Voices

I’m alone in my room in the hospital, reading a book about punctuation, and half-listening to a nurse’s voice. The nurses’ station is right outside my door, and contrary to what it says on the sign on their desk, the nurses all seem to be yelling at the person next to them. Even with the door shut, I can still hear her very clearly.

What caught my attention at first was how “raw” her voice sounds. Let me explain what I mean. In the production of sounds, we consciously control the contraction of the diaphragm as well as the tightness of the vocal cords in order to manipulate the volume and pitch of our voice. This nurse’ voice, however, sounds as if she has absolutely no intention or control of her articulatory organs. She talks like someone who might need voice training, and she definitely does not hear herself when she speaks.

I tried to imitate her to gain a closer understanding of the physiological process that takes place in her speech production. During the experiment, I found I was using very little effort to control or modification of the airstream; therefore, my voice sounded monotoned and …..raw.

After my little self-amusing game, I went back to reading about punctuation. I came across a passage that had no punctuation marks [1], so I read it out loud to help segment the passage mentally. As I was listening to myself, I recalled Erik (PP’s husband) once told me that I have different voices when I speak English and Chinese. If I remember correctly, he said I sounded more… whiny and girlish in Chinese, and I had a more affirmative and confident voice in English. Now, I could delve into vowel length distinction in English and the lack of it in Chinese, as well as those sentence-final tag words in Chinese and the lack of them in English as explanations for why Erik’s observation might be true. However, I’d be putting you to sleep, if I haven’t done so already.

What I’m more interested in sharing with you is my recent re-acquisition of language abilities in Chinese and how English, my second language, has influenced it. I am, as some of my ESL teacher friends might be as well, absolutely fascinated by this L1-L2 interference and influence. It has taken me almost 3 years to feel as if my Chinese is finally up to par with the rest of the population and that I have updated my lexicon with the most up-to-date idioms and slang. Those of you who have known me for a while know that I’ve always liked doodling. In my prime, I was a writer and the editor of the school newspaper in college. Now that I have regained linguistic comprehensions in Chinese, I couldn’t resist utilizing it by writing regularly and posting them on my Chinese blog (Yes! I blog in two languages, which makes me feel a bit schizophrenic at times)!

So anyway, I’ve been posting my writings on the blog for a couple of months now, and I try to write in different styles…. you know….to keep a variety of things and to give myself some fun challenges. While almost all my Taiwanese friends and family were amazed at (and amused by) my ambition to write in Chinese after not using the language for 10 years, my mother seemed less than impressed. When I ask her what she thinks, she often vaguely says, “You can do better than this.” or “You should read so-and-so’s blog and learn from her.”[2] At first I disregarded my mom’s comments and thought she was being way too serious about the whole thing. After all, I write for my own enjoyment. It’s not like I’ve ever dreamt to become a famous writer or anything (Shut up, Don….and Lisa). Recently, however, the competitive side of me is eager to bully mom into admitting that she likes my writing (codenamed “Crack Mom Project”….. I need a little background music from a suspense movie here).

Before I went into the hospital, I finished a piece making fun of the recent trend among women in Taiwan to talk in an extremely high-pitched baby voice. You can imagine how irritating it is to hear women in their 20’s and 30’s talk in a 6-year-old’s voice. Understandably (to me anyway), I wrote it in a sarcastic voice, kind of a “how to annoy the shit out of people” tone of voice. I polished it and edited it late into the night, until I was certain that, if not rolling on the floor, readers would at least engage in uncontrollable laughing.

I gave mom a call in her office on the second day in the hospital. I started by nonchalantly talking about the weather, my uneventful first night in the hospital, and how loud the nurses were. “Speaking of voices, mom,” I thought it was a good time to bring it up, “have you read my recent posting about it on my blog?” Pretty smooth, eh?! (hi-five!) My mom knows all my tricks and she wasn’t gonna hand me the satisfaction that easily, “It’s okay,” she plainly replied. IT’S OKAY? “You’re a good writer, Kate,” Uh-oh! Here comes the But! “But your writing has a very matter-of-fact voice that makes it hard to relate to what you’re trying to get at. You need more…. more descriptions, more words. More!” What did she mean? Matter-of-fact? What do I need more of?

I called a friend who works as an editor in a publishing company and asked if she could understand what my mom meant. She chuckled and told me that my latest posting sounds a lot like David Letterman’s Top 10 Lists. It’s dry. It’s sarcastic. It’s down to the point. It doesn’t fly well in Chinese. It never has and it never will.

I went down the memory lane to first year university English Lit at UBC. What I remember from that class can be summed up in one word, “Concise” – yes, with a capital C. After spending three years reacquiring the technical parts of my mother tongue, I’m faced with an irony – I express my ideas in Chinese with an English voice. I’m not sure if I could ever find my voice again in Chinese though.

[1] The passage was:

"It is under these circumstances that we feel constrained to call upon you to come to our aid should a disturbance arise here the circumstances are so extreme that we cannot but believe that you and the men under you will not fail to come to the rescue of people who are so situated." (Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Lynne Truss.)

The meaning of this telegram changes drastically if you put a full stop after the word “aid” and after the word “here”.

[2] My mother is not a harsh, critical woman. She’s actually very loving, giving, and funny. It’s just that…. when it comes to her only child’s accomplishments, she’s still struggling with being a typical Chinese mother, and not. Most Chinese parenting styles are still heavily influenced by Confucius’ teaching. Therefore, they often talk the child down so they don’t appear arrogant and the child learns to be humble. Deep down, though, they’re just as proud as any parent would be.