A public lecture that I attended last week prompted me to write this post. That was given by a French radio journalist, who follows the affairs of the United Nation for the Radio France International. Having reported from the UN in DC and published two books on the UN, he delivered the lecture in English on the topic of the two competing views of the UN, one from Europe and the other from the US.

The purpose of this post has got nothing to do with the topic of his lecture, but on my observations on his command of his native language and my thoughts that result from them. Obviously, French is the mother tongue of the journalist, not English. He has left the US for a number of years and has rarely used the language since then. It is hence not a surprise that he spoke more naturally in French than in English.

The lecture was enjoyable. The question and answer session was even more so, particularly because he answered the audience’s questions in his native French language, which was then interpreted in English for the audience. I can understand proper French fairly well, which made it such a pleasure to hear him articulate his ideas to answer the audience’s questions in a fluent and off-the-cuff manner.

This is a skill that I do not possess today, that I would very much like to have and that I have to work very hard for. Sadly, I have to say that I am not even sure if I know what the feeling is like to be able to express myself in my own native tongue, as my thoughts command. Here comes the question – what IS my native tongue?

When explaining to people my language background, I usually do it with a sense of pride, because it does make me feel proud that I am brought up in an environment where bilingualism is the norm. It is an environment that I call unique, which lies at the heart where oriental and occidental cultures meet. From young, most of us speak the language of our ethnic origin. Most of the people of Chinese heritage, like myself, are exposed to the Chinese language and its dialects. In addition, all of us learn to use English once we start going to school, if not earlier. With the country becoming more and more cosmopolitan, many of us get to learn more languages spoken in other parts of the world too.

Paradoxically, it is also this unique linguistic background that is the cause of my feeling of inadequacy when it comes to expressing myself. Let me go back to the question of what my native tongue is. Strictly speaking, my native tongue, or mother tongue, is Cantonese – that was the language that I first learned to speak as a child and it was the only language spoken at home when I was a kid. Then came Mandarin, which I started speaking when I started going to kindergarten. Then for some reason, Mandarin came to replace Cantonese as the lingua franca in the house.

When it was time to begin formal education, English then became my “first language” in school since the age of 8. In fact, our education system allowed for two “first languages”, which in my case were English and Chinese for the better part of my pre-university school days. As I grew older, I also picked up French, which I have persistently pursued for the last decade or so.

Having grown up immersed in such a linguistic cocktail, I do not think that I have a sound mastery in any one of them. While I can say that I can express myself reasonably well in English, perhaps Mandarin and to a lesser extent, in French, I do not really know what the feeling is like to be in total command of a language, be it a native tongue or any other language. What is ironical too is that I have lost my Cantonese over the years, what that should have strictly been my mother tongue. I can still speak and get by, which was what I did when chatting with my ex-landlords from Hong Kong in San Francisco. Any extended conversation would stretch my Cantonese linguistic capabilities to the limit.

I was indeed very envious when I listened to the French journalist command his spoken words through his thoughts, in his native tongue. “Command of a language” – I like this expression, for which I cannot find another appropriate way to paraphrase. I yearn to get a sense of what this sense of authority feels like.