learning my heritage in a foreign land

I am ethnically Chinese, and I am also 3rd generation Singaporean. (Wow, this is about the first time I am revealing that much information about myself). Whatever they say about Singapore being a good place to raise bicultural and bilingual children, they don't mean it thoroughly. The children are raised with one foot in their parent's culture, another foot in the modern world. What results is usually an incomplete understanding of either culture or language. Yes, it provides a foundation for the children to quickly learn more about one culture/language. However, the child must make the effort to learn. And learning usually involves visiting another country, ideally living there for a while.

The way I've set it up, you'd think I learned to use chopsticks in Singapore, but learned to properly hold it in China. Well, not really. I learned to hold my chopsticks in a little Chinese American restaurant, following the directions printed in the paper sleeve holding my disposable chopsticks. At the ripe age of 12, I learned to hold my chopsticks properly while my classmates continued holding their chopsticks in what is considered a childish fashion.

Strangely, I have also learned to speak Chinese more fluently since coming to the US. In Singapore, there was never really a need to say more than a few words to convey a crude idea of what I want. Then I met my college roommate's parents for the first time and realized that I really could not speak Chinese even if I tried really hard. They speak mainly Cantonese and a little Chinese.

Around the same time, I met another friend's parents for the first time. They are Taiwanese, and they expected me to be able to converse with them in Chinese. I can usually get away with speaking English . By replying in English, I can usually persuade the other party to reply in English but not these people. The dad immediately demanded in Chinese, "Can't you speak Chinese?"

Taiwanese dramas were popular back in those days, and I checked them out of of curiosity. A few episodes into them, I realized that it was easy to pick up conversational Chinese even if I was barely paying attention to the dialogue. And my Chinese did improve.

While visiting Singapore over a recent break, I found myself watching a few local Chinese dramas. If the modern dramas bear any resemblance to the dramas I watched while growing up there, I think I can understand why I didn't learn much from watching them. The dialogue was usually brusque, involving a lot of emotional exchange. It is not strange that I failed to pick up complete sentences from them. I also happened to catch an early 1980's drama where the sentences were more complete, although the show was also more awkward. While the quality of speech in the dramas may reflect reality, the dramas are also guilty of reinforcing the downward spiral in the quality of language.

This is not all to say that I did not benefit from growing up with a foot in 2 cultures. I think that at some point, people, especially those in an isolated society, need to seek out a more complete source of knowledge to counter its gradual erosion. I recently read somewhere that there are more non-native English speakers than native ones, and this will change the form of the English language as we know it. Perhaps we can accept this. But to accept the downward spiral of a language such that it is no longer poetic: is this not reversing what the progress that we have made over years? There was once a time when not all native speakers were literate enough to appreciate literature. After all it is only very recently that mass education has equalized the playing field, such that even a bus driver like JK Rowling can write a best selling series.

A thought in progress, I have no conclusion.

PS. I am assuming that out of necessity, the non-native speaker has made the language simpler and less nuanced. My experience with non-native use of a language is that the first order approximation is made by injecting keywords without regard for how they are connected (since the idea can be broadly conveyed this way).