Who was your Chinese teacher? What medium of instruction he or she used to teach you Chinese at the time you did not know a single word in Chinese?

I went to evening classes in UK where I learnt hanyu pinyin. There was a good book and the teacher used English to teach. This is also the method we use at The Mandarin Centre of New Era College. Our Mandarin teachers also use English to teach Mandarin, and it is the method used by the famous Beijing Language University.

What were the difficulties you faced when you first learned Chinese?

I didn't have the right environment in the UK to practice it. Over in Malaysia, you can practice Mandarin with any Chinese Malaysian you meet in the street or shops. The best way is of course to find a close friend or lover who only speaks Mandarin!

What are the differences you feel before and after you have mastered Chinese?

First, if you're a Chinese, your own name and all Chinese names take on their cultural (indexical) meaning. Chinese characters begin to make sense culturally. I can communicate with Chinese people - other than Teochew and Hokkien - anywhere in the world. When you become 'literate', one begins to understand what the world of the illiterate person is like.

However, like all things, being a little literate makes you realise how little one knows about the classics and the store of wisdom waiting to be discovered by you, and not merely through second-hand secondary sources.

How do you allocate your reading time between English and Chinese?

I would read Chinese papers first thing in the morning. At work, I have to pour through papers and documents in Chinese. There would be a favourite bed-time book in Chinese/English/Malay at any one time. The rest of the time is spent reading English/Malay papers and my research interest would be in any of the three languages. I would say, English is still used more often since it was the language I was educated in.

As a member of parliament from 1990 to 1995, you also showed that you can speak and write Malay well inside and outside Parliament. Where did you learn Malay? Who taught you Malay?

During the colonial period, we also studied Bahasa in school but my regret is not studying it seriously enough. But I have an instinctive feel for linguistics and can appreciate the structuralism of languages. So a lot of Malay must have seeped into my sub-conscious. Thus, even after spending more than 10 years in the UK, I could still stand up in Parliament and mellifluous Malay could flow out. I sometimes I wonder how it was possible!

Which language - English, Chinese or Malay - is easier to learn and master?

It's a truism that one's own mother language is the easiest to learn and master. Apart from one's mother language, one can learn any other languages depending on the environment. You will find an elderly Chinese shopkeeper speaking in Iban deep in the Sarawak forest. One can pick up any language if your work takes you there. I've met American missionaries speaking impeccable Teochew with my grandmother in my hometown. Thus, I don't thing there's a hierarchy of difficulty in learning a language. But to master a language, you have to love it.

Which school do you send your children to - Chinese or national or national-type schools?

My two children were educated in Chinese primary and independent Chinese secondary schools. I didn't want them to go through life with the identity crisis I went through. After all, they were going to learn English with their mother, so it made sense to learn Chinese, their father-tongue and know their other cultural origin. I'm most proud of their Malay though. They got As for their SPM and they speak Malay really "pekat". My son has lots of Indian friends and he seems to have picked up quite a bit of Tamil. He has also worked in France and is now proficient in French as well.

What about their tertiary education?

My daughter is about to start her medical course at a UK university. My son is doing entrepreneurship at a Scottish university. Like me, he has taken some years to learn the proletarian life!

It is always assumed that English proficiency in Chinese schools is low. Is it true?

I would say the problem of English proficiency in Malay, Chinese and Tamil schools is about the same. From my observation, the problem is the lack of good qualified teachers to teach English. The Education Ministry and the frequent policy flip-flops has a lot to answer for this.

It has been suggested by a school of thought that the teaching of science and mathematics in English in primary schools would help to improve the English proficiency of Malays, Chinese, Indians and other children whose mother-tongues are not English. How true is this?

This is always raised by Anglophiles. How is it we don't hear the French or Russians or Japanese or Germans raising this? The Chinese, Tamil and Malay education lobbies in this country do not buy this idea. They have no objection to increasing the learning period for English language. For years, they have been asking for the teaching of English to start from Standard 1 but this request has never been met by the Education Ministry.

They certainly see the teaching of Maths and Science in English as the most serious threat to the existence of the mother-tongue education system because at a stroke, it homogenises all the primary schools. There would be no need for Chinese and Tamil schools when the schools become effectively English schools with a subject in Malay or Chinese or Tamil.

I would suggest that the Education Ministry pays more attention to providing good, effective and properly qualified English-language teachers for all schools.

It is also often said that, whatever language we learn, we should also understand the historical, cultural and religious backgrounds of the places and peoples that language originate so that we could better grasp the subtle meanings of its expressions, symbolisms and literary passions. Is this true?

Certainly. Learning a language or understanding a people and their culture requires an empathy that goes beyond their language but encapsulates their history, culture and religion. This is the same whether we want to appreciate Shakespeare or Tang poetry or the Mahabharata or a Malay pantun. A translation is always second best.

Part 1: Rediscovering one's mother-tongue

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia. He is a former DAP member of Parliament for Kampar (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew Daily). He read political science and economics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.