Cat’s got your (mother’s) tongue?

Alright, the title has probably been used before somewhere else, but I still liked it enough to use it here. My Chinese oral is in a few days, and hence I’ve been making myself read in Chinese more, which got me thinking about my roots. As a small introduction, I’m Singaporean-Chinese. I grew up with Channel 8 dramas playing on television, Chinese songs always filling up any silence during car rides, and speak a decent amount of mandarin at home, though often laced with English phrases here and there. I have an alright Chinese GPA of 3.2/3.6 (around 60–70+) too, though I wished it was better. Everything’s decent.

A while ago, someone asked if I took Higher Chinese. You see, most people who have Chinese as their mother tongue language in my school do, so the question was a bit confusing to me because why ask when the answer will most likely be yes? Additionally, it was a question out of nowhere too — we were not talking about anything that’s related to school or language before, but I still answered with “yeah, why?” Said person then chuckled and replied, “Oh you don’t seem very Chinese.”

Fast forward a few months, I was with the same person again, this time with more people. We were working on something together, chatting about the things in our lives, when the topic of speaking mandarin came up, and I replied to something in Chinese. The person’s response to that was one subtext-ed with shock, something along the lines of “Oh I didn’t know you could speak Chinese that well, you just didn’t seem Chinese to me.”

Huh.

(I have nothing against them, because there wasn’t much opportunity to communicate in Chinese that much anyways. I don’t talk about my feelings that much, but that one sentence felt like a small paper cut — it stings slightly when it comes into contact with water, but it heals in a day or so. Sometimes a scar stays, reminder of where you got it from. This one’s comes in the form of a question. “What makes me any less Chinese than you are?”

I don’t think my Chinese is that bad. Sometimes, some things I say come out wonky, a wrong quantifier (I had to google what that was in English) used (“个”) or a sentence sounding awkward, and in between a phrase seems untranslatable, appearing in English in my head and I can’t seem to find the right words for it in Chinese. Google translate is sometimes used, but I still have a decent foundation. I know plenty, maybe not enough, but I can watch Chinese dramas without English subtitles, converse in mandarin with elderly who don’t know how to speak English, and make sense of most of my Chinese homework.

If anything, my spoken mandarin is probably the best. As mentioned, I grew up in a Chinese-speaking household, and have been exposed to Chinese media, specifically “spoken media” like shows, radio and songs the most; my conversational mandarin is probably my strength when it comes to Chinese as a language. It’s hard to imagine not speaking Chinese to my family members, even though I might be able to express some thoughts better in English. I guess it is something that has been ingrained in me, a combined effort of familial influences and opportunities for practice that has led to how I feel about speaking Chinese. The words not the most fluent or articulate when coming out of my mouth, but there’s something comforting and familiar about it.

“I speak Chinese to my parents at home most of the time.” It was when my friends looked surprised when I realised that not everyone did that. I guess it’s pretty justified seeing as to how English is a common language and given school and society, we rarely have opportunities to communicate in Chinese. Sometimes I’ll say something in mandarin, only to have my Chinese-speaking friends reply in English, and vice versa. It has become habitual to speak English.

But speaking in mandarin ultimately reminds me of home, of the family dinners I have weekly, where my family will sit down at the dinner table and talk about the week’s happenings, about news, gossip, all of that in Mandarin. It reminds me of buying food and drinks from hawker stores or canteen owners, where I’ll sometimes chat to them in Mandarin, which is always nice. (Recently I’ve come to a realisation that I’m more comfortable speaking to strangers in mandarin too?)

It has always been a constant, even as I grew up and my Chinese speaking skills have deteriorated majorly to whatever it is now due to the widespread use of the English language.

So, is being Chinese about speaking perfect mandarin, intonations perfect? My answer is, of course, no. When a seed is planted, and a plant roots itself into soil, it’s stem, branches and leaves can still grow in different directions. Likewise, even though I’m not the best at speaking mandarin, it doesn’t make me any less Chinese, and I will keep on doing it.

Time to go ace my Chinese oral. (or not. I might fail but I can wish for the best)

This was written sometime in late-July 2021, the weekend before my Chinese Oral exams in school. A year later and I’m going to take my Higher Chinese O Level orals in 4 days — what a time to release this article, am I right? (I promise to do well this time though! 我可以的！！）