Language

A few posts ago, I was speaking about the Language of Love. Today, I will speak about Language as in the physical language.

You know, from the time I returned home from Brisbane, I have NEVER thought myself as a Singaporean. I had identity crisis honest. Suddenly, every dash of sentence has a "lah", "leh", "lor", etc.. Finally after 4 years, unfortunately, I could easily pass myself off as a Singaporean using Singlish VERY well. After using 4 years to "master" Singlish, I am trying to learn another language of my OWN dialect group - Hokkien! Argh!!!

I am born to a Hokkien family but I was raised speaking Cantonese. How cool is that right? Well, my Cantonese is still "half a bucket full" LAH.. 半桶水..

Now, the problem is, in my line of work, sometimes, you just don't get to choose the clients to work with. Of late, I got a only-Hokkien speaking client of a certain elderly age. I took heart in that when I went for a home visit with my senior once, he mentioned that when he started out, he didn't know how to speak Hokkien! And boy! Was he fluent!

Right.. So what happened was today, I finally conducted my session in Hokkien! Yay! BUT it was REAL funny listening to myself!! Boy! Did I spend lots of time preparing myself for the visit. And more so, I am glad that my client appreciates that I made the effort to speak Hokkien though not fluent.

As I walked out of the home, my thoughts went to Ps Ben's sermon yesterday. It was Missions Sunday and he shared a little about his experiences in Rome. He shared about how one of the missionaries being able to speak fluently in Italian. And when I look at the team members in Santiago, Equador, etc, I am SO encouraged at the heart to learn the local language.

Speaking one's love language is able to make a person feel loved. Speaking one's language is able to make a person open up to you!