Mandarin is my first language. It is the language my parents taught me when I was little, the only language I used at home.
Mum taught me how to read and write in Chinese, too. She was a hard taskmaster, and I often resented her for it.
She’d been an award-winning essay writer in both Mandarin and English, and I think she saw the same potential in me. But she never said any of that. She just said, "it's important", firmly and calmly, crushing me with the weight of generations of inbuilt filial piety [parental respect].
Nowadays, English is my dominant language. I have to think sentences through before I speak in Mandarin.
Sometimes I’m halfway through before I realise my grammar is wrong, but I don't know how to fix it. Sometimes it's because I've tried to translate something directly from English to Mandarin, even though Mum has told me time and time again that translation doesn’t work that way, and I've gotten stuck halfway through.
‘Language attrition’ refers to the loss of a native language, but not necessarily a complete loss of language. Most of the time it just means more pauses and mistakes.
Yen-Rong as a child. English is now her dominant language. Source: Supplied
European professors Monika Schmid and Barbara Köpke define language attrition as a phenomenon that occurs when someone's first language "becomes less accessible or is modified to some extent as a result of the acquisition of a new language".
Language attrition, then, seems like the natural way of things for people like me - children of parents who migrated to Western societies.
As a teenager, I wish I could have talked to my mother about boys, relationships, and sex. I had so many questions that couldn’t be answered by Google, or even by asking my friends.
Yen-Rong, right, with her mother. Source: Supplied
But I don't even know how I would have started that conversation.
"媽媽,我要跟你討論一下... sex?"
[Mum, I want to talk to you about … sex?]
I don't even know the word for sex in Mandarin.
I wonder what she would say if I told her I'd had sex. I wonder what the conversation would sound like. Would it be entirely in Chinese euphemisms - a Chinese version of ‘the birds and the bees’ – skirting around the point without actually making it?
I wonder if she wishes she could talk to me about sex, if she’d tell me to be wary of boys, and not to be pressured into anything I wasn't comfortable with? I wonder if the conversation would extend much further than having children and starting a family.
I’m now 25, and I still can’t really talk to my mother about my relationships. I wish we could talk about how confused and annoyed and excited I feel when I think I might like someone, about how difficult it was to get my ex-boyfriend to understand our culture. But I can’t have a conversation with her about how to bridge that gap when I don’t even know how to bridge the gap between the two of us.
Yen-Rong today. Source: Supplied
It's what happens in movies; mothers are confidantes for their daughters. They have their issues, but they also have heart-to-heart conversations that end in hugs and tears - or at the very least, a sense of mutual understanding.
I know she loves me with all her heart and she wants the best for me, but to this day, I've never heard her say it, in any language.
However, she still corrects me when I get things wrong. She can’t help herself. I know she’s trying to be helpful, but whenever it happens, I always feel a pang of anger, tinged with guilt.
Maybe it's because I feel like I have let her down or because I too now write essays in English - but none that have won awards. Maybe it's because I know I will never really be able to write a good essay in Chinese.
I know I am lucky. I know many children of immigrants who can't communicate in their parents' languages and the loss of identity they feel they can’t ever get back.
If I have children, I don’t want them to have that sort of experience. I’ll probably make them go to Chinese school to learn Mandarin, and I’ll probably be as strict and firm and calm as my mother was with me. But I want them to be able to talk to me about their relationships. I want them to be comfortable enough to ask me questions in whichever language they want, even if they think it might get awkward.
I know I probably won’t ever have that chance with my own mother, and that’s okay. Maybe just being able to talk to her at all in her native language is enough.
International Mother Language Day is marked on 21 February each year. This story was published in 2020.
Yen-Rong Wong is a freelance writer based in Meanjin, Brisbane, on Jagera and Turrbul land.
