Are you Ms Yang or Ms Young?

Ever since I went for relief teaching last year, I have often come across questions like, “cher, are you Ms Y o u n g? cher, how to spell your name? cher, are you Ms Young or Ms Yang?” And I will be LOL inside my heart---HAHAHAHAHA!!! You should just take a look at the faces of those students!!!! They are so naïve, so cute and so funny that you just can't stop laughing. However, as a teacher, I have to put on a straight face and so I replied “I'm Ms Yang.”

I remembered on one occasion one of the lower sec guys said “Ms Yang is forever Young.” And the girls would go “Ms Yang is really Young.” Again, I was LOL to myself. Although I'm not sure if they meant what they said, but they definitely do brighten up my day.

Actually, I have never given such serious thought about the differences between Yang and Young (I'm not referring to the meaning though) until I did relief teaching. The constant mixed up of “Ms Young and Ms Yang” was so irritating that it immediately sparked off a red light in my head. I'm not trying to say that I'm being pissed off by the students for mixing up my surname, but I'm rather pissed off by the Young Yang, Yang Young pronunciations—(sounds like a tongue twister isn't it?)

But recently I have come to realize that both Young and Yang can be used interchangeably when we want to refer to someone with the surname of Yang (I'm referring to people with the Chinese surname Yang only). It is because in America, where Chinese is not the main language, those American Chinese have to substitute their Chinese surnames with a similar pronunciation English word. And thus, the closest pronunciation to Yang (Chinese surname) is Young (English word).

Therefore, case closed. And I have to apologize to those students who were being corrected by me for misinterpreting my surname. :P Next time, you can either call me Ms Yang or Ms Young. However, it would be better if you all know me as Ms Yang.