John Yau
Ing Grish
Ing Grish
“You need to speak Singlish to express a Singaporean feeling.”
Catherine Liu
I never learned Singlish.
I cannot speak Taglish, but I have registered
the tonal shifts of Dumglish, Bumglish, and Scumglish.
I do not know Ing Grish, but I will study it down to its
black and broken bones.
I do not know Ing Gwish, but I speak dung and dungaree,
satrap and claptrap.
Today I speak barbecue and canoe.
Today I speak running dog and yellow dog.
I do not know Spin Gloss, but I hear humdrum and humdinger,
bugaboo and jigaboo.
I do not know Ang Grish, but I can tell you that my last name
consists of three letters, and that technically all of them are vowels.
I do not know Um Glish, but I do know how to eat with two sticks.
Oh but I do know English because my father’s mother was English
and because my father was born in New York in 1921
and was able to return to America in 1949
and become a citizen.
I no speak Chinee, Chanel, or Cheyenne.
I do know English because I am able to tell others
that I am not who they think I am.
I do not know Chinese because my mother said that I refused to learn it
from the moment I was born, and that my refusal
was one of the greatest sorrows of her life,
the other being the birth of my brother.
I do know Chinese because I understood what my mother’s friend told her
one Sunday morning, shortly after she sat down for tea:
“I hope you don’t that I parked my helicopter on your roof.”
Because I do not know Chinese I have been told that means
I am not Chinese by a man who translates from the Spanish.
He said that he had studied Chinese and was therefore closer
To being Chinese than I could ever be. No one publicly disagreed with him,
Which, according to the rules of English, means he is right.
I do know English and I know that knowing it means
that I don’t always believe it.
The fact that I disagree with the man who translates from the Spanish
is further proof that I am not Chinese because all the Chinese
living in America are hardworking and earnest
and would never disagree with someone who is right.
This proves I even know how to behave in English.
I do not know English because I got divorced and therefore
I must have misunderstood the vows I made at City Hall.
I do know English because the second time I made amarriage vow
I had to repeat it in Hebrew.
I do know English because I know what “fortune cookie” means
when it is said of a Chinese woman.
The authority on poetry announced that I discovered that I was Chinese
When it was to my advantage to do so.
My father was afraid that if I did not speak English properly
I would be condemned to work as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant.
My mother, however, said that this was impossible because
I didn’t speak Cantonese, because the only language
waiters in Chinese restaurants know how to speak was Cantonese.
I do not either Cantonese or English, Ang Glish or Ing Grish.
Anguish is a language everyone can speak, but no one listens to it.
I do know English because my father’s mother was Ivy Hillier.
She was born and died in Liverpool, after living in America and China,
and claimed to be a descendants of the Huguenots.
I do know English because I misheard my grandmother and thought
she said that I was a descendant of the Argonauts.
I do know English because I remember what “Made in Japan” meant
when I was a child.
I learn over and over again that I do not know Chinese.
Yesterday a man asked me how to write my last name in Chinese,
because he was sure that I had been mispronouncing it
and that if this was how my father pronounced it,
then the poor man had been wrong all his life.
I do not know Chinese even though my parents conversed in it every day.
I do know English because I had to ask the nurses not to put my mother
in a straitjacket, and reassure them that I would be willing to stay with her
until the doctor came the next morning.
I do know English because I left the room when the doctor told me
I had no business being there.
I do not know Chinese because during the Vietnam War
I was called a gook instead of a chink and realized
that I had managed to change my spots without meaning to.
I do not know English because when father said that he would
like to see me dead, I was never sure quite what he meant.
I do not know Chinese because I never slept with a woman
whose vagina slanted like my mother’s eyes.
I do not know either English or Chinese and, because of that,
I did not put a gravestone at the head of my parents’ graves
as I felt no language mirrored the ones they spoke.
