Just Do What They Do (Lesson 444)
On the last pages, the author stressed the point that all languague are relative through Allen’s story. Peolpe in any countries play by thoes rules. And the rules they used, are all relative. This point give me a new view. I only think English and Chinese are just different language system before, because they look very different about sounds, characters, usage and so on ,totally different. But as the author’s point, they are raletive. If I can learned Chinese fluently, why don’t I learned English fluently?

For a language, there are many different ways to communicate meaning. Even if you get words out of order, the meaning is most important. It’s freedom whatever you are speaker or listener. In routine daily, people always communicate daily basis everyday. In UK, people say hello with “what’s the weather like?” “what’s a beautiful day”. In Chinese, people alway said “have you eaten?” at the begining of greeting. And probably the person don’t wait you answer, they just as the begining of the talking. So there examples of using language to greet are patterns.

Most of the native speakers tend to follow rules when they speak and write. And the rules always flexible. In Chinese, people very like to talk about eating. They like talk about the eating when they first meenting. If you are a strange person, they just the small talk. If you are familiar, they could talk very detailed about eating, what is eat, with whom to eat, how does it feel to eat, delicious? Even Chinese like to talk about business at dinner. Anyway, Chinese people are really interested in food.
And when you ask the chinese person why and give me a reason, he just look at you with strangeness, say “this is just the way we say it”. That’s the interesting thing about language. It’s unconcious and allowed by most of people.

In ENGLISH, I always listen to a English-speaking person to speak “you know” at the begining or end of a sentence. Like Jananess, my English coach,she always say”you know” in the middle of a sentense. Aha, obviously this is not for me to answer knowing or not knowing. This is a just a patten for a English-speaking person to express the tone. This is not in Chinese.

And how to”spotting patterns” then”copying patterns”? I think the most important thing is communicate the native person, whatever you are in the native country or on the internet. Just communicate right away! Firstly we should find the way to spot the patterns, we can look at the patterns and feel the patterns, then compare the new patterns with our previous patterns, remember the patterns finally. In the next communication, we will copy patterns and use it.