Figure of Speech

As it is obvious through my posts in this blog, i'm not a native English speaker nor have i ever lived in an English-friendly environment. In fact, i was ever reluctant in using English on a daily basis even if some of my colleagues in the office were insisted on using English as much as possible on a daily basis.

A friend of mine, after reading some of my blog posts had said that my English's grammar is suck. Deep. Well, here's the news, buddy. I did suck. But, hey, at least i'm trying to improve myself by putting some efforts to do menial tasks such as writing these craps in English every now and then. And even if i say so myself, i'm doing a pretty good job at it. Not good enough, i know, but good nonetheless.

I've never taken any formal English courses. They're just a waste of time and money, if you asked me. And i know that i could never afford to commit myself in such a fixed activity. I mean, i've already committed to an eight hours a day for five days a week, among others. Adding another commitment, even if it's only two or three hours a week is simply too much. Further more, i could never really get my head around those grammar rules, and past-future-perfect-tenses-and-what's-not. I had managed through high-school and college with ooh-i'm-going-to-go-with-this-sentence-cause-it-sounds-good attitude in any English lessons, quizzes, or anything. Until now. Breaks all formal rules, i know, but hey, i survived.

After all, dude, in my opinion, those formal courses only works if you had zero experience and knowledge in the said study. For instance, if i'd like to learn Swahili, i would fared much better if i had a formal course because i've never really heard any Swahili before. I mean, what's the Swahili word for "I"? No idea. And it's mightily harder -- a gargantuan harder -- task to find films or books in Swahili.

I learn English through pop cultures. Video games, films, books, and music, to be exact. I had a first introduction to Role Playing Games (RPG) where Japanese and English was used extensively (depending on which version you're playing) sometime in 1995 and still playing those 40 plus hours games until now. Four years later, when i moved to Jakarta and started to had a virtually unlimited access to films and books, i had more than enough means to learn English by experience and made me believed that any formal studies i might had is useless but a mere waste of time and money. How is it different, you ask? Well, as an example, i couldn't get through the first chapter when i read William Thackeray's Vanity Fair for the first time (circa 2000) without propping open an English thesaurus. But, few years later, i could finish the book without any significant problem and nowadays, i could sit through any American English speaking film without any subtitle.

That's reading and listening. And this blog is easily my effort in improving my writing skills. Imperfect, gibberish on many occasions, frown-inducing figure of speeches, nitpicked from various materials i may have read or seen in my past life, and used in a very very loose manners that oftentimes confusing. At best.

I'm currently learning Japanese by playing a lot of Japanese RPG games (dubbed games are suck anyway), and reading a lot of Japanese mangas and magazines. And even if i still couldn't get my ears perked up to listen to the words, flipping through the pages in ease, or actually started a conversation in Japanese, i could figured out who was the in-game NPCs (Non Playing Characters) i need to talk to in order to advance my game. Right now, that's all that matters.