Revision Wp3: My desire to speak Chinese
I am bilingual and I am proud of it. My language, Chinese, has given me the opportunity to connect with my heritage while living in a country that my family is not originally from. Whenever I speak to my friends in Mandarin at school I get the feeling that I am at home because that is my means of communication with my family. The problem is that there is an awkwardness when we deviate from speaking in English since my English is better than my Chinese. When I speak to my international friends in Mandarin, they respond to me in Mandarin for a little while before quickly switching back to English. I seek to find out why this is the case and how I can stop it from happening as frequently.
I recently asked a couple of these friends about why they do this, and my friend Ryan explained that using English to speak to me is more efficient. I initially thought that he meant that speaking with me in Chinese is not efficient because my skills are inadequate, but after clarifying he told me that it is easier to share concepts in English for the things that we talk about. Our topics of conversation usually revolve around computer science concepts. It seems that English can be more expressive for talking about computer science related things because the basis of programming is centered around English.
On the other hand, when I spend time with my friend Wen-Hsin, who is an international student from Shanghai, our conversations revolve around life and relationships. In this nonacademic context, surely there has to be a reason why she defaults to English when talking to me. When I asked her why she does that, she told me it was because my vocabulary in Chinese is limited, and it is strenuous for the both of us to speak in Chinese. She also said that it is difficult to change a communication habit and that she was accustomed to speaking in English with me, and the change was instinctive. However, she said she is open to converse in Chinese moving forward.
The desire to speak Chinese stems from me missing being with my parents as well as missing the environment that I onced lived in. However, the yearning to communicate in Chinese is not merely about language. It is an embodiment of the emotional connection to my roots and the culture that shaped me. Researcher Weiying Jiang states in her paper on the inseparability of culture and language that: “Language and culture makes a living organism; language is flesh, and culture is blood. Without culture, language would be dead; without language, culture would have no shape.” She explains here that language cannot exist without culture and vice versa. In a similar way, language itself is a reminder of the existence of the culture behind it. They are so closely connected that the two can be seen as pieces of one entity. I have overlooked how language is an extension of my Chinese culture. Specifically, when I bring up references to Chinese foods that do not have equivalent names in English.
Over the recent winter break, my friend Cathy came to New York to visit me and my parents made her some Diāng-biĕng-gù, “鼎边糊”. When we talk about the dish at school, we refer to it as guō biān hú, which is the Mandarin pronunciation. The direct translation of the name is pot side paste, but the translation does not make sense. It is in these moments, when I am reminded that words sometimes lose their meaning when they are translated. During our conversation about guō biān, we spoke in English, but we used the Chinese name of the dish to describe it. In this situation, though I am partially using Chinese, the cultural significance of the word gives the feeling of being at home. In an English conversation, through using a Chinese name, a feeling is generated because meaning is given to the word, and experience and memories exist with the word.
One of my main struggles is I am only able to speak and understand, but I am not able to read or write. This means that my Chinese communication is limited to my memory of what specific sounds mean rather than what sounds match with what words. That means that when I forget a word that I want to say to my friend, I have to think deeply to try to remember what word I want to use. And when I can’t remember the word, I explain my idea in a roundabout way. Remembering vocabulary because of this is hard when I am not frequenting the language since there isn’t a dictionary that I can easily reference. This is also the leading cause behind the discomfort my fluent friends face when trying to speak with me in Mandarin.
In Chinese there are four tones, which determine the difference between characters that would otherwise sound the same. When learning how to read and write Chinese, the sounds of the characters are associated with the characters themselves and this division helps create an understanding of the tones. As someone who learned Chinese solely through speaking it with my family, I was never formally taught the differences between the tones and there are often errors in how I distinguish between different words.
A example is the difference between “书”，”熟”，”数”，”树”. Which corresponds to “Shū”, “shú”, “ shù”, “shù”. These four words sound almost identical to me and because I never learned the different tones, it is difficult to distinguish between the words even though I know what they mean. In my head, when I think of these words, I use it based on the context rather than using the correct tonality.
Another aspect of my ability to speak comes from my native dialect being Fuzhounese, which is composed of sounds that are completely different from Mandarin and Cantonese. Therefore, on top of my inability to remember key words, I have a Fuzhounese accent when I am speaking Mandarin, which influences my pronunciation of words to differ from theirs and that causes a disconnect. Since my understanding of Fuzhounese is muddled with my understanding of Mandarin, the tones of my words in Mandarin are influenced by some of the incorrect Fuzhounese tones that I have memorized. It is difficult to describe this fully, but a lot of words are pronounced in a rounded way. On the other hand, someone who speaks Mandarin with a proper Beijing accent has a very pronounced r sound which comes off very sharp. Since my Mandarin is influenced by the roundness of my Fuzhounese, it causes a blend in my speech that comes off as improper.
