Chinese Speak

The other day I was describing to my friend how I grew up in a home where my parents spoke mainly in Chinese while the children spoke only in English. Thus we communicated (or struggled to) across a generation and a culture gap for many years. Amazed, my friend wondered how effective that communication could be without the nuances of language. Nuances? Oh, we didn't have any of that.

I can understand mandarin, but I don't speak it. I recently started studying Chinese so that one day I could go to Taiwan and meet my relatives. From my 8 sessions of Mandarin Level 1, I've come to appreciate how language reflects a lot about the 2 cultures of my background. It occurred to me that in Chinese, a single word will function in many different roles. For example, the Chinese use the verb kai for drive (a car), or fly (a plane) or open (a window or door). With the exception of polite forms of address, the no-frills Chinese language serves its function with little regard for nuances. The language also doesn't have different verb forms, for singular vs plural pronouns, nor past, present, future, conditional, subjunctive, etc tenses which is characteristic of latin-based languages. Furthermore, in English, we have the single word aunt to refer to a sister of a parent or grandparent, or the wife of an uncle or great uncle. When you talk about your aunt, the listener doesn't know how she is your aunt until you elaborate. In Chinese, there are distinct terms for every kind of aunt, whether she is the wife of your father's older brother, wife of his younger brother, wife of your mother's older brother, wife of her younger brother, father's younger sister, his older sister, mother's younger sister or her older sister. By having this myriad of terms for relatives, the Chinese language immediately establishes how this person is related to you; no elaborate explanation is required. Economical and efficient. That's how the Chinese speak.

My interpersonal skills

When I am discussing something with my husband, about a topic that is of significant interest to me, I become very animated and my cultural background emerges. First, I lose command of the English language as I struggle to explain my points. I tend to think out loud, and the listener becomes a sounding board to me. Perhaps I lack an appreciation for nuances or my Chinese-ness is coming through, but I also start to speak louder and to say "no!" instead of "that's not what I mean.." or "I don't think so..." or " I see your point, but I..." or "I said this, but actually I meant..." or even, " I disagree." "No!" is my economical way of saying all of the above. Meanwhile, when my husband hears me say "no!", he thinks I'm saying "you're wrong!" So, my husband hates discussing things with me, and gets defensive and retaliatory, and I get frustrated and annoyed, and our discussions inevitably escalate into undesirable tension, and this is even when we are agreeing on something. At our last discussion, I finally saw what was happening, and pointed it out to him and he agreed. I then promised to try to calm down and to elaborate instead of just saying "no!", and I also asked him to be aware of my "discussion style" and not to dwell in his false impression that I am saying he is wrong. What a major breakthrough! It's only because I started studying Chinese that I was able to recognize this, and more; I also realized not all things in life need to be efficient like how the Chinese speak.

-MO