Language

        Language. If you look up the word “language” in the dictionary it will most probably give you a long and well kind of complicated interpretation. To me language is a important medium in communication. As we are living in a country with 3 main races which is malay,chinesse, and indian .Each race has it’s own language. How do we communicate with each other ?  You don’t  walk down a street and see a Chinese man communicating with an indian man in mandarin unless the indian man actually understands mandarin.Basically the 2 main language that we all use to communicate in is Bahasa Malaysia and English.

        My dad sent me to a Chinese primary school to learn mandarin. Well as a kid I honestly hated the language mandarin and the whole Chinese school system . Which 7 year old would want to start school and 7:30 in the morning and go home at 3:30 in the evening with tons of homework ? As a child I was immatured and only saw the disadvantages of learning mandarin ,such as I was forced to endure canning for getting most of my answers wrong for spelling test and having to complete a mountain of homework. Looking back I am actually grateful to my dad for sending me to a Chinese primary school to learn mandarin. Being and indian and being able to speak fluent mandarin has been a great advantage to me .

        I still remember very well this incident when I was 13 years old my parents brought me along to this furniture shop to get a new sofa for our house. As my mum was about to purchase this black leather sofa ,I heard the Chinese salesman saying to his bos in mandarin that this indian lady doesn’t know the actual cost for the black leather sofa , we can get a profit by charging her extra. Upon hearing this I replied to the Chinese salesman in mandarin , I told him my mum may not know the actual cost of the sofa but you as a salesman should be honest and cheat your customer. Words could not describe the look on the Chinese man’s face , he was so embarrassed in the sense that he actually apologized a thousand times and gave us a 15% discount on the sofa.

        I’m not being a stereotype and saying that just because of one incident that every Chinese individual are bad. To me being given the chance and opportunity to learn mandarin is definately a great thing . I noticed that when I communicate in mandarin with the aunty’s living near my house you could see by the look on their faces that they respect you as an individual . I’m not proud to say this but I actually like ease drop on people’s conversation a lot. I mean when people look at me they would not know that I can speak mandarin, so I kind of tend to ease drop on people’s conversation. It’s not a good thing to do but it’s kind of interesting. There’s definitely many advantages in learning a new language .

I'm glad I can still write a few mandarin words....

 Being given the priveledge to learn mandarin has been a great advantage to me

Thisha doesn't understand what jia yi a foreign student is talking as jia yi is speaking in mandarin to thisha who doesn't understands mandarin


By:Priya Dashini