Language and Culture Trajectory

This website shows my identity and how I see myself. It talks about the people who are important around me and influences who I am today. All of my family members are bilingual and it is part of the Taiwanese culture. Taiwanese culture is a pretty hybrid culture. It includes traditions from Japan and China. With that, older generation Taiwanese can speak three languages: Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Japanese. In recent generations, however, more and more Taiwanese are becoming bilingual in just Mandarin and English; Taiwanese language is slowly dying off.

I would like to point out that in this entire website, I mentioned that I have never spoken Taiwanese back to my relatives or parents. Although it is true in a way, I am not blaming my family for my lack of fluency. The reason why my sister, my cousins (in Taiwan), and I were never asked to speak Taiwanese in return was because it would help us no good in the future. However, in a way, I do feel like I lost that part of my identity. During family gatherings in the US, it was usually hard for me to contribute to family conversations. Some of my family-members-by-law doesn’t even speak Mandarin. That only leaves me to force myself to speak Taiwanese, speak English (which can seem to appear rude), or to not speak at all.

Right now, I am in the process of learning Taiwanese. I hope one day, I can speak well enough to communicate not just to my family members, but to the community in Taiwan. Taiwanese is a language that is quiet hard to pick up because there is no writing system. Not many classes offer Taiwanese in Taiwan either. The best way to pick it up is to slowly immerse myself into the culture.

旭亨