Speaking of Chinese

Currently English is my best language. What most of you may not know though is that English is my third language. I actually learned to speak the Mandarin dialect of Chinese first. It was not until I moved to the United States at the age of 3, that my mother switched to talking to me in the Taiwanese dialect, now more commonly known as "Minnan-hua". What you may not know is, why this happened.

I've mentioned in the past that my father spent the first 8 years of his life in Beijing, the capital of China. It was long considered that the best and most correct way of pronunciation, was the Beijing accent on Mandarin. So many Chinese people have always complimented my father on having the best Chinese accent. When we moved to the U.S. the only direct contact us kids would have with the Chinese language was with our mom and dad, and my dad didn't think we should learn the Mandarin dialect from our mother, whose accent was Taiwanese, so he had her switch to speaking Taiwanese to us children. This was considered a good idea anyway since our "amah" (grandmother on our mother's side) could only speak Taiwanese anyway, and this would ensure we would always be able to speak to her. The downside of course was that we heard and used less and less Mandarin, to the point where today, it's my third most proficient language. Ironic, of course since technically, it's my mother tongue, and the first language I ever spoke.