I must admit, as someone who was born in the USA but is reasonably fluent in Chinese (can pass as a native in Beijing when speaking, at least on the phone, and

I must admit, as someone who was born in the USA but is reasonably fluent in Chinese (can pass as a native in Beijing when speaking, at least on the phone, and can read/write at like a third-fifth grade level which is harder than it sounds in Chinese), as soon as I saw this I thought "why????". Still, the article did turn out to be quite interesting. What I've also found interesting in my own personal experience with my parents (born in China, immigrated in their 20s) is how they go about learning new words in English. For example, I used to dismiss my mom's horrendous spelling as simply a byproduct of immigration, but only recently have started to think about it more deeply and I've noticed a couple of things. First, she tends to insert nonsensical letters (or miss extremely obvious ones) when trying to spell words she's recently just heard for the first time. This used to bother me a lot because it seemed like the mistakes were so obvious to correct, but now I've realized that because of how Chinese is designed, the concept of breaking a word down into pieces just simply isn't natural for someone who only started learning English in their late 20s. Not to say it can't be learned, but just that even after 20+ years in the states, my mom still doesn't default to "break it down" mode when attempting to spell words, partly because she never had any formal English training (my dad is much, much better about this, and I think it's because of more formal training in a university environment) and just picked it up.