Language – Page 14 – Goldfish Odyssey

This entry is part 21 of 28 in the series Goldfish

I started reading and writing in kindergarten. So, no one was concerned of my reading ability when I entered elementary school. However, before teaching us simple words, our teacher showed us some strange looking symbols: 注音符號 (zhùyin fúhào), phonetic symbols of Chinese Mandarin.

There are thirty-seven symbols and four tone marks. In addition, a dot can be placed above the symbols to indicate the neutral/light tone. (It looks like a staccato mark in music notation and functions like a staccato mark.) The first four consonants ㄅㄆㄇㄈ together have become the metonym of the entire system. A neutral vowel, schwa [ə], is added when pronouncing the consonants individually. ㄅㄆㄇㄈ can be transcribed in International Phonetic Alphabets as: [bə, pə, mə, fə]. However, due to dialects, personal habits and sloppiness, the pronunciations vary from [bo, po, mo, fo], [buo, puo, muo, fuo] to [bɔ, pɔ, mɔ, fɔ].

Dad spoke with heavy Zhejiang (浙江) accent. Mom’s native tongue was Taiwanese. After WWII, mom learned to speak Mandarin, mostly by converting Japanese words and sounds into Chinese. She also picked up some vocabulary from Dad. I knew that my parents talked “funny” and wanted to speak Mandarin well.

We learned that 注音符號 were keys to standard Mandarin. In theory, when combining a consonant with a vowel (or vowels), one would get the sound of certain words. For example: [ㄅ , ㄧ] in first tone would be [bi:] 逼 (force, verb); in second tone would be [bí:] 鼻 (nose); in third tone, [bǐ:] 筆 (pen); so on and so forth.

I believed everything our teacher taught us. And, I was very good in remembering how various combinations of symbols should be pronounced. However, I tied myself into knots trying to figure out how ㄅ [bə] combining with ㄧ [i:] would become [bi:]. In the evening, I walked around the house saying [bəy, bəy, bəy. . .] Our learning materials included a set of long-playing records. One night, I couldn’t sleep and got up to listen to the LP. Needless to say, that didn’t go very well with mom.

Within weeks, my parents subscribed 國語日報 (Mandarin Daily News) for me. It is a children’s newspaper still popular in Taiwan today. All the characters are marked with Zhuyin. Sometimes, it was helpful with my pronunciations of words. Other times, I picked up new words following the phonetics. I also like games and puzzles. As my reading ability and appetite continued to grow, I learned to like the translations of western literature on weekends.

After decades of studying languages, I have come to realize that phonetic symbols are useful tools. However, they can only reveal the very basic sounds of any languages. The nuances, the intonations and the variances taking place when combining sounds are often untranscribable. Each language is unique. To really “hear” a language, one needs to pay attention aurally and intellectually.

This entry is part 16 of 28 in the series Goldfish

あのね Pronunciation: [anone] ah-no-neh

Familiar language; female term; interjection
Meanings: well, I know what, tell you what, just a minute, hold on, . . .

I was a baby in a hurry to join the grownup world. I started crawling, walking and mimicking sounds early. “Mama” and “Baba” might have been part of my vocabulary already, when I learned a versatile word あのね.

Mom had to run some errands and left me in the care of Mrs. Chiu, a dear family friend. A native speaker of Japanese, she used anone habitually. By the time mom went to pick me up, I had fallen in love with the sound of the word. Everyone, of course, was amused by me running around saying a Japanese word.

The Chiu family lived a few blocks away from us. Their front yard was smaller than ours but had a wooden gate, low enough that one could reach over to the other side and unlock it. On one side of the house, there was another door blocking away the real intruders. If my memory serves me right, Mr. Chiu was a professor in economics. The children, two daughters and a son, were all much older than me. But everyone in the household was nice. I was barely old enough to understand the concept of “foreign countries” when they emigrated to Canada. First, Mr. and Mrs. Chiu left to explore the possibilities; then, the children followed.

In those year, under martial law, international traveling in and out of Taiwan was restricted. The day of the Chiu’s departure, there was a long send-off. We took pictures with the family in front of their house. Then, we went to the airport with them. Mom took a photo of dad holding Little Cop, looking out to the tarmac. Little Cop was visibly excited by the sight of giant airplanes. Dad, even under the shield of eyeglasses, seemed afflicted. Was he sad about losing friends, most likely permanently? Was he wondering about his own destiny? I was too young to understand those things.

Occasionally, we received news from Canada. A few times, Mr. and Mrs. Chiu returned to visit their relatives. However, it was years after I moved to the States during one of mom’s visits when I saw Mrs. Chiu in Montreal. Mr. Chiu had passed away not too long before our visit. Her children all found their own successes in different parts of the country. She was as sweet as I remembered. She and mom talked for hours and days all in Japanese.

Although unplanned, we had the great fortune to be in Montreal during the week of firework festival. Mrs. Chiu brought mom and me to a friend’s apartment in a high-rise by the river where the fireworks were launched. Watching the fireworks, all synchronized with music, as well as floating boats with flickering lights on the river, we shared the joyful event together. Often with a huge explosion of colorful lights, even Mrs. Chiu and mom, the elderly members of the party, could hardly hold back their excitements.

We stayed in touch with phone calls and holiday cards after the Montreal visit. Mrs. Chiu sold her house and moved to Vancouver to be near her older daughter. Mom might have visited her when touring the Northwest one year.

Several years had gone by. I settled down after completing my degrees. Mom was staying with me for a period. Mrs. Chiu’s younger daughter relocated to the suburb of Pittsburgh with her husband. We arranged a visit. As the door opened, Mrs. Chiu was there, all smiley. Her daughter shouted astonishingly: “甜甜茶” (tian-tian-chá)—sweet, sweet tea. Unknown to me, that was the nickname that her family gave me. Mrs. Chiu used to make Japanese style sweet tea (amacha?) I must have asked for it whenever I went to their house. And, Mrs. Chiu spoiled me.

That was the last time I saw Mrs. Chiu in person. Since they left when I was still very young, I couldn’t recall the faces of each member of the family. Yet, I missed the sweet memories that we all shared. Unfortunately, my Japanese didn’t improve much after that initial lesson.