MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

• Being English & Malay educated, I had utmost difficulty in communicating with Chinese patients, especially when I first started working in Kuching, Sarawak, where most Chinese speak Hokkien or Mandarin. My dialect is Hakka, which I don’t speak fluently. I had been called an OCBC (Orang Cina Bukan Cina) & some say I’m a “banana” just because I don’t speak Chinese well. Fortunately over the years, I’ve gradually picked up Mandarin from my colleagues, nurses & patients at the hospital. After 6 years, I can now do consultation with Chinese patients in semi-perfect but understandable Mandarin. While learning ‘more difficult’ words like “ruan chow” (ovaries), “tze kung jing” (cervix), “tan pai tze” (protein) & “suek siau pan” (platelets), I had forgotten to brush up on my pronunciation of ‘simpler’ words like “yen jing” (eyes). “Yen jing” if pronounced differently, means glasses or spectacles. My hanyi pinyin is hopeless. I guess I just don’t have the “Mandarin tongue”. So on one occasion while examining a patient at the RTU (Radiotherapy Unit) Clinic, instead of telling him to remove his glasses so that I could examine his eyes, I had told the poor man, “Please remove your eyes, I would like to have a look at your spectacles.”

• Chinese dislike the number 4 (“se”) because it sounds similar to death or dying. A former non-Chinese speaking specialist at the RTU, Dr. K (no relations whatsoever with Datuk K or Siti Nurhaliza), was seeing a breast cancer patient & her family for the first time. Both patient & family spoke only Mandarin. The patient had undergone curative surgery & was at the RTU clinic to discuss regarding further management of her cancer, including radiotherapy & chemotherapy. She inquired about the total number of chemotherapy cycles. Dr. K was trying in vain to converse in Mandarin. In an attempt to inform the patient that there would be 4 cycles of chemo, he had said, “You are going to die.” The patient was in shock & was about to leave the clinic when a Mandarin speaking Bidayuh nurse came to save the situation.