Thank you for your long comment--this gave me a lot of food for thought! Both for me-as-teacher and me-as-language-student.
My Japanese reading is still at a very literal level, and I can't read Chinese at all, but I do get the impression that you can do all sorts of things with Chinese characters that aren't really possible in English. In the manga XXXholic, for instance, the authors keep using the kanji 遭 for "to meet" instead of the more usual 会, which sounds more...I don't know, fateful or something. Most of this stuff flies over my head. You can also be all vague in Japanese about who did what (because you don't need to have a grammatical subject in every sentence in Japanese), which gives me a big headache sometimes.
I like the idea of every language having a different stockroom of linguistic weapons. (Ha ha, nice metaphor. Metaphors are great weapons.) I can see what you mean about English as being more weapon-like and Japanese & Chinese being more subtle-like. I was really surprised, though, that you felt the difference was that great. I just assumed that the amount of obvious, individual style that you can pour into English can be done in Chinese too (if not in the same way). But I guess all the things that are ANNOYING about English for language learners--the lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation, the irregularity of its rules, the relative rigidity of its word order, the capitalization, the tons of punctuation, the plurals and articles and cases and on and on--are actually really useful tools in the hands of experienced writers. Hence the obvious, individual style you can pull off in English.
You are too hard on your writing. Two things you can do very well that I can't do at all are creating characters and plotting. Both of those are very rare in fanficland. There are a lot of really good wordsmiths out there, people with an amazing awareness of language and character relationships, but there are few people who can make OCs that don't suck and write something long and full of plot. And there are fewer still who can FINISH something long and full of plot. But you're doing it. Being able to sustain interest in your fic for a long time--and really caring about it, working hard to improve it--is a skill too, IMO.
Your style is actually very refreshing to read for me, since a lot of fanfic writers dwell on pretty little details and you don't. Sometimes I just want some basketball, man. Just write from the heart and don't kill yourself over the little things!
As for my student...there is no way I'll ever show a student my fanfics, ha ha. I keep my online life a zillion miles away from my teaching life. i don't write porn, but I occasionally have a bit of sex in my fics, and there are always parents who'll disapprove of very innocent things, so I figure it's better to be safe than sorry.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure the student doesn't have enough experience with English to have a good feel for the aesthetics of the language right now. She's still reading in English at a pretty literal level. She's only grade 8, so she's probably just starting to get to the point where she can appreciate aesthetics in her first language, never mind English. I'm pretty confident she'll come around eventually, since she has to read a lot in school and she's already an avid reader in Chinese. It's the kids who don't read in ANY language who are more worrisome. Anyway, I'm not sure I'll be teaching her next term, so I might not be able to see her again, but if I do I'll bug her about reading more in English.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-12-12 02:37 am (UTC)My Japanese reading is still at a very literal level, and I can't read Chinese at all, but I do get the impression that you can do all sorts of things with Chinese characters that aren't really possible in English. In the manga XXXholic, for instance, the authors keep using the kanji 遭 for "to meet" instead of the more usual 会, which sounds more...I don't know, fateful or something. Most of this stuff flies over my head. You can also be all vague in Japanese about who did what (because you don't need to have a grammatical subject in every sentence in Japanese), which gives me a big headache sometimes.
I like the idea of every language having a different stockroom of linguistic weapons. (Ha ha, nice metaphor. Metaphors are great weapons.) I can see what you mean about English as being more weapon-like and Japanese & Chinese being more subtle-like. I was really surprised, though, that you felt the difference was that great. I just assumed that the amount of obvious, individual style that you can pour into English can be done in Chinese too (if not in the same way). But I guess all the things that are ANNOYING about English for language learners--the lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation, the irregularity of its rules, the relative rigidity of its word order, the capitalization, the tons of punctuation, the plurals and articles and cases and on and on--are actually really useful tools in the hands of experienced writers. Hence the obvious, individual style you can pull off in English.
You are too hard on your writing. Two things you can do very well that I can't do at all are creating characters and plotting. Both of those are very rare in fanficland. There are a lot of really good wordsmiths out there, people with an amazing awareness of language and character relationships, but there are few people who can make OCs that don't suck and write something long and full of plot. And there are fewer still who can FINISH something long and full of plot. But you're doing it. Being able to sustain interest in your fic for a long time--and really caring about it, working hard to improve it--is a skill too, IMO.
Your style is actually very refreshing to read for me, since a lot of fanfic writers dwell on pretty little details and you don't. Sometimes I just want some basketball, man. Just write from the heart and don't kill yourself over the little things!
As for my student...there is no way I'll ever show a student my fanfics, ha ha. I keep my online life a zillion miles away from my teaching life. i don't write porn, but I occasionally have a bit of sex in my fics, and there are always parents who'll disapprove of very innocent things, so I figure it's better to be safe than sorry.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure the student doesn't have enough experience with English to have a good feel for the aesthetics of the language right now. She's still reading in English at a pretty literal level. She's only grade 8, so she's probably just starting to get to the point where she can appreciate aesthetics in her first language, never mind English. I'm pretty confident she'll come around eventually, since she has to read a lot in school and she's already an avid reader in Chinese. It's the kids who don't read in ANY language who are more worrisome. Anyway, I'm not sure I'll be teaching her next term, so I might not be able to see her again, but if I do I'll bug her about reading more in English.
Phew. Now I'm the long-winded one!