on being a "no sabo" kid
Yesterday my Spanish teacher was telling me about "no sabo" kids, a term used to refer to heritage speakers of a language who aren't fluent. Her daughter doesn't speak any Spanish at all (ni papa, as Sra says), which makes her not even a "no sabo" kid, I think. Can you be a heritage speaker if you don't speak your heritage language at all?
I've been on both sides of this "no sabo" kid coin. When I took Spanish classes in high school, I remember doing better in class than some classmates who grew up speaking Spanish at home. They could speak decently but their struggles with grammar and accents surprised me. In my last job, I'd chat with one of my coworkers in Spanish and constantly find myself confused by his strange grammatical errors. I tried my best to teach him the proper tenses and we'd laugh every time he mixed up the conditional and imperfect subjunctive.
In hindsight I'm not so sure why meeting "no sabo" kids ever surprised me, since I am the Chinese equivalent of a "no sabo" kid. There are some things that come easily to me that might not to foreign learners β tones, auditory comprehension β but in general, my Mandarin lags behind that of a Chinese toddler. I don't know enough characters to read anything and can't hold a steady conversation with anyone outside of my parents or the most sympathetic listeners. When I'm in China I need to ask passerby to read street signs to me so I know where to go, and even then half of the time I'll get lost or commit some egregious blunder.
One time at soccer someone asked me ζδΉη§°εΌδ½ ? (How may I address you?) Even after asking him to repeat it twice, I couldn't understand what he wanted from me; I'd simply never heard anyone say that before. My Mandarin is incredibly brittle: if some term or phrase isn't one I hear my parents use, it might as well not exist to me.
Last year my aunt told me that I spoke Mandarin with an American accent, which caught me off guard. My parents are rarely complimentary of my Mandarin skills but they do credit my good intonation and accent, especially when compared to my brother's. My aunt's comment bruised my pride more than I expected. I've never taken pride in how well I speak my mother tongue, but hearing of shortcomings I can't even perceive makes me question everything.
People are often surprised when they find out that my Spanish is better than my Mandarin. That I don't speak better Mandarin is a shame to me too, but even putting aside the gap in difficulty between Spanish and Mandarin, my relationship to Mandarin is fraught with obligation and childhood trauma. My parents sent me to early morning Chinese classes on Saturdays for years against my will. To little Misu, Chinese culture was what separated me from the other kids who didn't get beat for getting A-minuses and what tied me to my tormentors. Spanish felt like refuge. I was never forced to learn it, and speaking a language my parents could not understand felt like the most visceral way I could protest. I put up walls pushing my first language out and filled the space it left behind with verb conjugations and new sounds.
For what it's worth, unlike some of the women interviewed in that article about "no sabo" kids, my parents rarely make me feel bad about my awful Mandarin. They can be brutally honest about my shortcomings, but they don't tease or guilt trip me about it. I don't know if it's because they can sense the dislike I have deep down for the language and culture or if it's because they know I tried somewhat to learn it, even if half-heartedly. But I know it's still important to them, because any time one of us (read: my brother) brings someone home, speaking Mandarin is still at the top of my mom's wishlist. I'd wager she cares about language more than she cares about whether someone is culturally Chinese β after all, without Mandarin she can't communicate properly with them.
(Which sort of makes me wonder β if I don't speak Mandarin and barely partake in any Chinese traditions, what makes me Chinese-American? The blood in my veins? The food I ate growing up? If (god forbid) for whatever reason I had kids one day, what would they have to show for being Chinese-American? They'd almost certainly have nothing but the color of their skin & hair.)