how to change

People all think the same... Their knowledge as concept/form/idea is improved upon and conclusions drawn from them... What makes the Chinese Chinese, and what makes English speakers what they are is culture, and Culture is knowledge as well, but that sort that is portable, and can be passed from generation to generation.... What you want, in my opinion, is a greater understanding of English which does reveal much of how we think and how we consider the world and our place in it in order to gain a greater respect for your own culture which must inevitably be followed by a more vociferous demand for your own rights as human beings...

We are all too much alike... A greater homogeneity, if that can be imagined is not to be desired... Too many cultures have been tread under foot simply because one party had more feet with which to tread... And everytime a culture is lost, something is lost of the human story, and that loss removes us all a greater distance from our common beginning... To be an American is some times a good thing; but we have no culture... They talk about this place as a melting pot, but it is an acid bath that strips from all their culture and their cultural significance so we seem like so many clones, all thinking alike, wearing the same fashions, listening to the same music... What ever you have by way of cultural affinity and identification you should hold on to... We destroy cultures, and those who try to be like us destroy themselves for our benefit...

If I may offer an example.. I have a friend who is Chinese/American... He owns a business, a restaurant and does well, is industrious, intelligent, and a good cook... To help his wife and a friend, I drove them to Chicago to go to the consulate office there... Before we left the city after a long day, they took me to the China Town area of Chicago for some real Chinese food... It was very good, but entirely different from the local "Chinese" food which is different for me, and good, what Americans like, but not ethnic... As the waiter in the Chicago restaurant explained to me... Chinese people come to his restaurant for a taste of home... They are, after all, very far from home, and as bad as it was, and as well off as they may be, like most immigrants to this land they look back with nostalgia for something lost to them in the gain of relative freedom and happiness.... One bite of that food and they were home, and that power that home has over us, stirring emotion born in childhood when we were not all so distant from each other and lonely is incomparable... I see human beings everywhere, and think it is a crime that people must ever run the length of the earth to escape poverty and injustice, and while these Chinese people I have met carry their own weight here and more, still, I also know what they stand to lose in the process which is what so many of us of European origins have lost: Our distinct cultures...

Try to understand us... And this is not necessarily to respect us.... That is more than most of us will ever do for your far older culture and people... We must ever fight with people to have respect for them... I do not know what it is about us, but until we had fought each other in a great civil war we had no respect of this people, and still have little enough... But of the world, we have no respect... We have often found the world in a miserable condition and made the condition worse... We have a tendency to blame all peoples morals for the problems they face, which is to exhalt our own morals without regard for the facts... Ignorance here is generally considered a virtue, and ignorant people who take pride in their ignorance are incapable of self respect or the respect of others... So good luck trying to see what we are or understand... But give up on us understanding you... Most of us will think it beneath us to even try...

Please excuse my spelling... My dictionary must have grown legs and walked off...

If you mean in a language sense, Salmo, the best thing you can do is not to translate to Chinese. Practice conversation, it can even be done alone, to set the patterns of English in a separate "compartment" in your brain.

Why didn't I think of that??? My thinking from my experience of trying uncuccessfully to learn French well, is that to learn how people speak you must learn how they think... Consider the reflexive verb... We comb our hair, and the French bore themselves... At least they take responsibility for their own state of excitment and do not expect people all over the world to provide their entertainment....

thank you very much

thanks

Fido, will u reveal HOW u have ascertained this (alleged) fact ??





David

I do not know Chinese, so I don´t know how you use prepositions, but studuing them you can see a certain difference in thinking.
"What is ON TV?" Will in German be" What is IN TV?" In English they think about the screan, in German about the technical side.
"He married Julia". In another language it is "He married himself with Julia". Which of course does not mean he himself conducted the marriage ceremony.
Get a story in English and Chinese and compare sentence after sentence and you will see there is a difference in thinking.

Sure. shirlock... In our language all words are forms, which is to say concepts, or ideas... And since all languages can be translated to a greater or lesser degree of exactness, clearly, all people must be able to conceive of their reality to put it into words as well, and it is by way of our conceptions that we think....This is not to say all people reach the same conclusions based upon identical evidence... Look at how often you and I disagree when presented with the same evidence... It is not alone based upon ones reasoning ability that conclusions are reached... Personal experience, which amounts to prejudice, and culture, which amounts to social knowledge all play a part in the conclusions all people reach, and no one can entirely escape... But again, if one and one are two in every language under the sun, it is because the ability to conceive of reality by means of language is universal, like the conclusions we draw from our conceptions which on a basic level, are universal as well...