A letter from August 29th, 2020

Dear FutureMe, The more you know, the well you understand how ignorant we are. Keep learning is the one and only way to keep up with the time. Once I was young, the scarcity of the materials limited my learning progress. Taking language learning for instance. No access to movies from English speaking countries; no audible books to listen to; no foreign teachers you could learn from, the pronunciation became the major barrier to overcome, especially when you learned by yourself. You could learn a word's meaning by looking up on a dictionary, but no one could correct your pronunciation. No English-speaking teachers, no online vocal dictionary applications, no Emma Say Youtube channel, it would be really difficult to learn the pronunciation. As a consequence, no one could understand what you are talking about because you did not pronounce them correctly in the first place. As a diligent English learner, I could write decent article that even college English professor would believe it was from the author of English-speaking countries. For spoken English, I practiced a lot. As a matter of fact, I seised every chance to practise in order to improve my English. However, I don't have many friends from foreign countries. If any, I had two from France, Pascale and Aurora and one from Cameroon, a black guy who studied in Zhejiang Agriculture University . They did speak English but not better than me. One way to get the right pronunciation, back to my day, was to listen to VOA. For one program, "Intermittent American English", I learned so hard. And I could say the sentences from the text book confidently because they were taught by the Americans. I still remembered the first day I set foot in Canada, at the transit airport in Vancouver, one clerk asked me where I would go the next. I said to him Montréal. "Where?", he asked again. "Montréal" I repeated. He still didn't understand me and then took a look at my air ticket. "Oh, Montréal." And that is the first time in my life to hear the name of the city "Montréal" in correct English pronunciation. Before I always pronounced as "Mont" "real"--and took it for granted it would be pronounced this way. In comparison with my fellow Chinese, I wasn't that bad. With many years working experiences in English as lingua franca, I could express myself properly--as long as I pronounce the words correctly. Even today, after fifteen years living in an English speaking country (and kept learning everyday), my poor pronunciation was still teased by my friends from time to time. For me, it was the time that limited my boundary. Nowadays, the hurdles are all removed. You can access all kings of material--online, and the sky is the limit. The only requirement is to take agency. "It's never too late to learn," as the saying goes, I will continuously keep learning everyday as if I would never to die.