{"id":54179,"date":"2023-10-04T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dvan.org\/?p=54179"},"modified":"2023-08-07T17:15:45","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T00:15:45","slug":"coercion-is-and-cost-me-my-mother-tongue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dvan.org\/2023\/10\/coercion-is-and-cost-me-my-mother-tongue\/","title":{"rendered":"Coercion is (and cost me) my mother tongue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Switzerland (Flickr, CC)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I know how to say sorry in Mandarin but not Hokkien, which is the Chinese my family speaks. That should tell you a bit about my family life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s also why, up until a few weeks ago, I didn\u2019t consider Hokkien my mother tongue. All I know of Hokkien are orders\u2014as in, go there<\/em>, come here<\/em>, don\u2019t do that<\/em>, bring this<\/em>, let\u2019s eat<\/em>\u2014domestic things, an insult or two, and questions\u2014as in, what time is dismissal tomorrow<\/em>, how could you<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But since settling down in Switzerland and seeing droves of kids return home for lunch, and then again in the late afternoon once classes are done, I hear my mom\u2019s voice. Hwai hakseng be tsia lo. Bang heh lo.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This makes me soft. Although my school days looked vastly different from those of the kids in my neighborhood, recalling words my mom used to say\u2014and saying them to myself\u2014takes me back to her picking me and my brother up from school. She always had wet hand towels and warm merienda ready for us. How my head leaned on her supple arm when I slept on the way home. How, years later, my head reached past her arm and rested snugly in the curve of her neck and shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my mom was raising me and teaching me to speak Hokkien, she would mention how Guakong, her dad, who migrated to the Philippines from China, believed that one day, everyone would be conversing in Chinese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her conclusion and order: Gong lannang uwe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back, I wish I could\u2019ve asked: Kokgi asi Hokkien? All the Mandarin I had to memorize in school was about stories and values featuring bamboo and animal characters, some propaganda about Sun Yat-sen, and survival things like how much is this? where is the toilet? I don\u2019t understand.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of them led me closer to my grandparents or helped me express myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was silence the point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swiss people seem to take multilingualism seriously. A lot of the websites I\u2019ve visited, from government websites to online pet stores, allow users to choose German or French as the site language. I\u2019ve seen a few that included Italian and Romansh, the other two national languages in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his book The Art of Not Being Governed<\/em>, James C. Scott considers Switzerland a shatter zone, calling it \u201ca mountain kingdom at the periphery of Germany, France, and Italy.\u201d In the 16th and 17th centuries, around the time of the Reformation, people in these parts of Europe who felt threatened by their governments or the Vatican fled to higher altitudes\u2014the Alps\u2014for refuge. Dukes or religious leaders back then would have had to spend loads of money and men to search for alleged heretics through rough terrain, so they didn\u2019t. Success wasn\u2019t guaranteed either. Because different tribes or communes have settled in this hilly zone for centuries to escape <\/em>oppression and coercion, what has emerged, eventually, is a confederation of smaller states called cantons. There is an understanding of and tolerance for each community\u2019s customs and language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this sounds close to the diverse, free, and egalitarian society of my dreams, their level of multilingualism is intimidating. Multilingualism to me has meant code-switching, peppering my sentences with English, Tagalog, or Hokkien words. Here, probably because of the absence of a single enforced national language, the many polyglots can say what they want to say in at least three languages. This means they\u2019ve spent time and effort to learn. So could I really fault my electrician-neighbor for scolding my husband for not speaking any Swiss language? I can still call her mean, since she snapped when he was only asking for help to get our stove to work. But I can also see how immigrants like me could change this multilingual landscape of Switzerland, which could be something she\u2019s proud of, or at least has had to reckon with for years by learning other languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keine Sorge, Oma. Ich lerne Deutsch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was little, learning Hokkien was a grueling exchange of asking what the Hokkien word for something was, saying it and saying it until my mom was satisfied, then saying it in the