大家早安. Good morning, everyone. Magandang umaga! Buenos dias! Bonjour!
Ho tsa khi.. that’s Hokkien.. but we don’t really do that.. greet people in Hokkien with good morning – except for occasions when we, the Tsinoy Hokkien speaking generation greet our Hokkien speaking elders who do not speak English.
Jia beh? That’s our usual greeting. Have you eaten? This speaks much of our culture, doesn’t it? 😋
There are 3 kinds of bilinguals: (compound, coordinate and subordinate)
I am a compound bilingual of Hokkien and Tagalog, coordinate bilingual of Mandarin and English born to a subordinate bilingual father (born in China came to the Philippines in his teens) and a compound-coordinate bilingual mom, born in the Philippines).
I am thankful that I know 4 languages – Hokkien, Tagalog, English and Mandarin and a scanty grasp of Cantonese because of hubby.
Of these 4, Hokkien is the only one spoken rather than written. Hubby observed to me that it is possible to read the Chinese Bible in Cantonese word for word but it is difficult to do so in Hokkien. And it’s true – I would prefer to read orally the Bible in Mandarin than in Hokkien. The Hokkien dialect has no written form – it’s just a spoken one.
Learning a language is easier as a child. I remember there was a period in my young years when certain words/concepts popped and easily ‘dinged’ in my mind. It’s an abstract thing – I just knew it and understood what it was – the word that I heard or saw. I read somewhere that language skills of the child best honed under 6 years old. I tried to learn French when I was 39. Believe me, it was hard. My French teacher knew and spoke more Filipino than I could in French. 😅
Do you know their conjugations of verbs are horrendous! And their language has masculine and feminine for adjectives, articles etc.. We don’t have that in Hokkien or spoken Mandarin or Filipino or English!
I don’t understand why Spanish and French have these differentiations in genders for adjectives and verbs etc.
A little trivia, I got pregnant about the time I had my French hence Michelle.. 😍 The only French legacy from my French classes today. 😜
This brings me to my next point – language must be spoken and practiced to be totally grasped. My French did not improve because I had no one to speak it with. And it was too complicated to learn and perfect at my age, in my time where I am. I have no need to speak or write it. I do not have French friends to practice it.
There are many advantages for being a multi-lingual. For a movie buff like me – trained as a child to watch Mandarin films with written Chinese subtitles helped me a lot to relate both the spoken/written words – honing my listening and reading skills as well. While I didn’t like writing Chinese words as a child, I’ve come to value my Chinese proficiency – far from perfect – but workable. It helps to read Chinese – medications, instructions, rules, signs. Even Japanese has words close to the Chinese language.
I realised how blessed I am to be born into this Tsinoy culture… Thank God for giving mankind – the words to express themselves, to relate and communicate with each other.
Here’s an interesting TED talk on bilingualism.. https://fb.watch/uNwypj6RZk/
