Few years ago, I have met and worked with few foreigners from the West. They speak impecable English language and could easily sell a piece of stone as jade - simply polish. I have to say I learned a lot from them. We usually worked most of the time in Asia countries. However, not all asian countries do not have English as their mother tongue. For them to communicate with us, they have to speak and listen very carefully.
It is not easy to communicate to non English speaker natives. You need a lot of patience to make sure they understand you exactly. I am from a Malay language school and I can understand and identify their difficulties.
One day during our tea break, the western lady spoke to another western guy and start commenting how she felt. She commented that she felt like speaking in primitive in Asia. I was taken aback with the comment. Of course being courteous, I did not tell her off, instead I would say indirectly to her this is Asia, you just have to live with it. However, the fact was, do you know most (if you are reading this) asians speaks more than 1 or 2 languages. For me, I speak Malay, English, Mandarin and all other chinese dialects. All in all 7 of them. We may not master English but you need to recognise we are more capable than what you could imagine :P
For me, if one find difficulty speaking their own language, how about trying to learn up the language where the majority uses in the country? Make sense? Stop complaining.
No comments:
Post a Comment