Is he Chinese?

June 15, 2006

I’ve had more than a passing interest in foreign languages over the years. I took the requisite Spanish in high school (4 years), including a summer abroad in Spain (hola la familia espinosa!). While I was never fluent in Spanish, I could passably read basic texts (newspapers, etc) and function overseas as a tourist :). I was confident in my skills and interest enough to take 2 (or 3?) years of Spanish in college, but I realized I was simply not that good/interested to be that diligent about the study part.

I thought perhaps it was Spanish that was difficult, so I tried my hand at Japanese - 1 year in college - and that was worse. The different writing system and language made it doubly hard to get ahead. I can successfully say ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘thank you’, ‘please’, and a few other basics, as I can in Spanish.

I was inspired to begin trying my hand at Chinese, at least to understand that basics, by my brother Mark. He’s simply amazing with languages, having taught himself both Chinese (mandarin) and Japanese. He’s been to Japan, and can speak fluently with native born Chinese. He’s also great with computer languages - java/c/python/php/etc. Just has a knack for languages, I guess.

Another brother Matt (no link) recently surprised me by going to Russia, and apparently he’s studied Russian for awhile. And he’s decent with Spanish as well. So everyone in the family seems to know and be more fluent in multiple languages than me!

In the interest of trying to be able to be polite in multiple languages, I thought I’d at least learn hello/thankyou/please in as many languages as I can. I know I won’t have much chance to use them, but I did have a chance at the local Chinese Buffet restaurant the other day. I paid for my food and said ‘thank you’ in Chinese to the checkout girl. She looked a bit surprised that I did that, so I explained that my brother spoke Chinese and I was just learning a few words. She then asked me where my brother was from. “Detroit” I said. “Is he Chinese?” she asked me.

Now, while I understand that there are mixed race families, and that I or my brother could be half-brothers, adopted brothers, step-brothers or something else, I still found the question extremely out of left field. When I related this to Mark, he mentioned that many Chinese people (and Japanese) here in the States don’t really believe many native-born Americans can speak or really understand their language, and are a bit distrustful of non-Chinese (or non-Japanese) people who speak the language. Perhaps that’s an oversimplification, but no one has ever asked me if I or anyone in my family was Mexican simply because I could say “gracias” or “adios”.

Posted in Family, Language, Personal