Chinese Can't Speak Chinese

I'd thought the horror of Chinese teachers are long gone, never to return. EVER.

I am so fucking wrong.

I must be the only person in the workplace to be screwed by Chinese speaking people, just because I refuse to reply them in Mandarin.

"You are Chinese. Speak Mandarin!" they holler at me in spanking Mandarin.

"I can't." was my simple and honest reply. In English of course. What the hell were you thinking?

"Yes you can! SPEAK!" they demanded in Mandarin yet again.

These people just love to see me fumble and tumble over my fucked up Mandarin. Their faces gleam with immense joy when I stutter a single sentence in pure Singaporean Mandarin. Sadist, all of them.

What a nightmare.

"You must not forget who you really are." they all will start saying with a big fat frown, in Mandarin (yet again).

I have not forgotten who I am.

And I have also not forgotten the way I was treated in school simply because I was weaker in my Mandarin.

Call it a psychological trauma. Call it disinterest. Call it the scar that will never go away.

It was hard to cultivate the interest in the language from the start. I grew up in an English speaking family, read books in English, watched cartoons in English, and hell, went to an "English" kindergarten.

So naturally my English was better than my Mother Tongue. Waaaaay better.

In school, English teachers adore me, Chinese teachers scorn me. I breeze through English lessons and was jeered at during Chinese lessons. As a young child, is it then surprising that I started prefering the English language more? Is it so hard to understand why I dread each and every Chinese lesson?

So if you were to blame me not being able to speak Mandarin properly, then aren't those Chinese teachers to blame as well for pyschologically scaring me for life?

All through my years in primary and secondary school, there was only ONE Chinese teacher whom I respect. She knew my disinterest, she knew my weakness, but she never once laughed, never once despaired. She tried her very best to make me love the language. When I could not grasp the Chinese meaning, she explained to me in English, knowing that I would be able to catch on faster that way. She believed in me. And she's the only one who did.

And I was so touched that she tried so hard.

But I guess language is not something you can master within a short period of time, no matter how encouraging the teacher is, and no matter how strong my flair for languages is. After all, the pyschological barrier is even stronger. (But I have almost never failed Chinese. Yay for me!)

Yes I know it is a beautiful langauge and I am proud to be Chinese, albeit one who can't speak a simple sentence with stuttering like a machine gun. For someone like me who love languages and the arts, do you not think I would fully want to appreciate the language's beauty and history? I do, I really do.

But its like admiring a portrait - you know its beautiful, you wish you could draw as well and you jolly well know you can't. And probably won't.

After all, your painting is sooo much better. And easier. And you don't have to stutter like some muttering idiot.