English as a Second Language

Ever since I can remember, while I was living on the East Coast, people would hear me speak, and they'd come up to me and say, "my, you speak english so well". That might be considered rude, even derisive by some, since many of these comments were made not even knowing if I was born and raised in the United States.

As a matter of fact though, English wasn't my first language. According to my mother, my first language was Mandarin Chinese, which I no longer speak particularly well, just enough to get myself into trouble. My second language was the Taiwanese dialect of Chinese, which I've expounded upon quite a bit in another section of this Blog. So that makes English my third language, and a language that I learned at the age of 3. You'd think that someone who already spoke two languages, living in a family where English wasn't the native language, would speak English with an accent.

My parents were well prepared in this respect. They knew that my older sister, Su fen would need to start school fairly soon, and they prepared by purchasing for her a Disney phonograph player. This was a small compact enclosed unit. When you opened up the light blue case, the back of it displayed a picture of Pluto, and the record arm was in the shape of a doggie bone that Pluto was eyeing. Along with the player, my parents purchased a set of records. These were very similar to the "hooked on phonics" series that are so popular today. Basically a recorded woman on these records went through vowels, pronunciation, and enunciation.

My parents told me I was not to touch the records, nor the player. These were for my sister, since she needed to learn English first, as she was off to school in a matter of months. As a little child, my sister had no interest in the records, nor the player, and she basically refused to listen or study. Meanwhile, according to my mom I was quite taken with the records and the player. She would find me hiding in the closet, playing back the records to myself. She said, I was hiding, since I did not want my sister to find out that I was using her player and records, which would have started quite a sibling fight. And that's the story of how I learned to speak English without an accent. I can still hear the woman on the phonograph saying "A E I O U, sounds like Lady Can I Borrow Some Sugar" in my head.

Su fen started kindergarten not speaking English, and I started a year later, fully fluent.