In the dim and distant past, at one point when information technology jobs were a bit thin on the ground, I was teaching at a school for immigrants. I'm not sure if it was exactly a visa school, but, if not, it was pretty close. Even though it was backed by a well-regarded institution here in Canada.
The students were primarily there taking senior grades in high school, or the early years of university or college. I, of course, had been hired to teach the computer program.
The students were all of Chinese extraction. So, early in the new year, Chinese New Year was a big thing. All of those of us who were instructors had been given our *own* instructions to have some special feature related to Chinese New Year. We had also been warned, if only tentatively, about the issue of New Year's money, and had been given a supply of red and gold envelopes, and instructed to put at least a penny in each.
One of the assignments that I had given the students was to write a program that would render a Chinese character, of their choice. I was already involved with security research, although I am not sure how far I had got in my study of cryptography, and the differences between encryption systems in alphabetic languages versus those that were based on idiographic characters. However, I was definitely not going very far into that field with these particular students.
At any rate, because of the assignment in regard to Chinese characters, on the appointed day I had prepared a bit of an introduction which I thought might alert them to what was going on. I had prepared an overhead foil. (Yes, this was in the days before PowerPoint had corrupted the world. Power corrupts; PowerPoint corrupt absolutely.) I had an enlarged version of the four characters for New Year's: the ones spoken as Kung Hei Fat Choi. They were in a line on the foil, but I had used pieces of paper to mask out everything except one character at a time.
In English, there are holidays, and there are phrases that are associated with those holidays. Certainly uncovering even the first word in one of those phrases, around the time of the holiday, would alert people to the fact that this was the phrase, and probably everyone would just blurt out the phrase, even if only the first word was showing. Even if you did it letter by letter, in English, you probably wouldn't have to uncover too many letters in order for people to get the idea, and blurt out the phrase.
This didn't happen with the class of Chinese students. I uncovered the first character, the one pronounced come Kung, and asked them what word it was. They told me the meaning, and the multiple meanings that it could be translated to in English, but there was no mention of the full phrase, and nobody seemed to note it. So, I covered the first one and revealed the second, the one pronounced Hei. Once again I asked what the character meant, and we had some discussion of that character and it's meaning. Still no blurting out of kung hei fat choi. No mention that it was part of a phrase that was commonly said at this time of the year. So I covered the second and revealed the third. The same very ordinary discussion, and nothing more, and the same thing happened with the fourth. Even having gone through all four characters, in sequence, nobody mentioned anything about Chinese New Year, or the full phrase. Then I removed the coverings entirely, and the full phrase was revealed.
Immediately, all the students in the class became extremely excited. There were cries of joy! And one of the students (the one who tended to be most vocally active in the class) burst out "Kung Hei Fat Choi! You owe us pocket money!
I was, of course, prepared with the pocket money. The staff at the school had not mentioned the term "pocket money," and so I was unaware of the phrase, but certainly understood the idea. But, having had such a non-reaction over the individual characters being shown, and discussed in class, I was completely unprepared for the excited reaction on the part of everyone in the class.
I assume that there is some difference in thought processes between those whose first language is an alphabetic language, and those whose first language is ideographic. (I am currently studying the Nuu-chah-nulth language. Certain characteristics indicate that, despite having an alphabet, it is, in fact, a syllabic, rather than alphabetic, language, and there are some interesting distinctives in the language speakers' approach to their own language.)
Some aspects of culture are inherent in language? Or some factors of language are imposed by culture?
Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/02/mgg-26-teaching-online-from-paradise.html
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/02/mgg-27-teaching-robs-universal-classroom.html
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