Native Speech

Is it mandatory to speak our mother tongue?

There’s a saying that we, as native Chinese speakers, should be able to speak in our mother tongue fluently. I wasn’t one to believe in such statements, not to mention that I grew up with a language disorder, making speaking and writing Chinese out of the question during my childhood. This was one such instance where conversing in proper Chinese would’ve gotten me much more insight into this man’s life.

Being the ambitious person I am, I spoke in broken Chinese, all the while knowing that he might not even understand my foreign-sounding pronunciation. It took me a couple of tries, but from our short conversation, I found out that he resides around this neighbourhood at Tiong Bahru and regularly goes down to the exercise area to chill and exercise his legs due to his injury. That’s as far as I got with my limited Chinese vocabulary before asking for some portraits.

Did this event make me want to improve on my mother tongue? Absolutely not, because experiencing migraines by looking at Chinese characters feels like hell on earth. Regardless, this scenario has made me more experienced in striking up conversations with strangers, and I’m glad I took the opportunity when it presented itself.

(Tiong Bahru, 2021)

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