I am multilingual and I am proud of it. I think I may even venture into the land of the snobby, since I have repeatedly posted here that I speak multiple languages.

But I am defensive today. Yep. I’m putting this on record, that I am defensive that I can speak multiple languages. Why am I defensive? It started all with this:

世界上有三大语文 - 英文, 中文, 日文. 一定要学
Translation: There are 3 main languages in the world [that are superior] – English, Chinese, Japanese. One must learn these.

And this was told to me by a white (i.e. caucasian) man, in perfectly fluent mandarin. While I do not have a problem speaking Mandarin to a white guy (other than feeling mildly amused), I do have a problem when people start lecturing on me and my languages. Holy hell, I speak all three languages mentioned by that guy.

I reckon I have always been the guy in the middle. It’s always like the camps are split in two and I’m standing right at the middle, not choosing a side. With regards to chinese culture, there will be those who think I am not chinese enough, and then there will be those who think I do not think “western” enough.

Its the same case for this. There is a camp of people I know who absolutely detest and are ashamed of their own mother tongue, and would completely deride it. And then there will be the other camp, who thinks their mother tongue is the most superior of all languages.

I have a Vietnamnese friend who is quite ashamed of speaking Viet and would go on all extremes not to speak it (despite being poor in English as well, sad to say). And on the other hand I have a Chinese friend who thinks everyone should speak Chinese, because its a far superior language to English (a sentiment I share on occasion, especially when it comes to describing food) and to any other language.

The point is, I don’t see any language as superior. Language is just a tool for me. I speak good English, fluent Mandarin, stuttering Japanese (and a whole lot of other languages like Malay and other dialects too like Cantonese, Hokkien…). It bloody is useful to speak and comprehend multiple languages. I do not see shame in speaking a language that is supposed to be a mother tongue (and its only a mother tongue by virtue of me being of that particular ethnicity). I also do not see one language in being superior than the other.

I know a friend, Wan who’s learning German to read Marx, simply because English is not enough in getting the right intricacies of Karl Marx. Too much you say? Not to me.

There simply is no point in lecturing me that a language is superior. I don’t share that sentiment as a whole. There are simply some cases when Mandarin is better than English to describe certain things that only a culture can embody. Likewise, there are certain things that only English can describe and there is no word for in Mandarin.

So anyways, back to the story of that strange old man. After he gave me a long lecture, I left simply because I couldn’t take any more lectures from someone who thinks he’s awesome coz he knows one other language. Then I visited the next house. It was a Hmong house. Then immediately I thought “damn, I need Tou”.

Also, if you’ve been reading closely, I need a friend called Tree.

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