bilingualism check

My note page: (the red circle is what is relevant to this blog post)

"Dike, I mechago?" Ifemelu asked.

Please don't speak Igbo to him," Aunt Uju said. "Two languages will confuse him."
"What are you talking about, Aunty? We spoke two languages growing up."
"This is America. It's different."

Context Note: Ifemelu is the main character, who just immigrated to the US from Nigeria, where they speak the tribal Nigerian language Igbo. Dike is her 6 year old cousin. 

                          - Americanah, Page 134 Excerpt

"This is America. Speak English." Ah yes, this is indeed one of the classic favorite phrases of a racist.

And while I've never had this said to me, I still view this phrase with a bit of a bittersweet feeling. Because the truth is, I do speak English. I speak English and that's about it. 

Well, technically I put that I speak "Conversational Chinese" on my resume (whatever that means) but in all honesty, I'm nowhere near fluent. Yes, I can say some common phrases like hello, goodbye, and thank you, I can even write a paragraph or two in Chinese. But there is a distinct gap in my Chinese ability that just screams American. 

I often still struggle to come up with coherent sentences. Holding a fluid conversation is not the easiest. My sentences are choppy, riddled with grammatical errors. And when I'm trying to talk to someone in Chinese, I often flit between English and Mandarin out of necessity, me waving my hands frantically in the air to demonstrate a word I simply don't know. 

When I'm at a Chinese grocery store or in a Chinese restaurant, and I can't identify a certain vegetable or order a certain dish, this half baked illiteracy can be inconvenient, even amusing. But at other times, it can be downright painful. 

When my grandparents come to visit from Shanghai, I feel the language gap in a different way. Something in the air shifts. Gone are the days of my Chinese illiteracy being something jokingly laughed away or something that instantly disappears the minute I set foot into my comfortable English bubble. There's a certain heaviness baked into every word. Because, when my grandparents talk to me, I often don't understand. Sometimes I just smile and nod when I don't know a word. And when I return home from school and they ask how my day is, I find that I can't explain. My parents - fluent in both Chinese and English - hover over the dinner table, dependable, although perhaps not the most eager, translators. When I go on drives with my grandpa, long silences often hang between us. A silence not of an unwanting to speak, but of a lack of possessing words the other will understand. So the silence hangs. I remember my grandparents giving gifts to me on my birthday, I was unable to express how much their card meant to me, so I just kept on saying thank you thank you thank you. I list these examples, not because communicating with my grandparents is a burden, but because I want to show the importance between language and connection. 

See, for me, a lack of language is not just that. It's a lack of connection to the ones you love. It's a lack of understanding the culture you came from. 

How did this happen? How did I lose this? After all, I am Chinese. So shouldn't I have the God-given ability to speak it?

Yes, and no. In my house, my parents don't speak Chinese to me and my sister too much. It's mostly English, tiny sprinkles of Chinese here and there. This isn't because my parents are ashamed of being Chinese or speaking Chinese, it's simply because, after 20+ years of being in the US it's only natural that they've assimilated, their language included. 

This isn't to say that they didn't try to get me to speak Chinese. My mom pushed me to do Chinese school. But eventually driving 30 minutes one way each Saturday morning became a hassle, so my mom settled on teaching me Chinese at home. Me being the lazy and homework-avoidant kid I was, I wrote "I hate Chinese" on all my workbooks. Unlike Dike, who didn't even know that his Igbo language was withheld from him purposely, I voluntarily chose not to study the Chinese language. I look back and I think that I don't what I was losing. 

Language has always been intertwined deeply with culture. You can't just learn a language without learning the culture. You can't just lose a language without losing part of your culture. That's why such a quick decision to not speak Igbo is so significant for Dike. 

Now, I'm taking Chinese as one of my classes. And yes, this is because it is one of those cop-out classes that's an easy A. But another part, just a tiny part of me, also does it because I know, that every Chinese word I learn, every Chinese essay I write, I am one step closer to bridging that silence between me and my grandparents.