It's been a long time, but today it happened again. Someone told me that I should learn Chinese.
Let me explain what happened to lead up to this. I am working on Ergo work for a while (even though I am actually in the Signaling team), and this work deals with man-machine interface, so we are manipulating what the user of the Motorola radios see on the screen. We received a report that a certain Chinese character (警) was not rendered properly on the screen (the bottom part was slightly truncated). After some investigation (by another member of the team), they found that they had to redraw the pixels of the character somehow.
While discussing this in a group, someone mentioned that I couldn't do this task. I agreed, yeah, I can't do this task! How would I know how to rearrange the pixels? And then she said, you should learn! Almost immediately, she said she was joking, probably because I started saying, Oh, I should learn?, preparing for a retort. Anyway, I turned whatever retort I had into a joke, because I don't think she was trying to be malicious.
But then again, why do Chinese-speaking people like to tell others that they should learn the language? It isn't just because I am Chinese; some others even told a Malay that he should learn, just because they often speak Chinese (Mandarin or Hokkien) around him. (I won't go into the "speaking languages that people don't understand" issue here, or else it might make a lengthy digression)
Sometimes I don't even feel angry immediately when I hear people telling me I should learn so-and-so, because I have gotten so used to hearing it. (and maybe it's partly psychological; these people always say it like you're in the wrong) But if I think about it, it is highly unreasonable. And rude.
For example, there are lots of people with lousy English around (I've probably also ranted about that before). Sometimes they write comments in code that mean nothing or are highly misleading, just because their English stinks. I usually try to soften the blow when I correct them, and just try to adjust the bare minimum so that their comment makes sense to future developers. There are also sentences in e-mails (official ones! Even those from managers!) that have glaring grammatical errors, wrong word usage, and so on... Of course, the worst are those mistakes that totally change the meaning of something. (like in my previous post about numbers) Sometimes I have to "decrypt" people's sentences just to make sure they mean what they say (since what they say could have a mistake that has changed it's meaning). I have become pretty adept at figuring out that someone is saying something, but that is not what they really want to say...
Anyway, all that to say that sometimes I have to bite back nasty words like "your English stinks". Like when I ask people to change their comments and they ask, "Why? It makes perfect sense to me." Like when I ask people something in a different way, using different words, just to clarify their meaning, and they get annoyed at why I'm asking the same thing again and again... whereas their first sentence was actually unclear or could be interpreted in a few ways, but they thought it could only mean one thing.
But I stop myself each time. I swallow back those words that will tell them "I wouldn't have to annoy you if your English were better!" "You should improve your English!" Because it's rude, even as a joke. Even if their English is lacking, they have other abilities, and I think I should respect that. So why are some people so rude and unable to respect others' abilities apart from understanding/speaking/reading/writing Chinese?
Do allow me my weaknesses, even if they are not the same as yours.
Let me explain what happened to lead up to this. I am working on Ergo work for a while (even though I am actually in the Signaling team), and this work deals with man-machine interface, so we are manipulating what the user of the Motorola radios see on the screen. We received a report that a certain Chinese character (警) was not rendered properly on the screen (the bottom part was slightly truncated). After some investigation (by another member of the team), they found that they had to redraw the pixels of the character somehow.
While discussing this in a group, someone mentioned that I couldn't do this task. I agreed, yeah, I can't do this task! How would I know how to rearrange the pixels? And then she said, you should learn! Almost immediately, she said she was joking, probably because I started saying, Oh, I should learn?, preparing for a retort. Anyway, I turned whatever retort I had into a joke, because I don't think she was trying to be malicious.
But then again, why do Chinese-speaking people like to tell others that they should learn the language? It isn't just because I am Chinese; some others even told a Malay that he should learn, just because they often speak Chinese (Mandarin or Hokkien) around him. (I won't go into the "speaking languages that people don't understand" issue here, or else it might make a lengthy digression)
Sometimes I don't even feel angry immediately when I hear people telling me I should learn so-and-so, because I have gotten so used to hearing it. (and maybe it's partly psychological; these people always say it like you're in the wrong) But if I think about it, it is highly unreasonable. And rude.
For example, there are lots of people with lousy English around (I've probably also ranted about that before). Sometimes they write comments in code that mean nothing or are highly misleading, just because their English stinks. I usually try to soften the blow when I correct them, and just try to adjust the bare minimum so that their comment makes sense to future developers. There are also sentences in e-mails (official ones! Even those from managers!) that have glaring grammatical errors, wrong word usage, and so on... Of course, the worst are those mistakes that totally change the meaning of something. (like in my previous post about numbers) Sometimes I have to "decrypt" people's sentences just to make sure they mean what they say (since what they say could have a mistake that has changed it's meaning). I have become pretty adept at figuring out that someone is saying something, but that is not what they really want to say...
Anyway, all that to say that sometimes I have to bite back nasty words like "your English stinks". Like when I ask people to change their comments and they ask, "Why? It makes perfect sense to me." Like when I ask people something in a different way, using different words, just to clarify their meaning, and they get annoyed at why I'm asking the same thing again and again... whereas their first sentence was actually unclear or could be interpreted in a few ways, but they thought it could only mean one thing.
But I stop myself each time. I swallow back those words that will tell them "I wouldn't have to annoy you if your English were better!" "You should improve your English!" Because it's rude, even as a joke. Even if their English is lacking, they have other abilities, and I think I should respect that. So why are some people so rude and unable to respect others' abilities apart from understanding/speaking/reading/writing Chinese?
Do allow me my weaknesses, even if they are not the same as yours.
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