"I'm Off ToThe School"

I just found out that I haven’t lost my edge in linguistics in terms of English Syntax. That’s comforting actually. On one of my YM contacts' status, it read, “I’m off to the school”. So very helpfully of course, I IM-ed her saying that it’s actually “I’m off to school” as “to school” is actually functioning as an adverbial phrase in the sentence even though it seems like a noun. So it should rightly read "I'm off to school." How very helpful is that :) Helpful but irritating, I know. I'm a a born teacher, I guess. A full-blown nosey irritating teacher.

I’m the kind of person whom you don’t like to be around when you go to Malaysian supermarkets. As a teacher, I have a whiteboard marker in my handbag at all times since I couldn’t be bothered to have to remember bringing my marker pen every time I go to class. Since Malaysian supermarkets or malls would have all the signs in English and since they would just write whatever comes to mind as long as it sounds vaguely English, I would be the person who would covertly take out her trusty marker pen and correct the placards. At least the ones that I can reach anyway.

I haven’t been consciously thinking of all the basics that I’ve learned during my varsity days like semantics, pragmatics and syntax in my daily teaching duties but they are what they are: my basics. They formed me and strengthened my foundations. They have been so ingrained that they have become second nature to me and for that, kudos to my teachers for a job well done. My adequate background frees me up so that I can concentrate on the job at hand. It gives me the confidence to do my job without having to second guess myself every two seconds which is important because let’s face it, my mother tongue is not English. English is my second language.

What constitutes a second language anyway? That’s the debate that has lasted for generations. Does it have to be a language that you learned which is other than the language spoken at home? What if the language spoken at home is “English” but the broken version? For example, when your child misbehaves, you’d say, “Stop or mama beat” when the mother really means to say, “If you don’t stop that, I’ll spank you.” Does that mean that your first language is English simply because you use English words regardless of syntax?

What is my situation then, when I am equally comfortable expressing myself in both languages but I can only learn things formally/academically in English because the medium of instruction of all my post-secondary education has been English? What if I can talk about my feelings better in English rather than in Malay for cultural reasons because in we don’t talk about feelings in Malay without sounding like “drama swasta” (Malaysian version of the soap opera)?

In the former, I find that my vocabulary is very schoolgirlish because I never learn my own language after secondary school and for that I find myself grappling when I have to express nuances. To me, it feels like trying to do brain surgery with the kitchen knife. On the other hand, the latter is because I was brought up in a traditional conservative Malay household where we never talk about feelings. My mom is the strong silent type and I have the feeling like if she talks about her feelings, she would feel vulnerable and she doesn’t like that. As the results, she never talks about feelings. What does that make me? That leaves me with no real vocabulary in context to talk about feelings because I seriously have never heard it in real life or real conversation. Simply put, I just don’t know how and the only instances when I hear feelings being talked about, it would be in Malay drama which doesn’t really light my fire.

So I end up using English to express my feelings and to learn among other things. Where does that leave me in terms of first and second language? Whatever it is, I am still grateful that I have both languages.