My Chinese Parents

Let me start with a little background. My parents were born and raised in Taiwan, where I was also born. But before my first birthday, they moved abroad and I was raised in England where I learnt to speak English alongside my parents by listening to BBC Radio in the mornings, conversing with the locals during the day, and falling asleep to audiobooks at night. As I became more adept with the English language, I remember growing increasingly frustrated at my parents still being unable to pronounce sounds that came so naturally to me. “Zoo” was “roo”, “although” was “all-low” and, perhaps most annoyingly, my name “John” was “Ron”. They should have just named me Ron. My most dreaded times in the year were parent-teacher evenings when I would have to re-iterate what my parents were saying to my teachers. “Why do they have to break these linguistic conventions?” I would ask myself as a five year old, not realizing what I know now, thanks to Kenstowicz.

The Kenstowicz article made me realize that perhaps I was a little harsh on my parents. My childhood frustration that they simply weren’t trying hard enough to learn to speak “proper” English doesn’t seem as justified after reading about the distinction between phonology and phonetics that gives native speakers an inherent advantage in learning to speak a language. And although my parents still pronounce my name “Ron”, they are very much capable of forming coherent, grammatically correct sentences. Although it is interesting as a speaker of British English to note the example of “tends” and “tents” sounding similar in speech, as they really don’t sound similar if you pronounce the T, it is very much the case that we do rely on context and perceptions to find meaning in words that may sound similar to each other, or even that we don’t know altogether. Coming to the US, I have been in many situations where I have come across an obscure word but managed to figure out the meaning from the context in which it is used (“overalls” instead of “dungarees”).

Gussenhoven’s article was particularly relevant to my parents’ situation as he noted that Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language whereas English is nontonal. Indeed, it is always a humorous experience to hear my friends speak Mandarin, as the tone is usually slightly, if not very off. If you’re not careful, you can end up calling your mother a horse simply by raising your pitch.

The articles helped me consider learning a different language in a different way. As a self-confessed perfectionist (among other things), I have always held myself to a high standard. I would get frustrated at not being quite able to grasp the subtle tonal differences in Mandarin. But now I realize that learning a language is much more complex and perhaps innate than what it seems.