone’s mind is rooted within a specific culture. I feel the same thing in language learning. At the beginning of my language study, I learnt how words are supposed to be pronounced, grammars composed. I thought I should’ve had no difference than a native speaker since I already understood the patterns in composing and breaking down complicated language structures. Unfortunately, I still got baffled by idioms and quips natives made. Slangs like “Chin up”, “You don’t say” and “foot in mouth disease” are incomprehensible through direct translation. However, things get clear as long as we have something called context, where gets us understood of the purposes and logic of those idioms. It is from that mismatch of information that I suddenly realized that it is impossible to learn a language without diving into its corresponding culture. Philosophically speaking, the study of a certain language is a study of a certain culture, a certain way of processing and expressing information. Even now, I haven’t fully clear to all slangs my foreign friends’ been hitting all the time. I hope to find an effective method in future readings that can help me conquer this challenge.
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