memoirs of a banana
my topic today, sheds another layer of “onion skin”. i hope some of you would be able to relate to it or even share your own experiences or links. on with the show…
i am sure many people have heard this term before. especially if you are of chinese descent, but speak nary a word of chinese (dialect or language). welcome to my world. i am of chinese-thai heritage and the choice of language at home is, English. being malaysian, our conversation has an occasional smattering of cantonese, bahasa melayu (BM) and an occasional thai word or two.
the “kebangsaan” education system, which i attended my whole life, did little to improve my grasp of the chinese language. i was turned away, along with 2 indians kids, from a classroom teaching primary 6 chinese syllabus. it turns out, we did not have the foundation at this point and the teacher found us a bit of a burden. they say, ignorance is bliss, but i wish someone had told me otherwise. i plodded along happily in life until i entered high school (secondary). cultural shock was the least of my concerns at this point. the majority spoke very little English and BM. now at this point of time, i was lucky to have basic conversational skills in cantonese. this i readily admit, was the sole reason i did not commit suicide in my 5 years through high school. every chinese friend i made, spoke mandarin and most understood cantonese. when they were having their conversations, i felt like i was listening to a bunch of aliens gabbling away. frankly speaking, i guess they viewed me more of an alien.
it was here, i learnt to write my name in chinese and also identify some chinese characters from friends. i have them to thank, for all their patience and efforts in teaching a banana, to not split (pun intended). i could now understand simple mandarin conversations and clumsily add an opinion once in a while. they still had many laughs from my pronounciation, or lack thereof, but respected my spunk at giving it a go. sadly, i have not been using mandarin much after i started college till now.
most bananas would agree, that pin yin (Romanized Chinese) is the bee’s knees. i learnt that pin yin taught us the proper pronunciation of chinese words and it was quite accurate. more information on pin yin at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin. just recently, i got back into the habit of listening to mandarin songs. a habit i’ve lost since leaving secondary, as it was good to know about the latest hip chinese music scene at that time. so i’m slowly picking up where i left about 7 years ago. hopefully after this, i will be able to accept those Karaoke sessions i have been constantly invited to by my chinese friends. i stumbled upon this gem of a site in my recent quest for pin yin lyrics, of chinese songs. the site is http://www.leoslyrics.com. definitely worth a visit, as it has most of the current popular songs, all ready in pin yin. i just love the internet!
anyone else share my predicament? got any links or tips to share? do voice it out.
