Current Mood:  THIRSTY

Currently Reading:

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
By Helen Fielding

~*~
"Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
~*~

Sith, this guy I used to know back in high school, wrote a little something today about the coolness of languages and the complexity that lies behind all the various forms of speech in the world.  He's so right (and can fluently speak a whopping 5 languages ); it's amazing to see how various individuals around the world can instantaneously be tuned in to one another simply by being able to produce a few of the same phonetic sounds and intonations. Regardless of whether you're in the "mother country" or not, or even if you're of the same ethnic background, an immediate connection is made once a few words of a familiar language is made, and that, to me, is pretty damn powerful.

Anyhoo, it made me think about my own grasp of languages.  I've finally mastered my Thai after having lived here for nearly a decade (it'd be pretty damn sad if I hadn't), but my French has pretty much gone downhill since my three years of high school lessons.  As for my Teo Chiew, well, despite the fact that I can understand much of it, whenever it comes to speaking, let's just say I sound like a four-year old with painfully broken speech (Yes.  I.  Salapao.  Want.  Please?).

As I was stuck in traffic today while picking my brother up from his student council meeting, I was listening to Jay Chou (), and was thinking to myself, damn Lynn, this is some sad shit.  I'm Chinese to the bone but couldn't understand a single word he was saying (heh, except maybe for the occasional "wo ai ni", but practically everyone knows what that means).  If both of my ah-mas were still alive, I bet they'd probably be so ashamed of my inability to speak my ancestors' mother tongue.  All of my aunts, on both my mom and dad's side, try to carry on the torch and incorporate as much Chinese culture and tradition into me and my cousins, but despite their hardy efforts, our Chinese-isms are still rather rudimentary and lacking.

I've always said that I wanted to get more in touch with my roots, soo, I think I'm going to start looking into taking some Chinese lessons.  Yippee.

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