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Chinese heritage speakers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 5 12 January 2013 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
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The standard pattern for heritage languages goes something like this. Newly-arrived immigrants set about
coping with a new language while of course continuing to use their native tongue among fellow countrymen. This language will be passed on to children, to varying extents. The child will grow up gaining an understanding of the parental language but probably won't use it much, if at all, among peers. When the child grows up and in turn has his/her own kids, the heritage language won't feature much at home. Maybe grandpa speaks it a bit when he visits, but the latest generation only picks up a few words, or none. Perhaps the old man is discouraged from using the language around the children. The heritage trail goes cold. But Chinese immigrants seem to be an exception. There are many children in the UK who are of Chinese descent, maybe 3 or 4 generations down the line and yet they can speak a Chinese language, most likely Cantonese. The Chinese community seem to place a high value on language and culture of the homeland. Children go to British schools and speak native-level English but if you walk into a Chinese take-away you will hear a parent barking instructions in Chinese to their teenage sons and daughters. In fact, if a young girl is taking orders out front she often writes them down in Chinese script. How do they hang on to their language roots for so long when other nationalities discard them? The Chinese community does have a reputation for keeping to themselves (although by no means to the point of excluding interaction with the host society). I guess it's also common for marriages to take place within the Chinese circle, thus prolonging the likelihood of the language lasting out over several generations. Edited by beano on 12 January 2013 at 10:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4967 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 2 of 5 14 January 2013 at 2:44pm | IP Logged |
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Chinese people don't get easily assimilated. Well Mandarin and Northern Chinese culture is heavily influenced by altaic people but it's still a Chinese tongue just like Cantonese... Same goes for Chinese immigrants. There are zillions of them all over the world and they often outnumber local people in some places. In South-East Asia, for instance, they were just a handful of poor immigrants at first, but now they literally rule the region, as everyone knows. In contrast, minority peoples in China get assimiliated by Chinese people very easily. For instance, more than 95% of Korean Chinese(Joseonjok) in Manchuria think their identity belongs to China, and not to North or South Korea, ever. This is very different from Korean descendants in other places, such as Japan or America... Edited by Ojorolla on 14 January 2013 at 2:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4446 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 3 of 5 15 January 2013 at 7:13pm | IP Logged |
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Before you get into a discussion of Chinese expats living abroad, you have to understand some recent
history. In the 19th century you have labourers going to N. America during the gold rush and building of the transcontinental railroad. They were very much discriminated and discouraged from staying after their work contracts (up to 5 years) were over. Chinatowns became gated communities to keep bandits (White people) out. In other parts of the world such as the Caribbean & S. America I've seen a lot of Hakka- speaking people. Many of these countries were once under European domination (ex-colonies) and naturally people of other racial groups were discouraged from mixing in. In S-E Asia there are Chinese expats in Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, etc. Again you have European colonization until after the war. They were treated as another group of second class citizens. Over the years I've met Chinese from all over. 1 man from Fiji who speaks fluent Toisan (a dialect similar to Cantonese), 2 from Vietnam & Cambodia who speak the Fukienese dialect, 1 from Bangalore India and 1 from Jamaica who came from Hakka-speaking families but can hardly speak a word in Chinese. When it comes to the next generation we shouldn't oversimplify. Some families are more successful getting the kids to retain their spoken Chinese. Many I've seen in N. America have lost the ability to write because the characters are difficult to remember but still retain a certain fluency in the spoken language (their parents' native dialects). Most Chinese who chose to marry foreigners you'd expect them not to pass the language to the next generation. In some cases the parent who is Chinese (like Amy Chua the controversial American author of the book "Battle Hymns of the Tiger Mother") got her nanny to teach her 2 daughters Chinese despite being married to a Jewish husband. I know 1 middle-aged man who lived in small communities in the US in places like Ohio, Florida and N. Carolina but kept up his spoken and written Mandarin for many years. He even went back to a local University in N. Carolina to take additional language courses. In his Chinese classes there are White people and people of other nationalities as well. His parents may have a strong influence in his early childhood but this is an adult who made a conscious decision to retain his mother-tongue to the point of writing letters in Chinese regularly. We are not in a major city like New York, Boston, San Francisco or Los Angeles but a small town like Greensboro where you may find a few thousand people of Chinese descent at most. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6127 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 4 of 5 15 January 2013 at 7:56pm | IP Logged |
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I meet plenty of American born Chinese who don't speak a word, and and quite a few also, like you said, who spoke with their parents, but aren't fully literate. I run into them all the time because Japanese language studying is pretty popular among them. Here in the San Francisco Bay area they have the numbers, and quite a few more immigrants came again following the Hong Kong turnover, so I think that provides a critical mass. Also, they have TV and radio channels -- not just one channel but multiple local broadcast TV and radio channels -- with some content both in Cantonese and Mandarin.
The other thing they do is they take classes -- pretty common story I heard is that the Chinese guys go to regular school and then also have some other class they go to where they study language. Maybe it's a sign of the times, but another children's school for Chinese language learning popped up about a block away from my house. I guess for most children, Chinese literacy is not something they're going to pick up on their own time, it takes a more structured setting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Γρηγόρη Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4457 days ago 55 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English*, Greek, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: German, French, Russian | Message 5 of 5 16 January 2013 at 4:37pm | IP Logged |
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If in America there are more third generation speakers of Chinese than of other languages, it may have something
to do with the fact that so many Chinese families have the grandparents living with them, and the grandparents speak to the grandchildren. I can only speak anecdotally, but when I hear the second generation speaking with the third, it is usually in English. The real test of the OP's theory is whether or not the fourth generation speaks any Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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