I’m a Singaporean Chinese. If I barely speak a word of my ‘mother tongue’, am I Chinese?
My lifelong aversion to Mandarin stretches back as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories involves an attempt on my parents’ part to speak to me only in Mandarin – an endeavour that failed almost as soon as it begun, given my already well-developed stubbornness and their own relative apathy about whether I really needed proficiency in the language. Entering the education system, a relentless slew of 听写, 作文 and 习字cemented the association between Mandarin and boredom, dread, discomfort – although this was undeniably a result of my attitude towards Chinese lessons, rather than any fault of the classes per se. And of course, once I passed my ‘O’ Level Higher Chinese paper, I celebrated the fact that never again, with the possible exception of ordering meals or speaking to my grandparents, would a word of Mandarin need to pass my lips.
As the linguists say, language is deeply intertwined with cultural identity. Singapore is a particularly interesting case, given that our officially recognised mother tongues are determined by race – though mother tongue conventionally refers to a person’s first language, English isn’t considered a mother tongue in Singapore, partially in order to maintain links to our cultural heritage. Yet for me and for others, it is English that holds symbolic value, that stands as the language of family, poetry, affection, self-expression. Being Chinese, then, has always sat uneasily with me. Because I cannot speak well my supposed mother tongue and because that has become a matter of indifference to me, it’s easy to feel like an imposter, or as we call it, a banana – yellow on the outside, white on the inside.
Ironically, it was only through my fledgling attempts to learn a third language – French – that I recently began to feel the loss that years of studiously avoiding Mandarin had left behind. Sometime in the process of tackling verb conjugations and learning the notoriously difficult French ‘r’, I started to be awed by the sheer intricacy of language. What a stunning, labyrinthine lacework of meaning a language is, and what riches are then possessed by anyone who can wield it well. In the same way, perhaps Mandarin, bane of my school life, was a privilege that went unappreciated against my stubborn refusal to accommodate it. Perhaps the sullen way it sits astride my tongue is worth mourning, though I tell myself I have other tongues, other worlds of meaning.
A few days ago, I set out on my first volunteering session as a befriender to socially-isolated senior citizens. In a nondescript coffeeshop beneath a void deck, we made an unlikely trio – my befriending leader, the elderly man I was assigned to, and me. “How do you want me to address you?” I asked in awkward Mandarin. 你叫我爷爷就行了(you can call me grandfather)was his reply, as simple as it was surprising – surprising because I’d forgotten, until that point, the beautiful way familial terms like ah ma can transform into affectionate forms of address for complete strangers; as though we all belonged to the same vast and rambling clan. He was, as all old people are, a fount of wisdom on everything from bodily aches to the huge and undoubtedly nefarious changes that had occurred since the Singapore of his youth. And despite how much I wanted to understand, to connect with him, I could only listen in admiration as he and the befriending leader conversed in casual Mandarin and Hokkien; his world was guarded by a gate which my rusty key of language could only half-open.
My relationship with Mandarin might always be uneasy. Certainly it can never be steeped in the kind of special importance that English holds for me. But if there’s anything the past few months has taught me, it’s that Mandarin can be beautiful in its own way, beautiful and valuable, and that realisation has given me some courage to accept it as a silent part of myself. In a world almost before words, a memory that has stayed with me: sitting cross-legged on the nursery floor, pencil clutched in clumsy imitation of my kindergarten teacher’s careful strokes. The word that was born in timid curlicues then was 我 – meaning I, myself. This was the first Mandarin word I learnt to write.
Submitted by Jolene Hee.
