Excuse me, are you a native speaker?

When I read the latest entry by Sharon Bakar in Bibliobibuli, one of her blogs of which I'm a follower, a very interesting question which had always been at the back of my mind sprang forward. It may or may not be a dilemma for any average Malaysian, but it certainly is for me. Being a Malaysian, I practically grew up speaking 3 languages, but which one of it am I a native of?

As children, my sisters and I were looked after by my maternal grandmother (since mum and dad had to work) with whom we spoke mostly in Cantonese. Our command of the language was largely conversational. Any technical terms or poetic structures would've been lost on us. It did help though, that we were always rooted in front of the television at 6pm to catch the TVB drama serials from Hong Kong (which I believe was a common phenomenon in most Chinese households in Malaysia). That was where I picked up my occasional intelligent utterings in Cantonese, the language in which the level of my proficiency would otherwise have been pretty basic.

At the time, the medium of education in school was Bahasa Malaysia (which was called Bahasa Melayu for a while sometime during my secondary school years). In primary, we learned the basic vocabulary but we never used it much at home. In secondary, it got more complex and difficult, but still, we didn't feel the need to use it much. I'm not proud to say that my ability in grasping the national language was slightly below average. I didn't appreciate the language as much as I should have and the reason for using it at all was purely academic. In order to pass the SPM (the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia, a national exam every Form 5 student has to sit for), you'd have to pass BM. So by the time I got to Form 5, I could write, but in a casual conversation, I'd have a problem uttering a decent sentence in complete BM, especially if fluency was of the essense. I was more adept at the bahasa rojak, a sentence made up of a healthy mix of English and basic Malay words and sometimes even a word or two of Cantonese (or Hokkien) when the need arose.

Back in our own home (whenever we weren't at granny's), mum and dad, who went to school when subjects were being taught in the Queen's English were particular about us speaking in proper English and made it essential in our household. I remember when we were still in primary school, mum used to immediately correct us whenever we got our tenses wrong or added a 'lah' at the end our sentences much too often. As we grew older, that stopped, and I believe that was when the problem began. Bahasa rojak frequently found its way into my conversations with friends (and sometimes even with my sisters) and my "proper" English gradually turned into Manglish.

This identity crisis where language is concerned, had always been a question but it was never a problem, well at least not until I decided to be an ESL teacher. If you've ever tried applying for a position as an ESL teacher in a foreign country where English is not widely spoken, like China or Korea, you'd know that one of the most important criterias is that you need to be a native speaker of English, in brackets, from the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand or Canada. Now I don't hail from any of these countries. I'm Asian, and granted, my English is not perfect (so that post really hit a chord!), I still struggle with it sometimes, but I grew up speaking the language at home. It goes without saying that it's naturally the default language in my daily life. I'd pick up a copy of the New Straits Times as opposed to a copy of the Berita Harian or the Nanyang Siang Pau, I'd read the English version of the manual of my new mobile phone, I'd choose to view the website in English whenever I wanted to do online banking, I sms, email and Facebook in English AND I blog in English. You get the picture. So am I a native then? Can I answer to an ad that says "Native speakers only"? And if English is not my native language, what is?

I'm of Chinese descent but never studied Chinese in school. I speak in Cantonese but read and write in English. I come from a country whose first language I studied in school but use very little of. What then, is my native language?