sentence I\u2019d wanted to say\u2014but by that point, I didn\u2019t feel like talking anymore. And because I detested the strictness that came with learning Hokkien, my mom and I would eventually strike a deal: that I would just respond using the language I was addressed in. This made chatting more natural again. But little did I know that I would teach myself to speak only when spoken to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years before the said deal, when my mom spent mornings at work, I loved babbling to our katulong at home. While they prepared lunch, they indulged my aimless chatter and my singing of Disney songs, where I spat syllables I\u2019d picked up but hardly recognized as words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yaya Gene Gene was my favorite. I could tell her what I wanted\u2014\u201cGusto ko yung headband na may tirintas!\u201d\u2014and she could tell me when I was being a whiny pain or too duwag for my own good. When she would braid my hair into various styles at 4:45 in the morning, an hour before going to school, I\u2019d teach her the Hokkien words I learned from my mom. Why shouldn\u2019t we learn to speak another language together? We were living in the same house. \u201c\u2018Pag sinabing \u2018Lannang,\u2019 ibig-sabihin \u2018Chinese.\u2019 Pag sinabing \u2018Huan-a,\u2019 ibig-sabihin \u2018Pilipino.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mom overheard me one day and was not pleased. The point was to speak about Pinoys in front of them without them understanding a word. She would switch to her broken Mandarin to shame me to my brother and my dad. But being othered doesn\u2019t need a language. To be othered is precisely to lose touch without your consent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was 16 when I realized that my mom is fluent in Tagalog. When I was struggling to read a Tagalog translation of Noli Me Tangere<\/em>, the Castilian-language novel that sparked the Philippine Revolution, <\/em>for school, my mom offered to help. So every night after dinner, she read the Tagalog text aloud, then explained every paragraph in a mix of Hokkien, Tagalog, and English. The first time she read Noli<\/em> to me, I was shocked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMahilig ako magbasa ng Tagalog komiks nung bata\u2019t dalaga ako!\u201d There was pride in her voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At her dad\u2019s wake 14 years later, I\u2019d learn that she too was raised to always speak in \u201cChinese.\u201d How her dad insisted, \u201cGong lannang uwe!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another life, I would have really liked for Chinoys and Pinoys to let each other be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was 18, a college freshman, I learned that \u201clannang\u201d didn\u2019t mean what I thought it meant. In the context of dating and the \u201cGreat Wall of China,\u201d I was ranting to Chinoy friends about how the Chinese Filipino community discriminated against Filipinos. One of them told me that even what we called ourselves was exclusionary. \u201cIt comes from lan<\/em> lang<\/em>, us<\/em> people<\/em>,\u201d he said, gesturing at us both. \u201cAnd huan-a doesn\u2019t mean Filipino. It translates to barbarian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Airbnb host Eliza had invited my husband and me to a Jehovah\u2019s Witness event. She told us that Filipinos were going to be there, so that made us more eager to attend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the event, a few Germans and Swiss asked me, \u201cDo you speak Tagalog too or another Philippine language?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do these people know \u201cTagalog\u201d and have the decency to say it right? Ta-GA-log, not Tag-a-log or Teg-e-log. One person opened his question by saying, \u201cPhilippines is so big, you guys have so many languages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another, an American, asked, \u201cKumusta ka?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMabuti!\u201d I said. \u201cIkaw?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMabuti rin!\u201d She looked pleased with herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it a good joke or a bad joke if I said the Jehovah\u2019s Witness hall felt like heaven? Because I have never felt that level of warmth and acceptance about being Filipino. In Manila, especially since 2016, since the influx of mainland Chinese people due to POGO, since the Chinese government continued to station ships on the West Philippine Sea, and since local media kept attributing such aggression to \u201cthe Chinese,\u201d I\u2019ve been accosted with \u201cChing chong chang,\u201d \u201cChinese ka?\u201d or \u201cIntsik ka?\u201d when I\u2019m alone. In an elevator, in a cab, or when I\u2019m just walking to the toilet at the mall. I know Chinoys haven\u2019t been the nicest people to Pinoys. But racial slurs barked at someone can unmoor them. They rob me of my certainty of home and deny my essence as a person as I\u2019m reduced to skin. And there\u2019s a special kind of ache when the people you identify with don\u2019t accept you and <\/em>other you. That Pinoys will gladly adopt or claim some white person who\u2019s never lived in the Philippines to be Filipino has, admittedly, made me wonder, \u201cDo I have to be white to be Filipino?