Use second language to release your true feeling

  Apart from your mother tongue, do you know another language? For me, Chinese is my mother language and English is the second language I have learnt for many years but still not good. There are many benefits of knowing more than one language. One interesting benefit is to help you release your feeling in a comfort way.

  Nowadays, people contact with their friends by SMS/Whatsapp rather than by phone call. They think phoning to their friends is too odd and too direct. They use whatsapp so that the receiver needs not give real time response. I admit it is not a healthy way of communication, especially with someone who has intimate relation with you. The point is, if you have something embarrass to say, for example, making a request or expressing your deep inside feeling on the receiver, we always incline to seek an indirect way.

  As a Chinese, instead of saying "我愛你"(means I love you) to lover directly, we seek help from our well known second language and say "I love you". It is more indirect and more romantic for us. And I think if some act is regarded as romantic, it should be indirect and implicit in certain extent. I remembered that when I was young, I have worked in a small company for 8 months. One day, my boss gathered all the staff and said our company will be closed down within 2 months. The whole announcement was conducted in Cantonese(our mother tongue), but instead of saying "執笠"(Cantonese slang for close down a business), the boss said "close down" in English. Mixing Cantonese and English is a normal phenomenon in daily HongKonger's speech. He used "close down" in this way because he wanted to deliver this sad message in a more indirect way.

  Artist uses drawing, sculpture or music to express their deep feeling. But most of us are not artist and it may be too abstract for us. Expressing feeling in this way also demands sophisticated skill. Using a second language may be more feasible. Although most of time I realize that my vocabularies are limited and hard to express my feeling in elegant or precise wordings, it seems that my ego and self-protection can be set aside and let my feelings freely released.