our family grew up with cantonese as the second language. my mom is from hong kong and my dad from the southern part of china.

unfortunately, i failed to cherish this opportunity and spoke english predominantly as a child, leaving me with heavily-accented and vocabulary-limited cantonese.

i have spent an inordinate amount of time repairing these deficiencies and learning mandarin as well.

a little more self-awareness and foresight as a teenager could have saved me years of learning as an adult.

on the upside, self-learning has yielded insights into chinese language and culture, learning, and accents. unsure if these other perspectives are worth the extra time and effort, though. :)