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people at the event did ask about my heritage. But they understood that you could be many things or lean more toward one culture or the other. I learned that it was the same for some of them, whose parents or grandparents came to Switzerland from countries I\u2019d never heard of. Like me, they had languages only they could speak and understand at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swiss German is also spoken in Switzerland, and immigrants like Eliza (who came from the UK) also learned it, albeit with great difficulty. Paul Jorgensen, founder and creator of Langfocus, found that the rise of Adolf Hitler and the outbreak of WWII made a number of Swiss people speak more Swiss German to distinguish themselves from Nazi Germany. I like the distinction, this awareness of High German and Swiss German: what\u2019s taught in schools versus what they\u2019ve made for themselves. And because the German-speaking locals have inherited both from their families and communes, they have a choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s this joke that my husband, his friends, and I have. Ask us what we learned in all our Chinese classes, and we\u2019ll tell you: wo xihuan chi mangguo<\/em>, intentionally butchering the tones. My cousins, who are Gen Z, know it too and have said it at mealtimes, even exaggerating the chi <\/em>for churrrrr<\/em>. Our parents and grandparents don\u2019t laugh. They don\u2019t seem upset, which makes me wonder if they hear the irony, the implied criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure Chinoy parents are proud to put their kids in \u201cChinese schools.\u201d But all those years spent learning a language foreign to us and<\/em> our immediate families, a language we can barely use to speak to each other, much less do business with\u2014we could\u2019ve spent it in each other\u2019s presence. Letting ourselves be known through our speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But culture, too, works against this idea. Given their interpretation of respect and filial piety, Chinoy parents wouldn\u2019t feel like having children who commanded Hokkien is in their interest. All the musical tones of the language, how it not only accommodates rage but lets it resound in our bodies, are reserved for the patriarch or matriarch. Silence is the default. We dilute our feelings by code-switching to sorry<\/em> or love you<\/em>. We don\u2019t say gua thia di<\/em>\u2014the word thia<\/em>, love, a throat swell away from thia<\/em>, painful, which is again another swell away from thia<\/em>, listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please don\u2019t tell me \u201cAt least you\u2019re fluent in English.\u201d This is often used in the context of employment: \u201cYou\u2019re more competitive,\u201d \u201cThere are more career opportunities for you.\u201d I know other people want to be articulate or fluent in English for those reasons. And I too spent my summer breaks, especially those before college entrance exams, combing through English grammar books to write \u201cmore complex\u201d sentences and reading classics to beef up my vocabulary. But does one need to be fluent in English, or are we using language to exclude people by calling some languages \u201cofficial\u201d or \u201cformal\u201d? Did I want to be fluent in English for the sake of it, or did I just need a vessel to give shape to my voice, which my younger self felt was silenced? English became the default because of how accessible it was to me, growing up with American cartoons and having English as the mode of instruction at school. And because it appeased my mom, who came of age and started a family at a time when anything American was covetable in the eyes of the average Filipino, or Chinoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My job search in Switzerland is limited to English-only-speaking roles. Hiring websites ask me to select my level of English: mother tongue, A level, B level, C level. In my applications, I choose \u201cmother tongue\u201d even if I\u2019m not so sure. Can your mother tongue be a language your own mother doesn\u2019t confidently speak? No other option seems to accommodate \u201ccolonialism\u201d better than \u201cmother tongue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as I would like to, I can\u2019t work in the service industry or in customer service until I can understand and speak a Swiss language. And I\u2019m genuinely happy for the locals for that. So used to an environment where I (and other Pinoys) have had to accommodate a foreigner by speaking a foreign language, I\u2019m grateful for people who can assert something so vital to their identity and culture, without telling me to go back to my country. How I wish that firmness were innate in me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help me learn German, my notes don\u2019t just bear the English translations. Tagalog words have sprung up too. \u201cMove as in galaw = bewegen. Move as in lipat = ziehen.