Babel

by R.F. Kuang

At first, he could not understand the point. These dialogues felt artificial, stilted, and most of all, unnecessary. He was fluent already; he didn’t stumble over vocabulary recall or pronunciations the way he did when he and Mr Felton conversed in Latin. Why should he answer such basic questions as how he found his dinner, or what he thought about the weather? But Professor Lovell was adamant. ‘Languages are easier to forget than you imagine,’ he said. ‘Once you stop living in the world of Chinese, you stop thinking in Chinese.’ ‘But I thought you wanted me to start thinking in English,’ Robin said, confused. ‘I want you to live in English,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘This is true. But I still need you to practise your Chinese. Words and phrases you think are carved into your bones can disappear in no time.’ He spoke as if this had happened before. ‘You’ve grown up with solid foundations in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. That’s very fortunate – there are adults who spend their lifetimes trying to achieve what you have. And even if they do, they achieve only a passable fluency – enough to get by, if they think hard and recall vocabulary before speaking – but nothing close to a native fluency where words come unbidden, without lag or labour. You, on the other hand, have already mastered the hardest parts of two language systems – the accents and rhythm, those unconscious quirks that adults take forever to learn, and even then, not quite. But you must maintain them. You can’...