来认识这个用英语写作的纽约客
这篇是“英语高分高能牛人访谈”第七期。
分享嘉宾：Jesse Alvior，生于菲律宾马尼拉，旅居纽约，常年使用英文写作，有多年新媒体经验。
Jesse 是 6 年前我在飞纽约航班上萍水相逢的邻座。后来我们在纽约见过几次面，一起在他非常熟悉的曼哈顿下东区（Lower East Side）闲逛。我关于纽约最鲜活的记忆之一，就是跟他在曼哈顿明亮的街头，闲聊移民、身份认同、911等话题。
在这篇访谈里，Jesse 分享了他在菲律宾学习英语的经历，菲律宾的多语文化和英语教育，各种英语口音，英语是怎样塑造他的个人身份的，他最喜欢的英语作家，以及母语菲律宾语是如何影响他的英语学习的。
Jesse 的英文清晰、简单、自然、地道，阅读的过程中可以多多体会。Jesse 是访谈嘉宾中第一位男生，也是第一位母语是菲律宾语的朋友。这篇访谈较长，但非常值得一读。
Justin: Could you please briefly introduce yourself and your work?
Jesse: I’m Jesse Alvior and I’m primarily a writer based in the Lower East Side in New York City. At the moment I provide social media content, taking photographs, shooting and editing videos, and writing blogs and posts for various social media platforms. You can find me and samples of my work on Instagram @FtoDelancey.
Justin: How long have you been learning English? How did you start?
Jesse: English has always been part of the culture growing up in the Philippines. I call my parents “mom” and “dad”, and we say such things as “good morning” and “goodbye” so you can say I started learning since I learned how to speak. I used English interchangeably with our childhood language (which to me is Filipino), on top of the dialects my parents use. My dad spoke at least four languages that I know of: his childhood language of Kinaray-a from the Panay island in the Visayas region, Filipino, English and Ilocano, a language in northern Luzon when he moved there to work. My mom speaks Tagalog, from which Filipino is largely based, English, and because her father was Spanish, she grew up with a lot of Spanish as well. I imagine she knows more of it than she would care to admit even though I’ve never heard her speak it.
Growing up I had nannies who were mostly from the Visayas, and they had their own languages as well. I had cousins from that region and at some point in my youth I was quite knowledgeable speaking Ilonggo, one of the region’s biggest languages.
Being in such an environment makes a child more receptive to different sounds and nuances of a language, most especially English, which would be the most unrelated of them all. But English is ironically one of the only two official languages of the Philippines, so the government uses it in every form of transaction. In school, the medium of instruction is English, so it was taught in school from day one. Technically, you can say I started learning English when I was sent to nursery school at four years old. From thereon, English grammar and English literature have always been part of the curriculum until you finish college. Always there were at least two English classes. In elementary school, we had Language and Reading, which are the equivalent of grammar and literature. By high school, a student is assumed to have mastered the language such that he or she can tackle Shakespeare, poetry, and other more complex works. Outside of those, every term paper, essay, exam, or thesis are all in English.
Justin: What is your greatest motivation for learning English? Why did you want to learn it so well?
Jesse: When I was young I always wanted to do well in school, so excelling in English was merely a part of excelling in general. As I grew older I realized that I was better in it than in mathematics, so I was quite proud that I excelled in it, which in turn motivated me to do better.
I was also a curious student; I loved to read. But when it came to writing, at some point I was bothered that I was confused between “your” or “you’re” or “were” and “where”. I had the zeal to figure out the problem and get to the bottom of it, so if I didn’t know something I would teach myself.
Justin: Could you please tell us specifically how you made great progress in at least one of the following: listening, speaking, reading, and writing?
Jesse: Reading was perhaps the easiest of them all. I loved reading when I was growing up and I just devoured every book I had. It was never a problem.
Listening was a bit more complicated. In school, teachers had a different accent, and children like me were keyed into this sound. Outside of the local accent it was much harder. Watching Sesame Street, where the accent is American, helped me understand the different sounds and realize that people can speak exactly the same language differently. A good analogy might be “a different melody to the same song”.
We had a lot of Hollywood movies and television programs in the Philippines, so that helped. I watched a lot of them even though I couldn’t understand half of what they were saying. At some point, maybe when I was about 8 or 9 years old, it just clicked, and I could watch a show from beginning to end and understand most everything. As an adult living in America, I would get to see some of these shows that I watched when I was 7 or 8 years old, and let me tell you that this is just a bizarre experience.
Speaking goes hand in hand with listening. I cannot remember anymore, but I would say when I was very young my accent was in all likelihood very similar to my teachers’ until I came to realize they sounded quite absurd. We did have a few American teachers in the Philippines which also shaped the way we speak. The more I listened to American accents, the more I spoke with it, but I wouldn’t say that I sound American at all, even though many Americans seem to think I grew up here.
Justin: Could you talk a bit about how English or writing in English has helped shape your identity?
