"the pain inflicted by the English pronunciation on their tongues and jaws"

"So I began to teach them English, just some phrases and short sentences, such as 'Hands up!,' 'Drop your weapon, we spare you!,' 'We don't kill prisoners,' 'Don't move!,' 'Surrender, you are safe!,' 'Don't die for American imperialism!'

There was no paper to write on, so I used a stick to inscribe on the ground the written characters representing the English sounds so that the literate ones among them could have some phonetic guidance.  I couldn't possibly make them pronounce the words accurately, since half of them didn't even speak Mandarin well.  But they were eager to learn, even if they did complain about the pain inflicted by the English pronunciation on their tongues and jaws.  A few claimed they had sore throats.  I was amazed that in just a few days they could rap out to one another what they had learned.  Most of them were smart men who would have gone far in their lives had they had the opportunity and the education.  I wondered why they would concentrate so much on learning a few foreign words that they might never use at all.  Heaven knew what would happen to us tomorrow; we might get captured or killed anytime.  The enemy was just two miles to the north.

I suspected that to them the act of learning must represent some kind of hope.  At least this meant there was still a future, on which they could fix their minds.  Their limited awareness of the larger world and their inert response to the menace of death endowed them with the strength needed for survival.  I was moved by the tenacity of life shown in their desire to learn."

-- Ha Jin, War Trash