Today is Chinese Language Day!
It’s a day that has meaning for me because I speak a Chinese language (a language that isn't easy to learn as an adult), so I'm grateful I didn't have to go through the process of mastering tones later in life! At the same time, I acknowledge that it also brings about mixed emotions when I reflect on my journey of language discovery.
Despite Chinese being my first language, I still feel like an outsider to the culture and world because I don’t speak the main Chinese languages that everyone thinks of. It’s been one of my pet peeves over the course of my life where a lot of non-Chinese people have attempted to guess what I speak, maybe not realizing that there are so many languages that exist (guessing for other people doesn’t always bode well 🫠).
Lacking Mandarin and only knowing select phrases in Cantonese, this feeling of separation from other Chinese people is even more pronounced in living overseas as part of the Chinese diaspora. While I live in a city where there are many Chinese people, very few people speak the same language that I do. As a result, I've usually felt quite on my own, even to the point where I did not fully know the name of the language I spoke until I found it in Operation World by Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk during college.
One of the reasons this book has been so pivotal to my walk with God is that it finally felt like a piece of the puzzle was added to my life just when I needed it most as a Christian and as a young adult. Growing up, I had heard of people reference my language as Chiu Chow (the Cantonese translation and spelling of it), but never what it was actually called, which limited my ability to find out further information.
It wasn't until I casually browsed the information on how to pray for Singapore in Operation World that I saw the word that would end up changing my college major, determining my thesis topic, and allowing me to feel reconciled to the ethnic identity that God had given me. This word was "Teochew" which opened up so many doors for me to connect with people on an online forum (that is now unfortunately defunct other than their Facebook group; however, check out WhatTCSay for a fantastic vocabulary resource) and to feel confidence that I spoke a real language with history, roots, and a community beyond anything I imagined. It also gave me a word of belonging, gaginang, which means "our people."
I only share this because I recognize how important language is and how it connects us with each other. Without this understanding early on, I had no idea that I was a part of anything beyond my family. Since that time, I've delved into as many resources as I've been able to in understanding the history of the Teochew people and language. I only have words and labels today because a Christian prayer book took the time to share as much information as possible within its pages, showing me the beauty of different Chinese languages.
To this day, one of my favourite verses is Revelation 7:9-10 where I long to worship God with other believers who will speak Teochew with me in heaven:
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”
Oh! How did I not know this about you? (Forgive me if you mentioned it before, my memory's not what it used to be. lol). I'm so intrigued now. Are both sides of your family from Singapore? That's so cool how God led you to discover Teochew from the Operation World book!
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