Jesse: My English skills have definitely shaped who I am today. All my pursuits rely heavily on my ability to speak and write in it. That in itself is quite interesting and complicated. Where some people would have the ability to speak English as a secondary aspect of their identity, it would be the opposite in my case. Most people would be, for example, be Spanish or French or whatever who can speak English, prioritizing their mother tongue and speaking English with their native accents. I would, on the other hand, lose my native accent and take on the accent of where I am or who I am speaking with. English has such a powerful effect on my identity that I unintentionally mimic the accent of the country I’m in or the person I’m speaking to.
With my Filipino friends I’d have our own English accent. If I’m in America talking to people at work or with my friends here, I’d be American like them. If I’m in the UK or speaking with my partner, who is British, I’d have more of an English accent. You should listen to me when all these people are together!
As for writing, I’ve been writing on and off since I was 12 so it has definitely shaped who I am. I’ve had many other ambitions or goals in life but writing seems to be the one constant thing that I really like to do. I may not write for a period of time, but I always find myself going back to it. With everything that I do career-wise, it’s undeniably the foundation. My skills for it has led me to do other things. A lot of social media is writing good copy and to be able to verbally communicate effectively.
Justin: Looking back, was there a period in which you felt you spent too much time learning English unwisely? If yes, how did you turn it around? Is there anything you wish you did completely differently?
Jesse: On the whole, I had a pretty good education in the Philippines. It’s always been the leader in Asia when it comes to English proficiency. Many neighboring countries do in fact come over to learn it on the cheap. I do wish that as a child I was able to travel in English speaking countries. It’s one thing practicing with your peers, but it’s another to be in a society that speaks it. It would have been great to have traveled to the UK and the US and learn how they use the language and realize my erroneous tendencies in using it. I would love to be better at idioms. As an adult, I feel as if I’m still catching up.
Justin: What did you find was the most challenging in language output (speaking and/or writing)? How did you overcome the challenge? If you're still undergoing this, how are you dealing with it?
Jesse: I’ve never really had any difficulty in speaking and writing, but if there was any challenging aspect I’d say understanding its peculiarities. When you’re in another country accents change, and you have to adapt. I love accents and when I first went to the UK it was a delight to hear all the different accents in England alone. They can, however, be a challenge. I remember calling a lawyer’s office and talking to the secretary and I could not understand what she was saying. Obviously, she was speaking in English but her accent was just impenetrable. You’d rarely hear that accent in movies or television so nothing could have prepared me for it. You could say I’m still undergoing this, but the more I travel and talk to people I become better at dealing with accents. It was only a few years ago that I could differentiate between Irish and Scottish accents, and actually identify a South African accent.
Justin: How important do you think grammar is? How did you learn it? Have you ever learned it systematically?
Jesse: Grammar is the foundation of English proficiency. There’s just no way around it. For a student whom English is a second language, he or she has to master the rules and know when to break them. It takes time and exposure. And when a student does master the grammar, the use of the language eventually becomes instinctive. You don’t even have to think. You don’t even have to translate in your head (which you should never do, by the way). Your thought process, the language you use to talk to yourself, your dreams, will be in English.
Justin: Who are your favorite writers? Have your emulated their writing styles consciously?
Jesse: When I was a teenager I devoured every Sidney Sheldon novel. I couldn’t get enough of them. Impressionable as I was, I wrote like him for quite sometime. David Sedaris’ early works are a joy to read. I’d say his first three books were original and astute. I identify with Nora Ephron a bit more because of her dry, New York sense of humor. I find myself going back to read her books after a year or so and still find them hilarious.
Justin: Some say that learning English is like slope climbing; the higher, the harder. And learners all encounter bottlenecks in different phases. Do you feel the same way? How did you handle them?
Jesse: I studied English in school for 17 years so if it were a slope, it was pretty much gradual. It was such a long time and very early on that I hardly felt any difficulty. If I tried to learn another language at my age now, I’d probably encounter so-called bottlenecks.
Justin: Did your mother tongue positively or negatively influence your English learning? If yes, how? And have you ever been bewildered by different languages? If yes, how did you handle it?
Jesse: Filipino is a beautiful, colorful, and ever-changing language. We use its informal variations very creatively, and it only benefited my use of English as creativity can be applied to any language. It honed my dexterity to weave in and out of one language to another depending on convenience. However, as a formal language, it took a backseat to English because educators placed more importance on English proficiency. There was even a time in the 80s when our teachers would prohibit us speaking Filipino at school hours, so you can say it had a positive effect on my English proficiency at its expense. I do wish I’m able to speak and write in Filipino as beautifully as I can in English.
Justin's comments:
I was instantly impressed by how effortless and natural it was for Jesse to use English. His English was plain, accurate, idiomatic, and his cadence was used to great effect. It was purely a joy to listen to him share his stories.
Jesse's experience reminds me of my own: what I do professionally has long been associated with English, writing in particular. English has empowered me and given me a fresh and distinctive voice, and a persona by extension. English has also, in a way, helped close the cultural gap whenever I reach out to foreign peoples and cultures. To me, it never merely means a language.
Thank you, Jesse!
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作者：Jesse Alvior
编辑、点评：孟庆伟 Justin
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题图：Jesse Alvior
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