Remembering how to speak Chinese, even though for many of us it is the first language that we learn, is a struggle that many American born Chinese people face. Martina Yee, previously a student at Penn State University says that “At the end of the day, learning the mother tongue is often comprised of daily interactions at home that enable Asian Americans to be immersed in their mother language.” and that is exactly the way that I have been able to be immersed in Chinese. Since my immigrant parents barely know how to speak any English, when I communicate with them I solely use Mandarin and a mix of Fuzhounese. Since this is my medium of communication, I have had to maintain my Mandarin at home even though, outside with my friends I don’t use it as much.
Being far from home and not calling home as much as I should, has created a level of disconnect that is overshadowed by the noticeable decline in my Chinese language skills, a consequence of the daily immersion in English-speaking environments. As I lose grip of the language I feel as if I am losing a part of my identity. This was my initial motivation to speak to my friends in Chinese since using the language is the best way to practice it. Through the practice of enforcing my Chinese, I feel a movement toward what my idea of home is, but that extension needs to be more than just conversational practice of my Mandarin.
As I write this, I remind myself that my ability to speak Fuzhounese is far worse than my ability to speak in Mandarin but I have found a resource to practice speaking in Fuzhounese at https://fuzhounese.com/. Listening to the speaker on the website speaking in Fuzhounese adds a second layer of “亲” because it hits closer to home than Mandarin does since it is the language of my ancestors. In my life, it seems that I am continuously chasing to be closer to my heritage in some way because I have the desire to maintain my identity as an American born Chinese.
The psychology of the feeling lies behind the fact that communicating to someone in their mother tongue is an affirmation of their identity and culture. Therefore when I speak to my friends in Mandarin, I am acknowledging our heritage and that connects me to both them and home. When communicating with a person in a way that highlights who they are and identifies with, it is powerful because it reaches beyond the barrier of language. It unlocks an deeper layer of communication that is paired with trust.
The affirmation of identity and culture is apparent in Xiaomanyc’s youtube videos when he talks to older Chinese people . When he does this, it builds a level of trust between them, which can be seen when the older gentlemen sit down to drink tea with him. There is a shift in how people feel about Xiaoma when they find out that he is able to speak in Mandarin. The initial reaction in his videos is always a sense of surprise followed by questions, then a sense of “亲”. This word to me means a sense of familiarity, but the word familiarity does not fully encompass the meaning of the word. To me, it is the feeling of home that I have been trying to describe through this text.
I was born in the United States, but my parents sent me to live in China for around 3 years, before I returned to the US. All of my schooling has been here, but back home I used to live in Chinatown so I was surrounded by a ton of Chinese people. In the United States, Chinatowns formed around the country as Chinese Immigrants moved to places that are in close proximity to other Chinese immigrants. This immigrant experience is not unique to the Chinese population, as immigrants that come from other parts of the world have also done the same to form “towns’’ of their own. Living in Sunset Park, I have always felt a sense of belonging within the community and being from Sunset Park is a big part of who I identify as.
As I prepare to graduate from USC, I don’t have immediate plans to move home, and when looking at places to live, I can see why living in a Chinatown can be appealing. Residing in an area with a strong Chinese community would not only offer access to Chinese cuisine and products, but also allow me to maintain and deepen my cultural ties. This in turn will give me the opportunity to root myself somewhere that was not originally home.
While I am not an immigrant, I am a first generation American. And as a first generation, I fear that in later generations, my language will soon be lost. The looming necessity that I have for a sense of being more Chinese is a mechanism that I am employing to maintain that part of my identity, especially since it has started to feel weaker as I have left my home. One of the first steps I can take to maintain my identity is recognizing that my Chinese is not as good as it can be, and using it even when it feels uncomfortable. While the loss of language through the generations is seemingly inevitable, I can delay it by putting myself through learning, and calling home more.
Works Cited:
Martin, A. (2018, September 19). I am illiterate. Retrieved from
https://sites.psu.edu/martinayeepassion/2018/09/19/i-am-illiterate/
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Diāng-biěng-gù. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di%C4%81ng-bi%C4%95ng-g%C3%B9
Foreigners Surprise Elders With Their Mandarin During Tea Ceremony. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8eo2rTWDXs
Mitchell, R., & Lee, J. (2000). Language, identity, and the ownership of English. ELT Journal, 54(4), 328–336.
doi:10.1093/elt/54.4.328
Library of Congress. (n.d.). Building communities. Retrieved from
