WHERE TO, NOW?

Friday, May 16, 2008

• I want to be truly quadrilingual

  I am bilingual. I can safely say that I am purely bilingual since I was a kid. My mother tongue is Malay and I have been taught English since I can remember. I was born in an English-speaking environment (a hospital in Melbourne) but was brought to Malaysia before I could speak. Thus my first language came from the language of the community I was brought up in - Malay.

  English comes easy to me because of all the exposure we get here in Malaysia. I've been watching English cartoons like Thundercats, He-Man, Care Bears, Chip n Dale, Talespin, etc. from the days I only had two younger sisters. Though I never picked up the speech, I could always understand it. I was able to get what people said in English, but speaking it was a different thing altogether.

  I was given quite a number of Enid Blyton books by my aunt when I was really young, and I grew up reading some of hers and some of the adapted (for young readers) classics like those of Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, etc. Going to primary school I never bothered about the grammar taught in class, because everything came naturally to me. I did not know why verbs end in 's'es when the doer is the singular third person; it just sounds better that way to me. Until I really paid attention and actually learnt grammar a couple years after that, all my full marks for English classes came from me answering the exams correctly because I thought my answer choices made the sentence 'sound right' (instead of being grammatically correct).

  Secondary school I joined the English debate team and the English Language Society (ELS) much to the delight of my English teachers. But in later years I was kicked out of the debate team and as a consolation they offered me the position of Vice President of ELS. I heavy-heartedly accepted the position, even though I was not one for office, I was more of a service person than an office person. I focused myself entirely on the ELS instead of dividing between ELS and debate team, and so in my year of office the club ended its financial year the richest (financially) it had ever been in its 30-something-year history.

  After finishing high school I went to a prep school for American Top Universities and after 2 years I got into the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Here is where my speech significantly improved, especially when I took the job as 'security' for a student union building. The job forced me to communicate in English with all sorts of people and my confidence in English speaking rose effectively. Plus I mingled with everyone and so I did not just pick up English, I took interest in other languages as well.

  Second year of college I took some Arabic classes and did well in all of them. The rest of my college years, apart from Math and Engineering classes, I took Arabic and Japanese simultaneously, since I find learning those two languages a welcome break from all the greek letters and numbers that kept invading my sanity when I did too much Math. I welcomed all the new stuff I had to memorize - the vocabularies, the grammar rules, the characters (about 30 for Arabic and thousands for Japanese) as if those did not add to the misery of taking 18 credits per semester minimum (and working two part time jobs just to stay alive). Nope, they became pleasant distractions for me and I enjoyed all the classes and homeworks given. It helped a lot too that the teachers were extremely nice and they were more than glad to accomodate me in their classes even though I was not registered to take them. Yes, I went to some Arabic and Japanese classes without registering, just because I wanted to.

  But life in America was too short for me. I had a deadline and it was June 27 2007 when my student visa would expire. And so on that day I left America and my learning of the Arabic and Japanese languages ended there.

  Here in Malaysia it is very very hard for me to even notice any existence of Japanese or Japanese-speaking people. Therefore my Japanese is dying a slow death --- I think with every day that pass I would forget one or two words and 5 or six kanji characters. Which makes me sad because I love the language and I love the culture --- some of my best friends back in America were Japanese and they helped me a lot with the language and I don't want to let their efforts go to waste.

  As for Arabic, it's been decaying but not by as much, since I can never forget how to read Arabic. But speaking it never came as easy to me as English or Japanese do. So I thought I need a speaking partner --- one who not only knows the language well but speaks it well too. And so I went and made a new friend today: an Arabic man from Iraq who is learning English. It was destined to be. We made a mutual pact to help each other in the respective languages. Praises, I have found a way at last.

  But I still need someone for Japanese, and I would rather be able to listen, understand and speak more than read and write, so practically I need a Japanese speech partner; a rare find in Malaysia. Apparently the ideal person for this is much closer to me than I previously thought. However it involves me waiting one year or more before she becomes available to me. My sister. Who is studying in Japan and speaks it rather well. Who is going to finish her bachelors in March '09. Yes, I am going to make her my Japanese speech partner when she gets back. Unless she decides to stay in Japan and do masters, then I would resort to marrying a Japanese girl. Or go work in Japan. Or something like that.

  So I am working on it. So far I've got two out of four ticked, another two to go before I can really be quadrilingual. Once I get done with that, I can go on to my next target... being sextilingual (like Mae?). But until then, two languages will do just fine for me to get by.

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