Losing My Tongue

The cresting of conversations happening all around me drowned out the din of clinking teacups and chopsticks drumming on small bowls. Within earshot, I could hear two ladies droningly call out the names of the dishes in the carts they were pushing.

“Har gow siu mai!”

“Cha siu bao!”

I was at Saturday morning dim sum. Sitting at the table were my parents and fifteen of their closest acquaintances. Of course, I was obliged to greet these relative strangers as my “AHN-ties” and “UN-cos” as is decorum for a Chinese daughter.

It wasn’t long before the conversation at the table landed on the fact that I, a full-blooded spawn of two full-blooded Chinese parents, did not speak Cantonese. In fact, save for very basic conversational phrases and food dishes (the ones I liked of course), I could speak almost none of my mother tongue.

“Did you know that my daughter can’t even spell her own name in Chinese?” my mother declared in a tone that was a paradoxical mixture of disappointment and bragging. As if she and her friend were comparing whose children were more the lost cause.

Suddenly, I could feel thirty eyeballs focus in my direction waiting for an explanation as to how one could forget something so crucial to one’s identity as a name. I felt my cheeks get hot.

Flustered, I replied, “But I bet I could recognize it if I ever saw it!” I smiled and tried to diffuse the embarrassing situation in which my mother seemed to love to put me.

The aunties and uncles smiled politely with an expression that can only be described as a withering glare.

Rather than explain further, I decided to drown my shame in another dan tat.

I am a CBC. A Canadian Born Chinese. A jook sing. A banana. And somewhere along the way, I forgot how to speak my mother tongue.

This is a fact that I am rather ashamed to admit and something for which I have always scolded myself. To forget your mother tongue feels akin to losing part of your identity. As a first-generation Canadian, I find it hard to pinpoint the exact thing that ties me to my heritage but I’m sure that language is up there as one of the more important links.

It was not always like this. In fact, there was a time when I was a wee baby that I spoke only Cantonese. English school was my downfall. Being immersed in English for the majority of my waking hours, it was inevitable that I would pick up this foreign language.

Eventually, the English words made their way into my Chinese “home” talk. It didn’t happen overnight but I’d say the steady increase of my English vocabulary directly correlated to the steady decline in speaking Cantonese at home. Soon my sentences sounded like this:

“Can I sik another dan tat?” (can you tell that egg tarts is a Chinese phrase that I have mastered?”

I am telling you all this, not because I like sharing my embarrassing failures as a Chinese person but because I believe a lot of first-gens like me have experienced this loss of language. For some, it may not be wholly forgotten, just a bit rusty, but for others I know it can be like complete verbal amnesia.

I’ve already mentioned that I am not comfortable in this state of ignorance. Some of you may be wondering, “What do you plan to do about it?”

I leave for Hong Kong, my homeland, in July. I will be alone a lot. And I am determined not to speak a word of English while I am there. Over the next few months, follow me as I explore my linguistic roots and attempt to find my tongue again.

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