You're so funny, mummy, you mix all your languages up together!

We're playing dominoes, Jasmine, Dave and I. They are special musical dominoes, but they do not play a tune. You have to match the value of the notes or treble clefs. Anyway, I was not really paying attention as I was thinking of something to pen down on here. It was Dave's turn and he had to pick up as he could not go, and then he said, "Mummy!" I looked up and said, "You cannot go, ah?" This was said just as Mitch was walking past and said, "You're so funny mummy, you mix up all your languages together." What he meant was that I mix English with some Malaysian expressions, and also sometimes Chinese.

For my friends who come from Malaysia and speak several languages and dialects, this is not something unusual. We mix up all all languages together easily. A sentence could contain Malay, English and Chinese words.  For example, " Want to go makan?" This means, "Shall we go out for a meal?" Makan means to eat in Malay, we tend to go out for meals, just like the English would go out to a pub. Another one is,"Mana eh sai, ahn ne kuan eh?" This is a Malay and Hokkien mix. Hokkien is a chinese dialect that I speak. Mana is Malay for where. the sentence means," How can that be?" that's the best I can explain it and literal translation would not have made sense.  We speak like this without thinking, substituting words in other languages with no bother at all.  We do it automatically and it makes our sentences more alive, well, I think so anyway.

Mitchell has a lot of Chinese friends in his new school, in fact, Caucasians are a minority. This is a new experience for him, and for Jasmine too.  For the first time ever, he has thought hard about learning Chinese. I know, I know, I should have thought my children how to speak my Chinese dialect. I was lazy. I was married to Dave, who is English, and so we conversed in English all the time. My Chinese is conversational and therefore not of interpreter standards.  This is probably because I did not go to a Chinese school back home, so I do not read or write in Chinese. Because of this, I am embarrassed to say I am Chinese and call myself Malaysian mostly. This in turn confuses all my friends outside Malaysia, when I reveal I am Chinese, they said, but I thought you said you were Malaysian. Confusing? Not really. I am of Chinese descent, and as far as I know, I have only Chinese blood, no mixed marriages between my great, great grandparents down to my grandparents. I am also Malaysian by citizenship as I was born in Malaysia. It would be as though I called myself English because I was born in England, but had parents of Chinese descent. Confused? Hope not. I'm rambling.

So, no excuses really for not teaching my kids any Chinese, I tried for a while but did not persevere.  I have some friends of mixed German/English marriage and they have spoken to their children in German almost exclusively when on their own with them. The children speak perfect English at school and with their friends, and speak German with their mum. Well, their mum speaks German to them and they understand, but they generally answer in English. Truly bilingual children. I wish I had persevered and my kids now, then they could converse with their friends, in Hokkien at least.

I now try to talk to Mitch and Jas in Cantonese, as this is what is spoken by most of their friends. They just make fun of me though and pretend to talk back in Cantonese, but it's all gobbledygook. They have got the sing song intonation right though. I don't mind and have taught them several phrases they can use with their friends. There is also Chinese school that they can go to, outside of school hours. York District offers several language lessons on a Saturday where our kids could attend, but they are resisting for now.  The language to learn at the moment is Mandarin of course. I can't speak or understand this very well, but can usually get by. For the future though, what with China in the open market, it would be a very useful language to have indeed.