My five year old does not yet have a handle on dealing with negative feedback. If her elbow accidentally hits me and I respond by saying anything more seriously than "Oh, it is OK, I know it was an accident", she would quietly walk away, all teary-eyed. She recently joined Telugu classes and during her first class, the teacher reminded her a couple of times that she should only use Telugu (and not English) to communicate while in class. She was apparently very offended by the teacher's mandate and declared that she has had enough of Telugu lessons. It took me a very long time and almost all of my patience reserves to drag her to class today.
Perhaps it is par for the course at this age. Or may be her age has nothing to do with it. I am almost thirty five and I sure have issues taking feedback positively. Only a couple of days ago, a friend and I were chatting about an article that had some discussion of the weird syntax of Indian English in its comments section. My friend then said "your blog is like that". It was not even full-on criticism necessarily, but I felt like hiding under the table like we do during earthquake drills. Running away from criticism was my first instinct, just like my five year old's. I did muster the courage to take it positively a moment later though and asked the friend for details. I want to get better and I really appreciated the candid feedback, although, I have to admit- acknowledging the feedback was quite humiliating. Three syntax errors in just one paragraph of one post! The friend then asked if he should keep going. I had absolutely nothing to lose at that point!
Perhaps it is par for the course at this age. Or may be her age has nothing to do with it. I am almost thirty five and I sure have issues taking feedback positively. Only a couple of days ago, a friend and I were chatting about an article that had some discussion of the weird syntax of Indian English in its comments section. My friend then said "your blog is like that". It was not even full-on criticism necessarily, but I felt like hiding under the table like we do during earthquake drills. Running away from criticism was my first instinct, just like my five year old's. I did muster the courage to take it positively a moment later though and asked the friend for details. I want to get better and I really appreciated the candid feedback, although, I have to admit- acknowledging the feedback was quite humiliating. Three syntax errors in just one paragraph of one post! The friend then asked if he should keep going. I had absolutely nothing to lose at that point!
I was never an avid reader growing up and if I were to make a top 10 list of my favorite books now like some of my friends did on Facebook, they will all be books that I read fairly recently. In fact, by the time I arrived in the US 14+ years ago, aside from the newspapers and school related reading, I likely did not even read ten books of any language total, let alone list ten favorite books. My spoken and written English skills were entirely dependent on what was taught in school as part of the curriculum and on the observations made by watching TV/other people.
I used to listen to the words of cricket commentators like Geoffrey Boycott and Tony Greg very attentively. "This pitch is conducive to pace and bounce". "Srinath and Prasad work very well in tandem". "That penultimate over bowled by Manoj was expensive for India". It was very appealing to me since it gave me a chance to combine improving spoken English with the pleasure of watching cricket. I actually used the word Penultimate at a work meeting about nine years ago and all of the non-Indians in that room started to laugh. Apparently 'Penultimate' is too esoteric a word ('second to last' was the preferred way to say it). Some of them even look for opportunities to use 'Penultimate' to this day, just to make fun of me. I figured one had to follow cricket to appreciate such fine words in life :). Regardless of the correctness of the syntax or grammar, I realize I have not lost the crazy aptitude for new words and phrases I had as a student. Humblebrag is one of the newest words I got introduced to. When I announced my teaching Telugu classes via my recent blog posts, I apparently text-book humblebragged, to the level of these Humblebrag hall of famers. Oh well. At least I learnt a new word!
Humble or not, I do have some bragging to do. I restarted music lessons after the summer hiatus and yesterday was class#2 to which I took my daughter along. The teacher taught a simple song and asked me to practice it. I followed the instructions religiously and sang that song all day. This evening, as we were driving home after finishing the weekend groceries rounds, my daughter began to doze off and I started singing that song again. Then she suddenly woke up and said "It is Gata. Ga. Not Na like you have been singing". She was absolutely right! I had been singing the first letter of the song incorrectly all day long! A genuine flaw in my work was highlighted, and this time, I did not look for a place to hide! I was very proud of her attention to detail. I just felt like bragging- there might not be anything humble about it. :)
I used to listen to the words of cricket commentators like Geoffrey Boycott and Tony Greg very attentively. "This pitch is conducive to pace and bounce". "Srinath and Prasad work very well in tandem". "That penultimate over bowled by Manoj was expensive for India". It was very appealing to me since it gave me a chance to combine improving spoken English with the pleasure of watching cricket. I actually used the word Penultimate at a work meeting about nine years ago and all of the non-Indians in that room started to laugh. Apparently 'Penultimate' is too esoteric a word ('second to last' was the preferred way to say it). Some of them even look for opportunities to use 'Penultimate' to this day, just to make fun of me. I figured one had to follow cricket to appreciate such fine words in life :). Regardless of the correctness of the syntax or grammar, I realize I have not lost the crazy aptitude for new words and phrases I had as a student. Humblebrag is one of the newest words I got introduced to. When I announced my teaching Telugu classes via my recent blog posts, I apparently text-book humblebragged, to the level of these Humblebrag hall of famers. Oh well. At least I learnt a new word!
Humble or not, I do have some bragging to do. I restarted music lessons after the summer hiatus and yesterday was class#2 to which I took my daughter along. The teacher taught a simple song and asked me to practice it. I followed the instructions religiously and sang that song all day. This evening, as we were driving home after finishing the weekend groceries rounds, my daughter began to doze off and I started singing that song again. Then she suddenly woke up and said "It is Gata. Ga. Not Na like you have been singing". She was absolutely right! I had been singing the first letter of the song incorrectly all day long! A genuine flaw in my work was highlighted, and this time, I did not look for a place to hide! I was very proud of her attention to detail. I just felt like bragging- there might not be anything humble about it. :)
Ysabel Carrilero Jyothy penultimate is said penúltimo in Spanish... if I am not mistaken it comes from Latin... thus you can use the word when you visit us as much as you want!!
ReplyDeleteYsabel Carrilero Love your blog. Please keep on writting and keep on bragging!! you have plenty of things to be proud of!
Nishtha Srivastava Some other words that only Indians use..'prepone' (apparently no such word exists in the oxford dictionary) and 'crib' (we use it to mean complain but no one here uses it in that meaning)
Nishtha Srivastava Oh and 'fortnight'
Gurpreet Kaur Love your blog Jyothy. And I dont feel any bragging in those articles. Keep writing!!!
Chandrika Nimmagadda your writing Jyothy ! I like the word "penultimate" too
Shruti Seshadri prepone was added to the oxford dictionary in 2010 (8th edition)
Shruti Seshadri Or perhaps 2011
Nishtha Srivastava Oh nice! It deserves to be there
Yagna Jyothy Vemuri ha. That 'prepone' is still a hot word at work. I have an entire email thread in which various non-indians deliberately used various forms of prepone (preponation?!). And we are not even talking about pronunciation of these words. That would be a whole another piece
Yagna Jyothy Vemuri Ysabel. I am so glad you clarified the use of penultimate in Spanish. I feel even more empowered to use it!
Yagna Jyothy Vemuri Nishtha, here is another such word for you: Thrice
Priya Gadiraju Shruti Seshadri would know all about "prepone".
Karen Williams Prepone? Is that like the opposite of postpone?
Gurpreet Kaur Yes Karen
Ysabel Carrilero My English is not very good but mostrar of the words you are talking about are not perfectly correct in British English and may be not so used in American English ?
Vandana Gade Totally loved reading your blog as well as going thru all comments - this is a goodnight