Re: unnatural languages

"Peter" == Peter T Daniels <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Peter> It's almost universal in the US -- land of immigrants,
Peter> dontcha know -- that the children of immigrants do _not_
Peter> speak the parents' language even if it was the only one
Peter> used in the home (and as a result are usually completely
Peter> cut off from their grandparents, which they later regret,
Peter> and force _their_ children to study the ancestral language,
Peter> thus causing those children to hate the language!

My cousins in San Francisco are in a different situation. They stayed
at their grandparents' home when very young, because both of their
parents need to go to work. The grandparent thus served as babysitter
for these grandchildren. The latter acquiared Taishanese as first
language, because that the only languge that the grandparents speak.
(But the parents themselves speak Cantonese (in addition to English),
instead of Toishanese.) How do I know that? My parents visited them
at that time and told me these cousins of mine spoke Toishanese also
to my parents. That was 25 years ago.

What happened subsequently? These cousins went to kindgarten and then
school. They soon picked up English, and forgot Toishanese. They
started to stay with their parents as they became older, and only
visited the grandparents once a week or once a month. The parents
even encouraged speaking English at home (fearing [wrongly] that these
children would not speak fluent English if they didn't do so).
Another 'strong reason' is that these parents were raised up in Hong
Kong. "I have to learn English *from them*. So, I ask them to speak
English at home."

The result? These cousins were already grown-ups when I visited them
in 2000. They speak fluent American English like native speakers, of
course. But they don't speak Toishanese nor Cantonese anymore,
although they've kept a weak, passive knowledge of these languages.
Very typical for ABCs. (Some of the cousins have a Vietnamese parent,
and hence can also understand Vietnamese passively.) But they can't
speak these languages anymore. The grandparents were upset (for a
long time), because these grandchildren that they once babysitted no
longer speak to them in an understandable way!

And these cousins themselves also feel frustrated. I think it's an
identify conflict. They are Chinese in blood, but feel so cut off
from the Chinese culture and languages. To Americans, they're not
100% Americans (because they're yellow). To Chinese people, they're
aren't Chinese because they cannot speak any Chinese languages, and
know little about Chinese culture (perhaps other than how people
celebrate various festivals, which they also celebrate on the same
days in San Francisco). I can see that they wanted and tried to use
Cantonese when speaking to me. But they can't. They of course know I
speak English, because I speak English to them all the time (switching
to Cantonese when speaking to their parents and grandparents). But
perhaps that code-switching capability further make them envy.

And it's unfortunately that this is still happening in a pipeline.
While some cousins from this family branch were grown-ups, a few are
still going to school. So, the history of the older cousins will
repeat on these younger ones. No, their parents are not learning the
lesson from their brothers/sisters and they're making no attempts at
all to correct this. (sigh...)


Peter> Except when there is a sizable, compact immigrant community
Peter> -- as with my friend in Chicago who spoke no English until
Peter> he entered school and was perfectly bilingual in Polish and
Peter> English.

It's good that he kept tis Polish capability. My cousins have lost
their active capabilities in both Toishanese and Cantonese.
(Cantonese is more often used in the public than Toishanese in San
Francisco, including radio and TV channels.)


--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
.

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