tongues

I just spent the weekend in Jakarta, representing Mekong Review at an event organised by Jakarta Content Week. The food was amazing, the people kind, and I got to spend some time with friends shopping for kebaya I wouldn’t have been able to afford in Singapore. I left feeling grateful and refreshed in my desire to do the best I can for Mekong Review; this isn’t something to celebrate but I was at least slightly comforted that our struggles are shared with other independent presses and publications out there. (Misery loves company and all that.) But I also left thinking deeply about language and positionality, particularly my own. 

I’ve done some basic Malay and Indonesian language classes before (I know, I know, I’ve likely confused myself a lot toggling back and forth trying to learn both at the same time), so I can understand some basics. Arriving in Jakarta, though, made it very clear that I don’t know shit and no amount of Duolingo could have prepared me for the rapid-fire cadence of colloquial Bahasa Indonesia. Stunned by the way words tripped off everyone else’s tongues, I’d panic and sheepishly blurt out English even when I could potentially have responded—albeit in a limited way—in Indonesian. 

As it turned out, the panel on which I was speaking had me sandwiched between a Malaysian and an Indonesian. They spoke Malay and Indonesian respectively, as they should. But it left me, the sole English speaker, sitting there nodding along to the few words I knew—which allowed me to vaguely get the gist but not much more—while trying to look not too obviously lost at sea. Alfian Sa’at eventually took pity on me and offered to do live interpretation, for which I’m super grateful. 

I didn’t feel put out at all that my co-panellists chose to speak in the languages they’re most comfortable with. Before the panel began I knew that Hafiz, the editor of the Malaysian Malay-language journal Svara, had made the deliberate choice to speak Malay, and more power to him for it. There was no reason why anyone should have been forced to speak English at an event organised and held in Indonesia, especially since most of the audience were perfectly comfortable with listening to Malay or Indonesian anyway. I was the odd one out. My seat on the panel became a very immediate reminder of how disconnected I am from the languages of the lands and seas of the sub-region I was born and raised in. 

(Side note: Yes, it would have been nice if the organisers of the session had made provision for live interpretation from the get-go. But in their defence, I don’t think anyone knew until just before the panel that all three speakers were going to speak different languages. I think they were expecting everyone to speak English; as far as I could see, the moderator’s cue cards were prepped in English.)

I never thought about this as a kid, but as an adult it has started to feel more and more like something’s missing because I can’t speak Malay. A lot of it is my own fault because it’s not like it’s illegal to learn; I’ve taken lessons before, but haven’t been committed enough so far to block out the necessary time in my schedule/life to study harder, practice and gain proficiency. Still, I think about how I got here in the first place.

This isn’t a result of being ethnically Chinese. It doesn’t automatically follow that everyone will only care about, or want to speak, their own native tongue. Anti-colonial leftists in the 1950s and 1960s saw Malay as Singapore’s national language; Nantah, a Chinese-funded, Chinese language private university, taught Malay as such. Being a Chinese Singaporean isn’t a good enough ‘excuse’ for not speaking Malay.

Also, it’s not like my Mandarin/Chinese is so damn good?!

I don’t know if this can be announced yet so I’m just going to write it in this newsletter and ask you guys not to go around telling people (what could possibly go wrong lol), but I recently received the (as yet unedited) Chinese translation of my book, The Singapore I Recognise. I’m reading through it to see if I can help with clarifications where necessary, but mostly because it’s surreal and thrilling to see a translation of my work. That said, it also strikes me as kind of pathetic that I require professional translation support to communicate these thoughts in what is supposedly my ‘mother tongue’.

Let’s face it: when it comes to work and deep talk on serious issues, I’m pretty much monolingual. With optimism and preparation I’ve managed to give speeches, join meetings and give interviews in Mandarin on subjects ranging from Singapore politics to the death penalty, but I usually sound so basic, because I’m not able to articulate the same amount of nuance in this tongue. And it’s not just about being monolingual; it’s also about being monolingual in a language that wasn’t actually supposed to be mine.

This is not to say that I hate the English language, or that I detest being an English speaker. This isn’t about that. I dream, for the most part, in English. I read, live, love in it, and my fluency has brought me places that I would have otherwise struggled to access or be included in. There’s nothing to regret. But I do think about what it means to have this level of fluency in this language—and only this language—that was essentially imposed upon this part of the world, first by colonialism, then by a “pragmatic” government’s desire to plug into global capitalism as quickly as possible.

This morning, while we were killing time at the airport in Jakarta, I mentioned to Hafiz that I kind of feel like a linguistic orphan; out-of-step, language-wise, with Indonesia and Malaysia despite having grown up in such close proximity, yet also sticking out in China or Taiwan because of my struggle with Mandarin fluency. (And I’m already considered “not so bad” because I at least have some Mandarin fluency! There are so many Chinese Singaporeans out there even more functionally monolingual than I am.) As I said about Mekong Review during my panel in Jakarta, what does it mean to work in the language of the coloniser? How does one go about decolonising our work and our minds when we’re operating in the tongue they gave us? How do we use current reality to transform the future for more just, respectful outcomes? These are all important questions not just for Mekong Review, but for myself as an individual moving through the world largely in English.

~ vibes ~

Let’s further complicate this newsletter about language by sharing a K-pop girl group covering a Cantonese song that is itself a cover of a K-drama OST song