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There are parts of this article that I relate to deeply and there are parts that sound absolutely insane to me. Like the author, I immigrated to the US as a ch
by xyzelement 5y ago
There are parts of this article that I relate to deeply and there are parts that sound absolutely insane to me.
Like the author, I immigrated to the US as a child, in fact to almost the same neighborhood in Brooklyn. Like her, I also made a point of learning English well, of looking at assimilation / "becoming American" as a really important goals - which I believe was right. I do have embarrassing memories of pretending to be American and not speak my native language in public -- it was a stupid idea to try to pretend to be something I wasn't, but I can see why the 11 year old version of myself that had just moved across the ocean would act that way.
The thing that's a little weirder to me is the loss of the first language (as compared to refusal to use it at times.) I suppose there may be a genetic component since the author and her brothers have all lost their Cantonese - I don't think this is common. Most times, people get rusty in their native language but it comes back easily with immersion. I do believe the author that this is a problem for her, it just seems like a rare one.
Two things felt crazy to me in the article.
First, I think the author's experience of allowing the sole language she had in common with her parents dilapidate - is extremely uncommon. You can pretend to be American all you want (as I did) but at the end of the day, if your dad doesn't speak English (mine still struggles) then you're "forced" to speak to him in your own tongue so you don't lose it. The author and her brothers must be weird birds indeed to have spent years not being able to communicate with their parents and somehow think that's fine.
Second, the author is clearly lamenting this but she's not talking about action until the very end. Cantonese speakers are extremely common in the US, as is media and opportunity to take classes etc. She's taking advantage of some of that, and I have to imagine that it must be easier for her to relearn the language than for someone studying it for the first time.
My point being, is if this is really important to her (as it should be) she should focus less on lamentations of the past and go whole-hog into fixing the problem today.
- aeyes 5y agoThe author never really learned Cantonese, her only "teachers" were parents and other immediate contacts. No school, no media, no books, articles, current events. After starting school there was less time and need to speak Cantonese so it is clear that her vocabulary and ability will be extremely limited. Its not forgetting, in this case it was never really learned like a first language.
- labster 5y agoSo people who can’t read don’t have a first language? Education is not a prerequisite for speaking a language. For thousands of years people learned from speaking with family, even in remote communities or distant farmhouses.
- ilammy 5y agoHow did that conclusion, from “no books” only? The point is not literacy per se or something. It's more about how much you use a language in your daily life. If it's only limited to talking to just your parents on occasional basis then you miss out on a lot of language skill development. If you use Cantonese for 1 hour in a given week total and the remaining 110 hours of your waking time are filled with English, it's not much of a surprise what language ability gets developed more. Cantonese is still your first language – you learned it first, in limited capacity – but it can cease being your primary language.
- nindalf 5y agoI have many friends who grew up in India who never learned how to read their mother tongue. They can’t read media, books, articles, current events as you say but they can communicate with all other Tamil speakers. They might not be able to write words in the Tamil script, but they get by writing the words in English. “ivan laam adikaraan”, a friend complained yesterday about a sports event. This is pretty common among my friend groups. What I’m saying is, our understanding and knowledge of language is complex. It’s possible to speak a language without reading it. It’s possible to read a language without speaking it. It’s not as simple as you make it out to be.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hnfong 5y agoWithout being fully immersed in a Cantonese environment (which, depending on your definition, basically only includes Hong Kong and some parts of the Guangzhou area), it's almost impossible to really "learn" Cantonese outside such environments, since there's actually very few resources for intermediate/advanced learners of Cantonese... There isn't a proper Cantonese dictionary (yet). The existing ones either assume you are already familiar with Mandarin Chinese, or are just simple translations to English. There (almost) aren't any children's books in Cantonese. There is very few literature, and serious books written in Cantonese. The reason being Cantonese being traditionally considered a 'slangy spoken dialect of Chinese' not fit for writing serious work. We're trying to fix that, but it will take some time.