Bridging the World with Languages

Congratulations Rose! Gold in the National German Exam! Its your third foreign language! ex-

claimed my German teacher with beaming eyes. This golden award slip aroused in me reveries about my

early experiences with languages.

When I was babbling, I lived in a room with almost every empty space posted with huge Chinese char-

acters and folk rhymes echoing all the day. Probably due to the immersion in the atmosphere my patents

meticulously built, I exhibited an extraordinary intimacy with Chinese. In my elementary school, my Chi-

nese essays were always examples to class, of which I put together as a little booklet entitled Footprints

in the Childhood as birthday present to my classmates. Changes always run faster than plans. I was thrust

into a convoluted maze once I stepped on the land of the US during fourth grade with incomprehensible

English sentences streaming into my ears. I tried in vain to understand my teachers and peers by watching

their facial expressions and identifying their tones. All the frustration made me miss my exemplary com-

mand of Chinese. The cultural difference brought more awkward moments. Personal space I had to keep

reminding myself to adjust while I talked with others. A teacher saw me coming to school with a bruise

on my leg and asked whether my father kicked me. But I thought she meant whether my father would

pick me up. The misunderstanding recruited two staff from Youth Protection Agency to deliver a barrage

of questions at my father regarding his abuse of me with raised eyebrows and a harsh tone until this

misconception was eventually resolved.

Such an accident really urged me to improve my English by attempting every means to expand my nar-

row social circle as a stranger here. I found that everyone could be my best teacher, because even the el-

der had patience and the little had to bear my poor English. One day my eyes were glued to the tape-

books in the library and my heart swelled with melodious American tones of my peers, instead of the

Chinese English tainted with heavy accent at home. I imitated English from the tapes and my classmates

word by word, sentence by sentence. Later I found a wealth of different libraries, including my English

teachers, my schools and the public libraries nearby, where I could absorb the honeydew of English lan-

guage like a bee in a spring garden. With the size of words on English books shrinking gradually from the

size of gigantic elephants to that of tiny ants, I gradually gained high proficiency in English as my second

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tongue after Chinese. Such an inspiring experience motivated my Spanish study at school and German

via private lessons.

Passion, determination, and perseverance are first and foremost in language learning. I ignored the oc-

casional strange look when I cherished every opportunity to practice Spanish at school and German at

home. Possibly benefited from the commonalities among languages I seemingly grasped, I was praised by

my friends as talented in Spanish and German learning, as exemplified by two awards of national exams.

But I did appreciate a crystal clear lens into the culture and motivations of countries pertaining to current

events and historical chapters with four languages in my assets. Recognizing all the subjectivity and limi-

tation in the media reports from contrasting stances expressed in different languages, I realized the truth

was sometimes distorted by the bias, and many regional disputes involving massacres could be avoided

by enlightened social-cultural, political, and economical vision. Language is a carrier of culture and a tool

of communication. I dream to gain keen insight into countries not only through official publications but

also through pressing concerns of common men with my mastery of their native tongue. This comprehen-

sion propels me to, within my reach, topple vexing barriers among countries, thereby knitting them to-

gether in a global village and minimizing unnecessary warfare.

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