In their 20s, my parents decided to take a leap of faith to move from XiaMen, China (Fujian province) to Singapore for a better livelihood. Although they couldn’t speak a word of English when they first moved here, being exposed to the language while working here throughout the years have allowed them to acquire the basics to communicate in Singapore. Knowing the importance of English in Singapore, my parents would often bring my siblings and I to the library to borrow books for the week. They would also make us attend the storytelling events hosted by the National Library Board every week. Thinking back, I gained proficiency in English through these small habits that my parents made, and I am immensely grateful for that.
Of course, the main language that our family uses at home would be Mandarin. My parents would use Mandarin to communicate with us, but among the both of them, they will use Hokkien (福建话). Especially when they are complaining about someone (usually us…) or a frustrating situation, it will always be conveyed in Hokkien as it is still the language that they were the most comfortable in. From there, my siblings and I got interested in the dialect as it was very different from the usual English and Mandarin we spoke. We would often imitate the way they spoke and guess what they were trying to convey. We would also interrupt our parents’ conversations just to find out what they were talking about. Unconsciously, we were able to match the dialect to Mandarin and understand Hokkien with ease. Since Mandarin and Hokkien are linguistically different, hopefully one day my siblings and I can speak this dialect as fluently as we could understand them.
I have always felt that listening is very important in Language acquisition in children. When we listen, we can get to understand the pronunciation in a particular language and subsequently understand them by asking and inference. As we understand them, it will then be easier to improve the “speaking” of the language and gain confidence in communicating through that language.
This piece was written by our #SGUnited intern, Yanlin. Yanlin is a Chinese major and will be in her fourth year.