Feeling My Roots

Recently, I have surprised myself by having a liking to express myself in Chinese. Now, this is a bit of a odd thing to understand for foreigners, but my generation of Singaporean Chinese really largely communicates in English. I will not go into explaining the hows and the whys here, since it involves government thinking and policies that has affected a nation's perspective and proficiency of English and its various mother tongues. But suffice it to say that I am always tickled by the confusion and awe when I explain to non-Singaporeans about how my generation would communicate amongst ourselves largely in English, while with our parents' generation in our mother tongue and with our grandparents' generation in dialect...

Certainly, it does mean we, this generation, know quite a few languages. For me, I profess I know the rudiments of the other languages, with English being the exception, since it is my rice bowl :)  And while I laugh when foreigners tell me I can teach Mandarin in a foreign land, I too do feel regret inside that my proficiency of my mother tongue is not any better. I can speak the language fluently, but as a typical Singaporean, my use of Mandarin is often mixed with English and dialect and until we started having PRC Chinese friends, I did not know my Chinese vocabulary was severely limited!

So, hence this entry. Hence, my delight that I actually feel like expressing myself more in Mandarin these days.

Does being overseas make one miss home and appreciate one's roots more? Certainly! But more than anything, I think being a parent now, and an overseas parent at that, makes me feel more acutely the need to ensure my son knows his roots and culture. And language is, after all, the key to the culture. 

We agreed that I would speak Mandarin to J, while Daddy Low would do the English bit. But I must say that it feels more natural to speak to J in Mandarin, in part because we were so used to hearing my mum speak to him in Mandarin when she was here. In our trip to Singapore recently, we went on a Chinese book shopping spree for J. Personally, I get intimidated and overwhelmed when I see a mass of Chinese characters together. It does not necessarily mean that I can't read them, and I can't explain it, but it does make me wish to close the book and choose an English one instead. So, when we shopping for the books, I was a bit apprehensive. To my pleasant surprise, I find that almost every book comes with Hanyu Pinyin. And while my Chinese is not tip-top, I can proudly say my Hanyu Pinyin is not too bad at all! :) They do make the pages look cluttered with the images, but I console myself that I would at least be able to read them and probably also improve my Chinese in the end! :)

So, we came home with all these books and J has been luckily interested. Well, in the first place, he likes books and I think with these, it helped that they have large colourful pictures. I don't think he is actually paying too much attention to the Chinese characters yet, but hey, they did say a child's best window of learning is from 2 to 7 years old. And while mine is not 2 yet, he can get used to these funny blocky characters being on his books first :)

At the nursery, they try to ask me for some Chinese words that J is familiar with. I think they see it as a sort of magic mantra that they can use, should J break into hysterics. And that is fair enough. But I tell J's key carer not to be too bothered and to just speak to J in English, cos I would like him to learn English there, while we converse with him in Mandarin at home. After all, what beats learning the language from the native speaker? My boy might just come home with the cool British accent some day! :)

For myself, for now, I take little baby steps by commenting in Mandarin now and then online. I mean, hey, technology makes it so much easier - I love how with the computer, you can just type the Hanyu Pinyin and the whole list of similar sounding words come out and you just choose the right one. I may not be able to write it by myself, but I sure know my words, cos I dun often make a wrong choice :) And with the hassle of knowing which is the right word out of the way, I am actually surprised by how my expression is actually quite decent! :) 

I think the next thing for me when I return is to get a lunar calendar or something, so that I know when we celebrate the Chinese festivals. Always wish I know when to eat dumplings, mooncakes and tang yuan! :)