Trilingual Family

Strictly speaking, my mother tongue – if the definition of mother tongue is the one that you hear/speak throughout childhood – is not Mandarin Chinese but Fenghua Hua, the dialect from my hometown where I grew up and lived till 17 years old before I left for university in Shangahi. Mandarin is a language that I learnt when I started school at the age of six. (by the way, isn’t it a proof that a new language can be learnt at a rather ‘late’ age of six?)

Yet, I am not teaching Nina Fenghua Hua, but Mandarin Chinese only. Even my mom said that she would make an effort to speak Mandarin with Nina. The reason? ‘Because Fenghua Hua has no real value’, quote from my mom.

Is it true that the dialect has no value?

I was chatting with L. who has a daughter about same age as Nina and an older son of 3 years old. L is origionally from North-East part of India while her husband is from South India. They each speak different regional languages (I didn’t manage to remember the names of languages, shame on me!) so English becomes the common language between them. Their older son speaks some words of L’s local language thanks to L’s mother’s effort, but their younger daughter will not, because they have decided not to teach her that language.

It also leads me to think of my 8-year-old niece (my sister’s daughter) who lives in a city not far from our hometown. She can understand Fenghua Hua because that’s pretty much the only language that her great-grandparents speak, however she would always reply back in Mandarin because that’s what she has been talked to by her parents and in school from birth. No one including her great-grandparents seems to be bothered.

On a different note, Shanghai Hua is getting a momentum from its locals – those whose parents are Shanghainese too, NOT those ‘new Shanghainese’ who are recent migrants to the city like myself – to be spoken more not only on the street but also in more public areas including bus & metro for the stop announcement for example. It is a movement that gets more and more supports in recent years. It’s not uncommon to see a passage on weibo (a Chinese version of facebook and twitter combined) in standard Chinese characters but would make sense only when pronounced in Shanghai Hua. I have many friends from Shanghai talking to their kids in Shanghai Hua only at home.

So why Fenghua Hua & L’s language and Shanghai Hua are getting so different treatment from its own people? Is it because people from Shanghai feel more strongly about their heritage? Or simply down to the fact that Shanghai has a large enough population to support the evolvement of its dialect? Or perhaps because Shanghai holds such an important place as a city and an economy in the whole country that its people feel their dialect deserves a special place to match?

I don’t have an answer. There perhaps isn’t a simple answer.

For now, I continue to speak Fenghua Hua with my mom and Mandarin with my daughter.

It’s incredible how one person can NOT hear a converstation at all when the conversation is in a language that one doesn’t understand.

In case you haven’t seen my previous blog, my mom is staying with us for three months after Nina was born. She speaks a Chinese dialet – Fenghua hua, and my husband speaks French. They don’t understand each other’s language.

So this is what happens quite often. My husband would ask me  a question in French, and just when I am about to answer or half way through the conversation, my mom would start a conversation with me, as if she doesn’t hear that there is already another conversation going on, and I cannot answer two questions at the same time! My husband sometimes would do the same, but ever since I protested once he pays a lot of attention not starting a second conversation. Alas, my mom still does …

I don’t think they are being rude to cut an on-going conversation. It’s just that, since they don’t understand the other language, they don’t register the fact that there is another converstation. It’s like the brain auto-filters the strange language. When you think of it, brain sometimes can ignore things that it doesn’t pay attention to. That’s how brain survives – if it has to register everything single information happening at the same time, it would go insane!

Now I think back when I just arrived in France, when my French was less than so-so, my brain sometimes totally switched off that I didn’t hear a single French word even when I was surrounded by French conversation. It might be the same thing for my mom and my husband.

Hopefully, Nina won’t filter out Chinese and French in the future.

By going to the mothers’s group, I realized just how many multilingual families there are out there in Sydney – or at least in Chatswood area.

Just in my mothers’ group, there are moms who are speaking French, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Ukranian, Korean, and Chinese to their babies. It’s very encouraging to see that every mom is so comfortable and natural in speaking respective language to the baby.

Statistically in the year of 2010, 15% of Australian speak a language other than English at home. 22% are overseas born and 25% of people born here have at least one parent born overseas. And that’s for whole Australia. I’m quite certain that the figure is much higher around Sydney.

I suggested to two other ladies, Grace (Spanish speaking) and Emilie (French speaking), that we should get together regularly so just to share our multilingual experience. Yet to propose to other moms in the similar situation, but they two seem quite keen with the idea. It’s going to be great to be able to share our experience, learnings, frustration, and encouragement with each other, together with our bubs who are at the same age.

–

Nina started to make more sounds and I wonder if some of these sounds are more Chinese, and some more French. I’m sure they are not, but one could always think crazy thoughts, couldn’t she? 🙂

I was chatting with my wonderful hairdresser, B, earlier this week (so yes as you gathered I even managed to get a proper hair cut finally!! the first since the birth of Nina).

B was born and grew up in Sydney to a Shanghainese mother who left Shanghai as a young girl. B speaks Shanghainese (the dialect from Shanghai – more about dialects in China, see this blog) with her mother at home, but B has no knowlege of Mandarin nor is able to read/write any form of Chinese.

So I asked B if her mother has tried to teach her Mandarin/reading/writing. She said she went to a Chinese school on Saturdays when she just started school (in Australia, it is called Year 1 / 2, equivalent to the first/second year of Primary school I think), but she hated it.

–  ‘It was just too hard’. B said. So after a few Saturdays she stopped going.

– ‘ Do you wish you had continued?’ I asked. I am curious.

– ‘I wish I did’. She didn’t hesitate to reply.

– ‘Did you mum try to convience you or force you to go?’ I asked.

–  ‘I wish she did’. Another swift reply.

B.went to Shanghai for the first time – and the only time so far – two years ago. She was so excited before the trip that she’s finally able to speak Shanghainese for real. To her astonishment and disappointment, not so many people understood her – partly because not everyone in Shanghai speaks the local dialect and Mandarin is more popular (although in recent years there is a movement by the locals to re-instate Shanghainese as another official local language. I perhaps should write another blog entry about this, a very interesting movement), and partly because her Shanghainese is the one from almost half a century ago. The dialect has evolved and changed, like the city itself.

B. told me she wishes to learn some Mandarin and perhaps even one day go to Shanghai to work and live for a while.

It makes me ponder, if one day, Nina tells me ‘mum, it’s just too hard’, what should I do?