FEB 1 — Think poor English standards aren’t a problem? Well, my sister almost wasn’t born… because our mother barely knew English.

It’s almost comic, the story. Our parents were in the Philippines at the time; my father was doing his Masters. My mother was pregnant with baby number three: my second and most hard-headed sister.

They had planned a little trip and my mother decided to go for a check-up, just in case. She asked the doctor if travelling would have any effect on the baby’s safety. So she tried explaining, in the little English she knew, her concerns. My dad was in the waiting room, thinking he had nothing to worry about.

Unfortunately, the doctor had misinterpreted my mother’s question and thought my mother wanted to abort the child so as not to hinder her travel plans! When the doctor tried to affirm what she wanted, my mother merely smiled and nodded her head without really understanding what he was saying.

Wondering why the examination was taking so long, my father walked into the examination room. Just seconds before the doctor was about to administer an injection to induce a miscarriage.

Dad: “Dear, why are you getting an injection?”

Mom: “I don’t know. The doctor said I should. For the baby.”

Dad: (after finding out from the doctor what the injection was for) “What? No, no, no! We don’t want to get rid of the baby!”

After the incident, my father practically forced my mother to learn English. You couldn’t blame him. After all, he had nearly lost a child to poor English fluency.

At least the story had a (mostly) happy ending. My sister was born, during an earthquake no less (explains her hard-headedness). My mother became competent in the language and my dad resolutely decided all his kids would master English. Other children read Enid Blyton; we grew up on Bulgakov, Kipling, Wilde and Tolstoy.

My father’s only complaint: his kids are now all either in the media or doing language-related stuff. Morals of the story: One, raising children on good literature leads to the unfortunate side-effect of them having a mind of their own and second, don’t leave your wife unattended in a foreign clinic, especially if she can’t speak English.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.