Banana children?

My son speaks excellent English but he can't say a sentence in Hokkien. It is such a shame that I never taught him.

When I was little, I spoke Hokkien and only Hokkien. None in my family spoke English. I had happy memories of Hokkien riddles. Boy was I good at it.

"Ay-ya-tok, phak-kan-lok,
kan-lok-phua, see-khiau-khiau"

"Am-mong-mong, niau-choo-kong, a-ma-phak-ah-kong"

When I went to school, I quickly realized that my fluent Hokkien skill was of no use. Girls who spoke fluent English were way ahead of the rest of us. They seemed so westernized. Back then, being westernized spelled sophistication. I felt like a snua-pa-kau (country bumpkin, or rather country monkey). I had to work hard to catch up in school. The good thing about me was I never stopped trying, ..... never embarassed to learn from scratch. When some girls were already reading Reader's Digest and Mills&Boon, I was still enjoying Peter&Jane.

For years I was convinced that those who spoke fluent English had an added advantage. I wasn't alone in my thinking as I found out that many children born in the 80s and 90s had parents who conversed with them in English only, resulting in a whole generation of bananas.

It was only recently that Mandarin started becoming popular, thanks to China's economic boom that caused the paradigm shift in people's mindset. As for me, I am determined to talk to my son in Hokkien now. He has learned to say 'chiak-pnui', 'pang-jio' and pang-sai'. Still a long way to go but I will not give up.