"Sunday Times 14/05/06"
Acting on her Mandarin
Actress Jeanette Aw, 27, couldn't string a sentence together in Mandarin when she started out in her career. She tells JEAN LOO how she improved her command of the language.
Are you more comfortable speaking in English or Mandarin? Why?
I'm more comfortable speaing in English because I come from an English-speaking family and we rarely use Mandarin in our conversations. The only time during my childhood when I spoke more mandarin was during my secondary school days at Crescent Girls' School. Besides an hour of chinese classes every day, my friends were more comfortable speaking in Mandarin, so I got the hang of it, too. But when I went to the National University of Singapore, where I majored in threatre studies, I hardly spoke it because the people around me spoke English. I wasn't into Chinese pop culture either,so it all added up to a lack of opportunities to use the language.
So why did you join the Chinese drama industry even though you're more comfortable speaking English?
Actually, when I applied for the auditions four years ago, I didn't even know it was for Chinese station Channel U because my friend had collected the entry forms for me. I decided to give it a shot and only found out that it was a Mandarin audition when I got there. But I was lucky. Even though it was a nerve-racking experience, things went very smoothly. I got through the auditions, signed on with Channel U and began my journey as an artiste.
How did you manage your initial frustration with Mandarin?
I didn't have any problems with the pronunciation of the words or the reading of the scripts, but rather the speed at which I read. When I was sent to Taiwan for four months to film a drama four years ago, another thing that really frustrated me was that the Taiwanese couldn't understand Enlish and I couldn't express myself in Mandarin. So they were always guessing what I was trying to say, somtimes even offering suggestions when I was trying to find the right words. That experience made me more determined to work on my Mandrain. Initially, it was quite hard because I was so rusty at the language, having lost touch with it for so long. I couldn't even complete one sentence in Chinese without mixing it with English. But luckily, there was a foundation from my secondary school days that I could build on.
What helped you improve your Mandarin?
I made it a point to listen to people speak. This helped build my vocabulary. Also, I started buying collections of Chinese short stories because they were manageable and easy to read. In Taiwan, most of the books were in Chinese, so I had a very wide range to choose from. The only problem was that the characters were in fan ti zi (complex chinese characters). so that required a little getting used to. I still keep a dictionary by my side when I'm reading my scripts because I run into words that I don't recognise.
Any tips to share with our readers on how to improve their Chinese?
I think reading comics is a good start. it helps increase your skills of conversational Mandarin because the characters are always speaking to each other in speech bubbles. For example, I find taiwanese cartoonist Jimmy's stories very captivating because they draw the reader into pictures and it's easier to make sense of the words. Listening to chinese pop music is fun too. But for me, what really worked was reading books because I'm more of a reader by nature. Reading helped me remember certain things better, like new phrases and their meanings. But ultimately, there must be more opportunities to practise speaking Mandarin.
