Catapult | The Pain of Losing Your First Language | Kristin Wong

On a Saturday afternoon, I’m in a remote Cantonese class, sitting at my desk with my laptop open and a book in front of me. The class is small, and I’m the only Chinese person in it, aside from our teacher. He’s patient and calm, and his Cantonese is smooth. Which is surprising, because everyone in my family speaks Cantonese one way: loud, forceful, and full of spit. I mimic those same harsh tones when I try to speak it, but my uncle says I sound like a five-year-old. “Who wants to read the next exercise?” the teacher asks. There’s a long pause and blank stares, but he just smiles and waits for one of us to volunteer. “I’ll go,” I say. The words are written in Jyutping, a romanization of Cantonese. I’ve never seen the words I heard as a kid translated to English letters. I only know them through sound. I drag a finger across the page and read them out loud anyway. “Nei . . . hai . . . bin dou . . . jan . . . a?” I feel like a fraud. I wonder if our teacher thinks I’m a fraud too. There

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