Learners of languages come from all sorts of backgrounds, some are brand new, some learn as a secondary language in school, and others pick up the language through conversation but without formal schooling. But what about those who can’t speak, read, or write the language, and yet understand the language like a native? This last category is the one that I sort of fall into (unfortunately?), and it’s an odd situation that a surprisingly large number of people can relate to. This is my story of my experience being in this odd situation, and how I am actively trying to remedy it.

I grew up in a household that spoke both English and Chinese (Mandarin), but from a young age I began responding only in English, and curiously, this has put me in the rather awkward position of being able to understand basic conversation in Chinese but unable to actually take part in it. Most of my peers who are the sons and daughters of parents from China typically communicate with their parents in Chinese. Even if they don’t, they usually go to Chinese School, where they learn how to read and write (and presumably speak, as well). It is still something of a mystery to me why I stopped speaking to my parents in Chinese, and why they never enrolled me in Chinese School. When questioned, my Dad would often say it was to ensure nothing interfered with my English. Because if you’re born in America, you ought to speak good English, he’d say.

It appears to be a common assumption that if one can’t speak a language, one probably doesn’t understand much of it either. It makes a lot of sense; after all if a person can’t understand a language, they can’t speak it, but that doesn’t imply, logically, that the converse must also be true. This commonly held assumption, though, has led me to make some interesting observations in my own life.

For instance, often when my parents’ friends from China come over to the United States for a visit, my parents will often invite them over to our home to stay a short while. Before meeting my brother and me, my parents tell them we don’t speak Chinese (rather, they say we don’t ‘dare’ (敢) speak Chinese, as if to imply that maybe we could, but are too shy to do so). Typically this is interpreted to mean that we probably don’t understand much Chinese, and often our friendly guests would try to accomodate by using their best English to communicate with us, usually a friendly “hi”, as oftentimes they don’t speak very good English. The irony of course is, we would have understood those same phrases in Chinese, and a lot more, but it’s hard to tell when we never say a word in Chinese.

Sometimes on random walks I would run into a family from mainland China, and they would naively ask me a question (usually directions) in Chinese, because they guess from my appearance that I must know Chinese. I immediately find myself in this strange situation in which I know exactly what was asked, but am incapable of communicating back a response. I either do a bunch of finger pointing or otherwise feign ignorance. It’s heart-wrenching when I do the latter because I usually do understand what they ask.

I could have just kept on this way forever, but as you may be able to tell, I eventually grew frustrated. I especially grew frustrated when the language barrier got in the way of communicating with my parents. This was especially true with my mother, who learned English late, and as a result communicates with us almost entirely in Chinese. Everything I say to my mother gets subconciously passed into a filter to be turned into simple English that my mother could understand, but when even that isn’t enough, sometimes it is literally impossible for us to communicate.

This is why, when I entered college, I resolved to seriously study Chinese.

Chinese is a tough language to learn, as any non-native speaker can attest. For western learners in particular, Chinese presents challenges all across the linguistic spectrum, from the sounds it requires (pronunciation and tones), the character based writing system, a completely different grammar, and most importantly, an immense amount of cultural baggage which must be learned in order to get even close to an advanced level. I wasn’t completely aware of all of this when I went in, but I had an inkling that it was going to be tough.

The choice to learn Chinese was no easy matter. Many people tout learning a new language as a great side hobby, but I beg to disagree. Learning a few words in another language is fun, but to learn a language to the point in which you can improvise sentences and respond in a simple conversation is tough work, as I experienced while attempting to learn French on the side (via Duolingo!). I knew it would require a substantial investment of time and energy, and apparently my parents knew this too, my dad having been a student of English and my mother having been a student of Japanese. They actively tried discouraging me from doing so. My dad cited a long list of American entrepreneurs who had successful businesses in China, having not spoken a word of Chinese. He emphasized the testimony of many of my Chinese peers who absolutely hated going to Chinese school. “Why are you chasing something so many others hate doing?” he often asked me. Prep for your career, they said. You could always learn Chinese later. Thinking back to my experience learning French, I knew it was either now or never. I enrolled, against their wishes, in accelerated beginners class designed for heritage speakers… except, I wasn’t actually a speaker.

I bit my tongue and played the fool for the first several weeks, as I got used to pronouncing the sounds of the language in my mouth, and identifying basic words that I knew but couldn’t readily recall. Truly I am most grateful to my Chinese teachers, who understood my situation and gave me the help and encouragement I needed to continue trying to learn the language in an accelerated environment. I went to Chinese tables three times a week outside of class to practice with teachers and other students, and I spent hours scribbling down characters in a notebook, trying to learn and commit to memory the forms of the words.

Today, three years later, I’m still far from proficient in the language, but I found myself more ready to communicate basic phrases to people, and able to read. But something else happened too - I discovered my love and interest in Chinese culture. Any language carries with it the culture that went into it, and Chinese certainly is no exception. Though the language has gone through some evolution, the written script is the same script used by the ancients some two thousand years ago, and I found with a little extra effort (read: a one semester course in classical Chinese) I could begin to read these texts as well.

I could write an entire post about my newfound interest in Chinese philosophy, calligraphy, culture, and everything else, but I think I’ll close this here. My key takeaways are as follows - if you can ever find the opportunity to learn a new language or culture, take it. It can be life changing, especially if its part of your cultural background. Learning a Chinese has given me a tremendous amount of insight into the cultural differences that underlie the history of the East and how the East is today - and I’m not trying to sound cliché by saying this. Most of all, it can really be fun.

A family friend gifted me a special Chinese dictionary specifically made for studying classical Chinese texts. They usually provide word etymologies and extensive lists of definitions which you, the reader, will have to piece together in order to decipher and understand older texts. He told me that whenever he had a bad day he would open to a random page in the dictionary and read it, immersing himself in it, and forget all his troubles - and he’s a native Chinese speaker!

It’s funny how little I knew about my own cultural background - despite being passively able to understand Chinese, and now being able to speak, read, and write it with limited fluency, I still feel as if I’ve barely scratched the surface of a rich culture and civilization.

Signing off,

~Roland