\u201d When I found myself using Tagalog because I couldn\u2019t instinctively summon English synonyms to help me, I knew, without a doubt, that English is a borrowed tongue, one that cost other people\u2019s blood; and Tagalog a native tongue, one that underpins how I understand the world around me despite my Taglish and Tagalog-Hokkien, despite my writing in English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The probability of losing the Tagalog I know is slim. I speak to my brother, whom I\u2019m very close to, in Tagalog. We only code-switch to Hokkien for Chinoy things like pwationgchu. There\u2019s a bigger chance I\u2019ll lose Hokkien because it\u2019s a regional language and the only people I know who speak it are immigrants or from immigrant families. My parents\u2019 generation seems to be the last to use Hokkien outside the home, with their friends. No standard system of writing like pinyin exists to help us pronounce the words or let us DM each other and be understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that a system should<\/em> exist. Orality and oral cultures wield the power of community because speech is shared with others. They have a bodily connection where our tone, silences, and facial expressions, among other physicalities and intimacies, reveal our meaning, our fronts, and what we bury in a given moment. Unfortunately, my family doesn\u2019t have stories or songs in Hokkien to pass down. Those could\u2019ve created the positive environment I needed to be fluent. The safe, playful space all of us needed to be vulnerable. All the Hokkien I seem to know has come from the unremarkableness, necessities, and frustrations of the everyday. Stringing words together means unearthing from my mind each relative\u2019s voice and the mundane or heated moments I witnessed or shared with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the grand scheme of things, the value of a mother tongue is a construct. The same goes for being multilingual as the Swiss know it to be and being able to pass down a language. We each get to define and rank what matters to us, which reveals the absence of a universal set of values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I speak and think in fragments. It\u2019s something I don\u2019t particularly like about myself when I think about how I struggle to write straight<\/em>. But who told me it shouldn\u2019t be so, that this can\u2019t be a flow of its own? A way to remember the conflicts that came before me, to hurl this mess upon the world as evidence of its own mess, to recognize difference and know better than belittle. Bue iau kin<\/em>, says a voice in my head. It\u2019s my grandmother\u2019s. The phrase\u2019s lilt, how the tone curves and speeds upward like an arpeggio, embraces me whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Mei Wen<\/strong> is a Chinese Filipino writer who explores her relationship with herself, her family, and art through essays. Her works have appeared in\u00a0Spellbinder<\/em>,\u00a0The Lumiere Review<\/em>,\u00a0Anak Sastra<\/em>,\u00a0The Ekphrastic Review<\/em>,\u00a0After the Art<\/em>, and\u00a011 x 9: Collaborative Poetry from the Philippines and Singapore<\/em>, among others. She enjoys nurturing communities, film photography, and watching cat reels. Born and raised in the Philippines, she now lives in Switzerland. Mei Wen is a pseudonym. Instagram:\u00a0@houseblessing_<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know how to say sorry in Mandarin but not Hokkien, which is the Chinese my family speaks. That should tell you a bit about my family life.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s also why, up until a few weeks ago, I didn\u2019t consider Hokkien my mother tongue. All I know of Hokkien are orders\u2014as in, go there, come here, don\u2019t do that, bring this, let\u2019s eat\u2014domestic things, an insult or two, and questions\u2014as in, what time is dismissal tomorrow, how could you.<\/p>\n

But since settling down in Switzerland and seeing droves of kids return home for lunch, and then again in the late afternoon once classes are done, I hear my mom\u2019s voice. Hwai hakseng be tsia lo. Bang heh lo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":54181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nCoercion is (and cost me) my mother tongue - DVAN<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dvan.org\/2023\/10\/coercion-is-and-cost-me-my-mother-tongue\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Coercion is (and cost me) my mother tongue - DVAN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I know how to say sorry in Mandarin but not Hokkien, which is the Chinese my family speaks. That should tell you a bit about my family life. That\u2019s also why, up until a few weeks ago, I didn\u2019t consider Hokkien my mother tongue. All I know of Hokkien are orders\u2014as in, go there, come here, don\u2019t do that, bring this, let\u2019s eat\u2014domestic things, an insult or two, and questions\u2014as in, what time is dismissal tomorrow, how could you. But since settling down in Switzerland and seeing droves of kids return home for lunch, and then again in the late afternoon once classes are done, I hear my mom\u2019s voice. Hwai hakseng be tsia lo. 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