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| Image Source: The Japan Times |
Okay, lol. I think it's rather funny how I always use words like okay, so, well, this, and so on in the beginning of a paragraph. Couldn't be helped, I have quite restricted vocabularies. As expected of someone who read manga and webnovel. Instead of learning these cool advanced vocabs, I could only grasp some weird terms which were not even originally English. In other words they were either originally Japanese, Koreans, or Chinese language, which then translated into English. Now I guess you have found why my English is rather weird.
The funny thing is, that's how I learn English. By reading manga, English translation manga. In my country, where mostly people speak 2 languages (the local language as our first language and Bahasa Indonesia as our second language), English was taught mostly as a foreign language. Why not having English as our second language? Well, we have approximately 668 local languages, more or less 300 ethnic groups (not so sure about this though), and 34 provinces. The problem is different villages even have different dialects. We don't even use Bahasa Indonesia that much in daily life, mostly we use Bahasa Indonesia in formal setting, or when we have to communicate with people who don't speak our local language. Let just say that there's no necessities for us to use English to communicate among us.
Even so I believe there's a lot of our people who used English either passively or actively. I was a passive English user, where I was only capable of reading and listening to stuff in English. I could barely speak in English at all (I'm suck at talking to begin with). But I guess after reading a lot of manga with English translation and English Novel, my speaking just somewhat slightly become better, to the point I don't even realize that I could actually converse in English. Actually I even found out that I could express my feelings better in English rather than my first and second language.
Which was funny since I used to hate English subject the most since junior high school era. English was the first subject I failed miserably (I got 0). I didn't enjoy listening to English songs until I was in my last year of high school. Though gotta admit that I enjoy reading English Novel which translated into Bahasa Indonesia. I was and still am a die hard Potterhead. I guess Harry Potter series was one of the reason I started to appreciate English more (still disliked it though).
Things slightly changed when I started college. Well, of course, since my major in college had anything to do with English. But seriously, I didn't really took English as an important language whatsoever, I couldn't even understand why people treat it as some monster like language at all. Because a lot of my peers who's not in our major looking at us as this proud-rotten characters just because we learnt English. There's even a joke going around about how English is a language used in hell.
Like for goodness sake. English is just a darn language, nothing else, and nothing special either. It's the freaking same as the other languages. We just used it for the sake of exchanging information and understanding each other. In other words, it was just simply a tool to communicate or whatever you called it. So let's stop treating it as something rotten or something special. Because it's neither both.
At that time I didn't particularly learn English to communicate at all. I was an otaku thorough and thorough. I just really love manga. But since I was a poor student and couldn't afford to buy manga, I realized that I had no other choices but to read the English translation manga which was pretty much available in Internet. Then I could kill two birds with one stone. While I got the pleasure of reading manga I could learn English as well which was required for my major. Which led me to where I am right now. Still an otaku.
So, what I want to say, please treat English simply as a language. Just because people could speak English doesn't mean that they were superior to you or anything like that. Because they could just be like me, who's just desperate to read manga, or desperate to understand some k-pop news, or desperate to watch and understand English movies without need to wait for the stuff to be translated into their respective languages. And also please let not banish people who used grammar incorrectly or spell the words wrong because it's just a proof that they speak in another language you might know nothing about.
And let me clarify first, I hated English as a subject, but right now I neither hate nor love the language itself. Why I use English in this blog? Hmm, I wonder.
Even so I believe there's a lot of our people who used English either passively or actively. I was a passive English user, where I was only capable of reading and listening to stuff in English. I could barely speak in English at all (I'm suck at talking to begin with). But I guess after reading a lot of manga with English translation and English Novel, my speaking just somewhat slightly become better, to the point I don't even realize that I could actually converse in English. Actually I even found out that I could express my feelings better in English rather than my first and second language.
Which was funny since I used to hate English subject the most since junior high school era. English was the first subject I failed miserably (I got 0). I didn't enjoy listening to English songs until I was in my last year of high school. Though gotta admit that I enjoy reading English Novel which translated into Bahasa Indonesia. I was and still am a die hard Potterhead. I guess Harry Potter series was one of the reason I started to appreciate English more (still disliked it though).
Things slightly changed when I started college. Well, of course, since my major in college had anything to do with English. But seriously, I didn't really took English as an important language whatsoever, I couldn't even understand why people treat it as some monster like language at all. Because a lot of my peers who's not in our major looking at us as this proud-rotten characters just because we learnt English. There's even a joke going around about how English is a language used in hell.
Like for goodness sake. English is just a darn language, nothing else, and nothing special either. It's the freaking same as the other languages. We just used it for the sake of exchanging information and understanding each other. In other words, it was just simply a tool to communicate or whatever you called it. So let's stop treating it as something rotten or something special. Because it's neither both.
At that time I didn't particularly learn English to communicate at all. I was an otaku thorough and thorough. I just really love manga. But since I was a poor student and couldn't afford to buy manga, I realized that I had no other choices but to read the English translation manga which was pretty much available in Internet. Then I could kill two birds with one stone. While I got the pleasure of reading manga I could learn English as well which was required for my major. Which led me to where I am right now. Still an otaku.
So, what I want to say, please treat English simply as a language. Just because people could speak English doesn't mean that they were superior to you or anything like that. Because they could just be like me, who's just desperate to read manga, or desperate to understand some k-pop news, or desperate to watch and understand English movies without need to wait for the stuff to be translated into their respective languages. And also please let not banish people who used grammar incorrectly or spell the words wrong because it's just a proof that they speak in another language you might know nothing about.
And let me clarify first, I hated English as a subject, but right now I neither hate nor love the language itself. Why I use English in this blog? Hmm, I wonder.
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