跌倒老大汉

So my thoughts have kind of switched language lately. I don't know if this is normal, but I have always been able to switch between and think in the different languages that I grew up in. Of course most of the time I think in English, although at home when I communicate with my family I tend to think in Chinese too. I'm sure those of us who grew up in Chinese-speaking homes do that quite often.

I was brought up by a babysitter during my kindergarten days, where my working parents would just leave me and my sister to the care of the babysitter before they went to work and then come collect us at the end of the day. So my babysitter was a Teochew lady who spoke only Teochew and often brought me to watch Teochew operas. And my parents speak Hokkien to each other at home and to their parents and siblings. Until I went to primary school, I only spoke these dialects and Chinese. As those who speak these dialects might know, the two are really quite similar to each other, with only slight differences in the ending pitches and some word usage. So while these days I do not speak these dialects as much as English and Chinese, I think somehow my brain kept that ability to think in these dialects over the years.

But lately, I might have regressed into my pre-primary 1 days. Call it a brain glitch or whatever, I realized thinking in Hokkien is not as horrifying as it seemed at first. Some people, especially the younger generations, think Hokkien is an uncouth and vulgar language. But I think like Chinese it also has many interesting phrases which I thought were very apt in describing things.

For example, just last week, my dad and I were on our way back home from the coffeeshop when we walked by a toddler who suddenly fell smacked face first onto the floor. Her mum (I assume) immediately rushed forward to coddle her, while her grandma (again assuming) said in Hokkien,

"Buay yeow geen, pua toh lao dua han. Le dua han liao." (Nevermind, when you fall, you grow up. So you've already grown.)

跌倒老大汉 (pronounced "pua toh lao dua han" in Hokkien), that is a phrase I haven't heard in a long time. In Chinese it literally translates to "When you fall, old big man", which dosen't do justice to the meaning at all.

I guess it was rather apt that the toddler didn't cry at all when she fell. She just got up quietly and continued to move forward, "growing up" a little like her grandma said.

Perhaps that's what we should all do when we fall. Get up and keep moving forward.