Literacy in My Life I

I went with Wang Lin to visit her sister this spring break. I talked about the differences between Chinese and English with her sister’s husband, Mark and another guy. It was quite interesting. And we talked about misunderstandings caused by similar pronunciations in Chinese and English. At first, they learned hard to pronounce my Chinese name, Shuai. And then at the end of our talking, they told me that my name made them think of Shrek… I was speechless, but have to admit that joke does make some sense. And the other day, when Wang Lin and Mark were talking, Wang suddenly forgot what to say, so she said “nei ger” which in Chinese means “well, by the way” involuntarily. However, Mark heard that as “negro”. This coincidence may cause some problems in another situation. I think this kind of situations is quite interesting. Maybe it is because that we are so familiar to our own language and think in our language, so we just ignore how the others thinking in another language may understand our words and sometimes take some words in other languages in our own language.