Yating Xu
If the word “multilingual” is defined as “being able to use several languages especially with equal fluency”, then I have to admit that I’m not a multilingual in the strict sense. I grew up in China, Mandarin is my native language, and I’ve been learning English since primary school, though still not being able to achieve a native-like proficiency, for sure the time is long enough for me to be equipped with adequate language skills to survive in Montreal.
In the past year, the experience of studying and living in Montreal offered me a lot of opportunities to be exposed to an environment where the conversation flows with diverse languages, as well as the chances to get acquainted with a number of REAL multilinguals. By talking with them, listening to and being a part of their conversations, I have witnessed and observed some fascinating moments about these multilinguals and their language choices, and most importantly, the respect and inclusiveness I felt when being around with them.
The first example I’m going to give is between one of my Chinese friends, Chen, and his three roommates: a Québécois couple and a French girl. Chen and his two Québécois roommates can speak both English and French pretty well, while the English of their French roommate Juliet is not good enough to actively engage in a conversation, so most of the time, it is still French that dominates their daily conversations.
I still remember the first time that I was introduced to them by Chen in their apartment. They originally assumed that my French was as good as Chen’s, so they greeted me in French naturally. A few seconds after they noticed the confused expression on my face, Florent, one of the Québécois guys, broke the temporary silence by jokingly asking me, “You prefer English or Mandarin? I can do both.” We all burst out in laughter with these words. Then, quite naturally, all the people in the room started to talk in English. Even though the “official” language of their apartment is French and they have already been quite used to communicating with each other in French, that night, each of them unanimously “switched” to the English mode just to make me feel like I’m not excluded. Even Juliet, the only person whose English is not good in the room, was trying so hard to follow the conversation between us and speaking to us by using her limited English vocabulary rather than speaking in French.
Another example I can call upon right now is about my former landlord Annie and her three boys, Leo, Emile and Philip (the names are shown by age in ascending order). They grew up in Montreal and had lived in Costa Rica for a few years, so all of them can speak at least three languages: French, English and some Spanish. Philip and Emile were born in Montreal and both of them have some kind of talent in language learning, so they can easily switch between French and English very well. But Leo, the youngest one of the boys, was born in Costa Rica, though his English is good enough to conduct daily communication with others, when he speaks English, I can still tell that it’s not as fluent as the way he speaks French and he’s more likely to pop up some French words when talking with us.
One day, we were having a little chat about our own experience of going to the La Ronde (the biggest amusement park in Montreal), Leo seemed very interested in this topic and he was so excited to talk about his favorite attraction in the amusement park, sharing with us his feelings of riding it. The conversation was originally in English, then somehow turned into French with Leo’s vivid description, but it didn’t last long, because Annie directly interrupted Leo’s enthusiastic speech as soon as she heard Leo was speaking French, “ In English, Leo!”Right after Annie’s words, Leo switched back to English again and all of this happened so quickly and smoothly, but it still left a deep impression on me at that time and I felt so touched by this small episode during the conversation that night.
The two stories above for sure are both successful examples of multilinguals and their wise, thoughtful language choices, but I also came across some situations when I was put in a very embarrassed and somewhat uncomfortable position due to people’s inappropriate language choices.
This summer, I went back to China for two months and unavoidably visited some relatives and friends that I can barely remember. Even though we both knew that we don’t feel very emotionally connected to each other, we still tried to have some “ice-breaking” conversation so as to ease the awkwardness. However, the language of our conversation was a tricky problem for us, since I’ve been away from my hometown for more than 10 years, so I actually had some difficulty understanding my hometown dialect, not to mention communicating fluently with others, while most of my relatives can speak Mandarin and the dialect very well, and contrary to what Annie and Chen’s roommates did, they chose to communicate in dialect for most of the time, and only switched to Mandarin when necessary.
So as you can imagine, the whole conversation with the relatives can’t be regarded as pleasant, at least in my mind, and after that, I started to realize that for multilinguals, their language choices, either intentionally or unintentionally, will bring different experiences and feelings to those relatively “disadvantaged” interlocutors. I won’t say that those relatives of mine were making a bad language choice by putting me in such an undesirable situation. After all, people who can speak more languages do not have the obligation to cater to those who know less languages, especially when the latter are far outnumbered by the former, but what I firmly believe is that, the reason why we try so hard to learn languages is because we want to learn how to communicate with others, and no matter how many languages we manage to master eventually, the essence of communication is always to respect the one we speak to.
