Since I spoke at the Brand You World Telesummit the other week, I have been having several conversations about the joys and tribulations that come from having lived abroad for most of your life.
One of my listeners asked me about prejudices.
What is the worst prejudice I have ever encountered and how did I deal with it?
Apart from having to deal with the fact that people think that Italians are chronically late (which has turned me into a punctuality freak), there is another one I find rather disturbing.
And I was extremely glad to discover years ago that I was not the only one experiencing it.
Here is the story.
An Italian friend of mine had been working for a major international news agency in Brussels for many years. She wanted to move within the organisation and applied for a job in London. One of the first questions her future boss asked her was ‘Can you write English, dear?’
What is it that makes certain people think that, if you grew up speaking and writing one language, you will never be able to write well in another? Have they never heard of Joseph Conrad?
Even if they haven’t, they must have seen ‘Some Like It Hot‘.
The person who wrote the screenplay of this icon of Hollywood’s golden age had grown up in Austria-Hungary speaking German. Billy Wilder was already well into his 20s when he emigrated to America and learned English. He had been writing in German (as a journalist in Berlin) for his entire life.
Joseph Conrad and Billy Wilder are just examples. There are so many others. I am absolutely convinced that if you write well in one language you can write just as well in another.
I guess what you need is a sense for the rhythm of that language and you need to do a large amount of reading. And yes, at this point, I have to give credit to Ian, the editor of Central European Business Weekly, the English newspaper I wrote for at the beginning of my career.
We spent several hours drinking Becherovka (we were after all in Prague) and going through my articles, which used to have far too many subordinate clauses (from having written in German for too long).
So my answer to my listener would be ‘Never let other people’s limits become your own’.
Photo: thanks to reelclassics.com
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Even Italians are questioned about being able to speak and write English, can you imagine how people doubt Chinese people’s ability to use English as a tool? I was asked so many times if I can use English appropriately, and now I am almost used to those strange questions—can you write? can you understand? Some suggested me go to voice coach because of my Chinese accent. When I took courses, one lady worried that I couldn’t pass the courses because they were in English. Thank god, I passed them all.
And thank god, China is standing up, and becomes more and more important on the world stage. To Chinese people, language only contains a small portion of discrimination from other countries’ and nations’ people. They doubt about our personalities, abilities, and intelligence. I used to teach two kids Chinese. They are half Chinese and half Anglo-Saxon (his ancestors were from England). The 7-year-old one said to me twice, “your country is the poorest country in the world. My dad said your country steals.” I pretty much sure that next time when I meet his dad, I will say, “Can I tell your son one of his ancestors used to be a robber?” Not to mention other invasions, take the two Opium Wars in which British army invaded China during the mid of 19th century as an example. In the first Opium War, British army took control of Hong Kong. In the second Opium War, the Anglo-French army burned the Summer Palace, and robbed a great deal of treasures from there, most of which now displayed in the British Museum. Not enough, they also forced by then the weak Chinese government to sign a very humiliated treaty, which included paying the two countries money and let them export opium to China. Therefore, every country has its own blemishes, and please don’t always point fingers to others. That’s my point.