In ninth-grade English, Mr. Johnson showed us the movie “My Fair Lady” for the first time. We watched Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins transformed Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle from a poor flower girl to a sophisticated lady. He accomplished this feat through the power of speech. When the professor sang the verses to “Why can’t the English Learn to Speak?” it instantly resonated with me. I understood very well how a person’s speech defines who they are because I have encountered this firsthand.
“It’s the aooow and garn that keep her in her place. Not her wretched clothes and dirty face.”
At eight years old, the only English words I knew when we immigrated to the United States were “Hello,” “Goodbye,” and “Thank you.” At the time, my brother, sister, and I spoke Cantonese (a dialect of the Chinese language) at home and in Vietnamese with our teachers and classmates. English was uncharted territory our young minds had to explore in this strange new world.
As children, we can learn a new language at a fast pace. But the first few years were still a challenge to get through. I remember being made fun of for using a verb tense incorrectly (“Yesterday I miss the bus”) or saying slang incorrectly (“Give me high five!”). The other kids weren’t being mean or judgemental; they were expressing their amusement, as children do, at something they take for granted. However, it did prevent us from becoming close friends with classmates outside of our ethnicity.
Not only do we speak different languages to different audiences, but the built-in slang of a language also plays a role in the familiarity of our relationship. For example, I may ask my mom in Cantonese, “Old momma, where is old papa?” (Lou ma ji, lou dau hai bien dou?). I doubt my English-speaking friends would be willing to call their parents “old” as a term of endearment. Likewise, I wouldn’t ask my mom in English, “How’s it hanging?” as this might prompt the poor woman to look up to the ceiling to see if anything is hanging there.
Putting pronunciation aside, using correct grammar, accepted slang, and sentence structure will endear you closer to native speakers. As the years passed, my siblings and I subconsciously started to speak English with each other at home, forgoing our Cantonese and Vietnamese. Of course, we still spoke our native languages to older family members, but with each other, it’s English all the way. Unsurprisingly, we started making more friends outside our circles, teachers treated us better, and our lives gradually improved in our interactions outside our home. We were becoming less Immigrant and becoming more American.
In a curious turn of events, I returned to Vietnam after graduating and found my old language to be strange and awkward. Coming from a financially poor environment, we never learned to speak “proper” Vietnamese at a young age before we left. My Vietnamese sounded unsophisticated and even vulgar to native speakers.
For instance, the pronouns he/she, you, and they in Vietnamese are nó, mày, and chúng nó, which polite company should never use. They are too unsophisticated. Instead, one should refer to one’s peers as anh (older brother), chị (older sister), and em (younger brother or sister). When referring to the person you’re speaking to, a polite person wouldn’t use the literal word for “you” (mày) but instead use the word for “friend” (bạn) or revert to calling them your brother or sister. Even lovers call each other brothers and sisters, anh yêu em (I love you), which, in English, seems inappropriate. But this is just a built-in feature of the language; it brings the speakers closer to each other without extra connotations outside the intention of being polite.
As my old language returned and I understood more of the rhetoric of the Vietnamese language, I became more comfortable with my old settings. It became easier to make friends and communicate with strangers. I understood the huge difference the correct language usage makes in how others view a person within their society.
A few years later, I decided to move to China to learn Mandarin, the main dialect spoken on the mainland. Even though I couldn’t read and write Chinese, being fluent in Cantonese helped me immensely in understanding the tones and grammatical structure of the Chinese language. Learning Mandarin wasn’t difficult, but again, cultural rhetoric within the Chinese language caused a large amount of embarrassment and awkwardness. Bringing my American language customs to an Asian language seems to work against me when trying to assimilate into the new culture.
In Mandarin Chinese, one easy mistake to point out is to avoid referring to a young lady as Miss (xiao jie) because one could be implying that the person is a prostitute. Another is to refrain from asking or offering a man a green hat because it would imply his wife is cheating on him. And lastly, don’t call a person by their first name if they “rank” higher than you in the generational hierarchy.
I can call my friend’s mom by her first name in America, and no one would bat an eye. My brother can call his mother and father-in-law by their first names, and no one is offended. However, do this in China, and you’ll be considered rude and obnoxious. My wife’s parents have a friend who is at least ten years younger than me. But I was reprimanded for mistakenly calling him by his first name instead of “uncle” because he is a friend of the generation above me. And if I even consider calling my father and mother-in-law by their first names, I might be sleeping on the couch or out of the street before I can say dui bu qi (I’m sorry).
I lived a few years in China, married a Chinese wife, and we moved back to the U.S. The time spent there opened up a new understanding of cultural differences and how languages reflect their corresponding worldviews. I am reminded of Professor Higgins’s point on how a person’s speech affects their social identity. I take this idea further and stretch it across cultural identities and the ease of assimilation within such societies.
The rhetoric of a language reflects its history and worldview, and the correct usage and understanding, or lack thereof, of cultural rhetoric will change how others view the speaker. Assimilating to society through grammar, slang, and cultural influences can improve your role and interaction within said society. To become part of a culture, you must try to understand how its language transforms ideas beyond their literal translations. In his musical debut, Professor Higgins asked, “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak? This verbal class distinction by now should be antique.” Although I agree with this sentiment, I doubt this practice will ever disappear because it is built into our human nature.
When he pointed out to Colonel Pickering, “If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do, Why, you might be selling flowers, too.”
I felt like he was speaking to me. I was the flower girl, and learning to speak properly would transform me into a legitimate member of the culture I wished to become a part of, and he was right.
Reference:
My Fair Lady
Author: Alan Jay Lerner
Adapted from the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Copyright 1956
https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/My_Fair_Lady.pdf
Huey Ly 
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