Annie Zhu Q1 Blog #1 - Mother Tongue
In elementary school I was very proud of my Chinese skills. My parents had sent me to Chinese school when I was just five, and I was constantly praised by my relatives as well as my parents' friends for speaking Mandarin well. My ego was very boosted as some might say, and fueled by the naivety of an elementary student, my opinion of my own Chinese skills became very high.
However, when I got to high school I realized that I was far from superior. I couldn’t read basic characters, much less write them, and even my speaking (my strongest skill) was subpar.
The official dialect of China, Mandarin, is also called putonghua, translated literally to “common language.” As with any official language in any country, people who speak fluent putonghua are considered well-educated and formal. Of course, there is an unfair advantage since putonghua comes from the Beijing region, so people in Western China would obviously have a harder time speaking accurate putonghua.
Since both of my parents speak putonghua with rural Chinese inflections, I began to realize that I had adopted their mannerisms, blending it into a jarring Americanized-rural accent, which I shamefully saw as “double-uncultured.” I was both American AND “uneducated.”As a result, I became shy about speaking, fearing that other Chinese people would look down upon me for my flawed Mandarin. After I finished taking the AP Chinese exam, I completely stopped speaking Mandarin outside of one-sentence exchanges with my parents: recounting how my day was or telling my dad when to pick me up. Even when I encountered other Chinese people, I would avoid talking in Mandarin with them.
I’m aware that this is pretty stupid: I shouldn’t be barring myself from chances to practice Chinese because those are exactly how I can improve my Chinese in the first place.
As Linda Holmes brought up in “The Antithesis of the Olympics: Using AI to Write a Fan Letter,” my thought is all that matters - it can be imperfect, and it can be simple, so long as I try my best. What my past self (admittedly very recent past self) failed to recognize was that I never needed to speak putonghua perfectly to be “truly” Chinese. My parents don’t even speak it perfectly, but they lived in China for decades of their life, growing up in its culture and history. That’s literally as Chinese as it gets.
My ancestry cannot be generalized to the government-dictated dialect of China. It’s so much more than that, so the best way I can honor it is by learning about my culture with pride.
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/30/nx-s1-5056201/google-olympics-ai-ad
https://www.lan-bridge.co.uk/confused-about-chinese-mandarin-putonghua-and-simplifiedtraditional-characters/#:~:text=In%20Mainland%20China%2C%20there%20is,across%20the%20mainland%20to%20communicate.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/19787482@N04/6982924704
Annie, to be bilingual is already an accomplishment in its own right! I personally cannot speak my mother tongue (or french, the language I signed up for), so I see the act of speaking two languages to be a physical manifestation of hard work, determination, and connectivity to one's culture. It was really intriguing to learn about the western China bias of Putonghua; it is much like how some shame and belittle people who speak English in a Southern accent.
ReplyDeleteHi Annie! What I admire about your blog is how clearly it shows the effort you put into honoring your ancestry. Learning Mandarin and having those thoughts about the dialect shows how you care for the way you carry your culture. Your experience actually creates many parallels to mine because the dialect of Telugu I had learned growing up was seen as unrefined, so I often avoided talking in it. Your piece has inspired me to speak Telugu, my native language, more freely. Also, speaking the language in a way that more closely resembles the way your parents do might carry more cultural significance, especially since those rural qualities can get lost in mainstream Chinese culture.
ReplyDeleteI am saying this as a person whose first language is not English, it’s a shame you avoided speaking to others in your mother tongue! People who speak Russian are pretty rare around these parts (even with the war going on), so I am always so excited when I find someone who I can connect with without filtering my thoughts through another language. Also, you are so lucky to have gone to Chinese school with the support of your parents! I’ve never gone to Russian classes (or learned Ukrainian, which is my actual ethnicity), I’ve just learned it from my parents. Which no doubt comes with some “uncultured” aspects, so we are in a similar boat there. I really enjoyed the overall message in this post, too, that to be human is to be imperfect and a blend of many things.
ReplyDeleteHi Annie, I really admire how you put so much effort into your culture and learning the language of your ancestors. I relate to that feeling of entering high school and realizing that when matched up against peers, our skills or talents start to feel inferior to those around us. It is not easy being the children of immigrant parents as there are unreal cultural expectations to live up to, and I applaud your courage to unpack it. Understanding that speaking Chinese is so much more than what is outlined in the rule book is such a powerful thing and it applies to so many aspects of life. As the child of Hindi speaking parents I understand the difficulties faced especially when talking to other Hindi speaking friends and even relatives, it is easy to be seen as an outlier due to accent, or vocabulary. I’m happy that upon reflection you realized that the best way to honor your culture is by learning it.
ReplyDeleteAnnie, it’s amazing to see you connect with your culture! As an immigrant myself, I’ve been through almost the exact same thing as you, I’m also trilingual! I definitely get being hesitant in speaking in front of people who are by origin Chinese: I had the luck of being raised for a few years in India which is how I was able to learn Hindi and get closer to my culture, but my sister was born in the UK and only lived a couple of years in India so she experiences the same thing as you when we talk to all our relatives. The line about learning about my culture with pride really resonates with me, since I literally have an accent, but I’ve learned to embrace it instead of thinking of it as a weakness.
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