I am going back to the classroom after a seven year hiatus and I’m FREAKING OUT! I wanted to write about that, but I have so many things to prep, some I don’t even know about yet. (My apologies in advance for late reading and commenting.)

Anyway, I’ve been reading Good Grammar by Matthew Johnson (very good!) and I’m planning on using much of his first unit on introducing kids to language and grammar study. One of the lessons is reflecting on your idiolect—your own unique dialect. So, because I need to PREP, I wrote my own to use as a model. It’s a first draft, and for the purpose of the lesson, it’ll do.

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I’ve always believed that Taiwanese was my first language. I have no reason to think otherwise, but this is too far into my past to confirm with my own memories. The lore of my language learning goes something like this: I spoke Taiwanese first until I started school, and my parents wanted me to do well so they only spoke to me in English. What I lost when I gained the language of school were the words that connected me to my grandparents. They spoke Taiwanese and Japanese; I soon only  spoke English. It didn’t do me much good to understand what was being said, when I couldn’t respond.

While I technically only spoke English that didn’t mean I could speak it like my classmates, who grew up in homes where their parents were fluent. I still picked things up from my family. One time, in second grade, I said the word pizza, only I pronounced it pee-za because that’s how my dad said it. Besides pronouncing things differently, I sometimes struggle with idioms because I didn’t hear them growing up.

Because I wanted to fit in and it wasn’t “cool” to be Taiwanese/Chinese back in the day, I refused to learn to speak either Taiwanese or Mandarin, the other Chinese language my family speaks. When it came time to choose a foreign language I could’ve taken Mandarin or Spanish, but I chose French instead. It wasn’t until college that I realized how dumb that was. Mandarin or Spanish would’ve been so much more useful in the communities I belong to. 

As an adult, estoy tratando de aprender español. I’ve been lucky to have friends and students and their families who are always willing to help me learn new vocabulary and correct me when I make mistakes. One day after school, I was alone in the office and a message to families had to go out in English and Spanish. I had the translation ready to go, but no staff members were around to make the call. I decided to give it a go. After I finished, a student who was hanging around the office said, “Miss, you sound Mexican!” I thought and still think it was one of the biggest compliments I could receive.

And I’m not embarrassed to speak what little Taiwanese and Mandarin I do know. My family says I sound “American”, but I’m not letting that stop me.