English is my second language, I began to contaminate this language when I was 21. The learning process brings me so much pain. Even today I vividly recalled in my dreams of my first year in US(when I spoke and understood none English)that how scared I was all the time. After a long silence acquisition process, I entered the phase of “focus listening”, when I understood all, but wouldn’t be able to speak fluently. And then slowly, I entered the phase of “rigid speaking”, when I spoke a lot and eventually acquired a mastery of grammar.
At the third stage, I experience ecstatic when I speak English. There’s a reason I use the word”ecstatic”, notice that’s not because I finally can express myself freely, but because when I speak English, there’s NO FEELING attached to me. I understand exactly every word’s meaning and I used them appropriately all the time, but I don’t have any previous experience associated to each word, when I speak “Screwed up”, I cannot picture this symbol and contextualize it into my environment. Consider language is an important channel for human beings to interact with their outer world, it functions as an interface. This interface has two-folds, productive and experiential, meaning, you use language both as a communication tool and a self-embodying game. And for me, in order to effectively use English as a communication tool I sacrifice my engagement of trans-experience. When people said “your English is fantastic”, I smiled and self-talked”You have no idea what fantastic means to me”. I feel ecstatic when I experience the separation of the two folds, how cool it is this, I’m literally function as a computer’s interface right now, because my interface(my language ability) is just independent of my sensory memory. And I name it as “the beauty of a second language”.
And I’m an interaction designer. Every human behavioral patterns means a lot to me. I learned that people are not always concern about usability. In an software interaction cycle, if we break down the process into individual patterns, there’re times people value experience more than productivity. They’d rather spend sometime on something that is meaningful to them, whether it is learning and reflecting a second language, fulfilling a religious duty, or spending time with an important person in your life. This allows them to turn the profane to scareness, turn tiny activity into a ritual, a performance, during the process they can either transcend themselves, or gain meaningful “ecstatic” in their memory.
We cannot misuse this concept in software design. For example, one of my friends said, in order to change his password in XiaoNei.com(a popular facebook-like Chinese website), he had to scan his ID, emailed it to validate. And we all know “password-changing” behavior is not an activity people want to turn into a ritual. However, people like to change their profile pictures on facebook, that’s one of the ways they express themselves and validate by others, they may don’t mind if we turn this “profile picture changing” a bit complicated because they enjoy the process. I think someday I’ll have a name of “the beauty of UI”, when the software’s UI behavior design, can satisfy every aspects of human needs, from functional, to ritual.
Wei thinks... 
coolnalu
February 26, 2009
Caught a spam. lol.
I have the same feeling as well. Also it appears to me that female acquire new languages faster than men.
– followed link from lanrenux.
beautystars
March 6, 2009
website beautystars.co.cc
ericzou
March 14, 2009
another great post Wei.
English – we spent countless days, months and years trying to master this language. We spent more hours in studying this language than anything else we have studied in our life. But when we thought we are close to the mastery, we found we did it all wrong. We were merely using it as a tool. Through it, we saw the world from outside in rather than inside out. We don’t feel the texture of the words, the flavor of their meanings and the culture or social backgrounds that associated with them. As you put, to us, the word has only its functional use – we can swallow it’s meanings, but we can’t chew out its flavor.
I think it is this, the lack of the ability to savor the deliciousness of the words, leave us all hungry and unsatisfied.
“I learned that people are not always concern about usability. In an software interaction cycle, if we break down the process into individual patterns, there’re times people value experience more than productivity.”
not sure if i will agree completely, but i do agree that we cannot evaluate the usability without its context(mostly the social, culture, or educational backgrounds of its users) as people from different backgrounds value things differently. one process or design might considered to be extremely ‘inconvenient’ to one group of users, while to another group of users , it is merely ‘common practice’.
–Eric
RaiulBaztepo
March 29, 2009
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language 😉
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
Watch Year One Online Free
June 20, 2009
If you ever want to hear a reader’s feedback 🙂 , I rate this post for four from five. Detailed info, but I have to go to that damn msn to find the missed bits. Thanks, anyway!
p.s. Year One is already on the Internet and you can watch it for free.
Respectable Reviews
October 9, 2009
I give you credit for learning a second language! That is more than 99% of people in the world achieve!
Frank
March 7, 2010
interesting article 🙂 “However, people like to change their profile pictures on facebook, that’s one of the ways they express themselves and validate by others, they may don’t mind if we turn this “profile picture changing” a bit complicated because they enjoy the process.” – To me, everything people do has to have an incentive behind it. As you pointed out, people update their facebook photos as a way to express themselves. The incentive here is self-expression and we all know that’s part of human nature since we are all social beings. But we all, constantly and subconciously, evaluate the return of investment when we do things. When the ROI doesn’t match up with the effort, people’s behavior change just because the outcome doesn’t worth the trouble we have to go through anymore. There is a fine line that marks the boundary of people’s tolerance level. And that line is different for different experiences because people’s intent and the value returned is different. This line is also different to different people simply because no one is the same.
Cicely Stachurski
June 14, 2010
Great wordpress post, I will bookmark this post in my Mixx account. Have a good day.