Many Tribes, Many Tongues

Last night, I dreamt that I failed a Chinese oral exam. I had not been dreaming about exams for a long, long time. Even after leaving school, I used to have recurring nightmares about failing Math exams. The nightmare was usually the same - going to the exam hall and not able to do the Math exam paper at all because I had not attended Math classes the whole year. It was a strange, traumatic experience in dreamland, filled with anguish and agony over calculus and differentiation. It was strange because it was contrary to my typical kiasu Singaporean nature, not like the real me who's always mugging up and faithfully doing my ten-year series.

Some people say dreams in our sleep reflect our thoughts in the day. I suppose my nightmares about Math exams are the vestiges of the stresses I went through during my school days. Might the exam stresses be so deeply ingrained that my nightmares occur long after I left school? It goes to show the long-lasting "damage" that the exam-oriented school system inflicted on my mental well-being even today?

But why the dream about failing oral Chinese exam last night? For the past one over year, I've been trying to brush up my Chinese-speaking ability, relearning hanyu pinyin (which I learnt as a working adult in a one-to-one course conducted by my sis's friend) and reading primary-school-level Chinese books which I bought from Shanghai two years ago. Sadly, my progress has been painfully slow, mainly because of distractions from other activities and not enough time spent on real study. My aspiration to become effectively bilingual still has a long way to go.

If only we have only one language for all peoples, life would be simpler and perhaps richer since we can devote more time to learning and enjoying the fine things of life instead of grappling with a 2nd or even 3rd language. After the earth was first created, the whole world indeed had one language and a common speech (Gen 3:1). But pride caused this idyllic state to be changed.

In the days after the big flood, Scripture tells of men building a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that they may make a name for themselves. God saw the tower of Babel that the men were building and He said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." (Gen 3:3-9) And here we have the genesis of the multiple languages in the world today - men's pride and ambition to build a monument to their own greatness, for themselves rather than to God.

Will my aspiration to build up my Chinese-speaking ability become my "tower of Babel"? Admittedly, I'm most envious of Singaporean friends who speak well in Chinese. Speaking as well as them will increase my sense of self-worth and significance. But I need to guard against pride in any human achievement. The story of the tower of Babel is a good reminder.