American Born Chinese Kids

[super_zebra]

I'm an ABC, or an American Born Chinese, which basically means I was born and raised in America but my parents are Chinese. (Taiwanese, actually, but ABC sounds cooler than ABT). I've grown up in Southern California in Orange County, in a city where about 15% of the people are Taiwanese or Chinese, and 30% are Asian, and so I've grown up with a lot of Chinese, Taiwanese, and other Asian classmates.

What I wanted to know, since it seems like there aren't that many other ABCs in this forum (at least not as many as there are Chinese learners or people from Asia), if those who have lived in these kind of communities, if it seems to you that Chinese culture is kind of lacking among the children.

While in 2nd generation immigrants, most children lose the fluency their parents have, it seems to me that all the Chinese kids here not only lack the ability to write Chinese [which is, well, expected especially if they don't take Chinese school], but some can barely hold conversations in Chinese at all! If they do, they usually HAVE to use Chinglish, as usually their vocabulary is limited to what they would hear at home.

In fact, many of them don't even talk back to their parents in Chinese, but when their parents ask them things in Mandarin or Cantonese they reply in ENGLISH.

While yes, they're American so I mean, they might feel more comfortable replying in English, there are MANY Koreans at my school, too, most of which are in the same 2nd generation situation, yet always write notes to each other in Korean and speak in Korean. Same with the Japanese people here.

I always thought it might be because its much easier to become a native speaker of a language if you can read it, but I really don't know. and I do admit that I myself don't have a great grip on Chinese. I'm better than almost all of the ABCs here [partially since I actually WANT to learn and speak Chinese], but I have a vocabulary limited to speaking to my mom, and I can only write about 500 characters.

So, for those of you who might've also grown up or have lived before in communities in the United States like this, perhaps in Orange County, San Gabriel Valley, Houston, or the San Jose area, any thoughts?

[gato]

Yes, Chinese not having a phonetic writing system makes it much harder to learn AND to retain. I was born in the mainland and went the US when I was in 6th grade. Though I was already reading newspapers and books when I first arrived in the US, could even understand the jist of Hongloumeng (Dream of the Red Chamber), after 15-20 years of not practicing, I could no longer read a simple newspaper article. Since I had all along spoken Mandarin Chinese exclusively at home, I was able to retain my conversational skills. But it was only through some months of dedicated study (4-6 hours or more per day perhaps) that I was able to regain my Chinese and improve upon what I had before. The key is to practice: speaking and reading -- and writing, too, if you have the interest and time.

So, yes, the Chinese writing system is a major barrier to learning the language, especially for those in a non-Chinese-speaking environment. That's why your Korean-American friends can write notes to each other in Hangul. It's because they can write down what they can speak. Chinese kids, on the other hand, even those in China and Taiwan, can't genearlly write down what they can speak until they learn the characters.

[tluroc76]

I was 14 when my parents uprooted our family (from Taiwan) and moved to San Diego back in the early 80's. Now I have two boys, one was born in San Diego and the other in Indy. My older one is 4 1/2 and second is almost 2 1/2 yr. old. Both can understand simple Chinese (Mandarin) when I speak to them, 98% of time they reply in English.

I can still read and write in Chinese but find it difficult at times because I have forgotten many characters over the years. My wife grew up in Canada (she was born in Brunei), she speaks 3 Chinese dialects fluently, also the Malay and English but she can't read or write in Chinese. I speak Taiwanese, Mandarin plus English obviously. As much as I want my boys to learn and understand their Chinese background. I realized that US is our home and it's very unlikely that we would move back.

In the past 20 or so year I have returned to visit my relatives and friend only 4 times. I would have visited more often if I could. But being the older son in the family, I started carrying the family when I was barely 20. To stay with the topic, I may or may not send my kids to Chinese school, there is one or two in town by the way.

My company has about 200 people in the building, I'm the only Chinese, heck, I'm the only Asian in the whole building. There are 5 Chinese families in the community where we live. Chinese student population in any school is less than 5%. I hope my boys can at least verbally communicate in Chinese, reading & writing would be nice but I'm not going to force them. Well, they need to be able to write their names at least.

Perhaps as they grow older they will have want to learn more about their parents' roots, cultures. It's a higher probability that my sons will one day bring home little blondies or redheads rather than cute China dolls, being out here in the Midwest.

[bhchao]

I am also an ABC and I speak English with my parents. That's because my parents and I speak English with each other. However in the very few times that they speak Mandarin with me, I always respond with Mandarin even though I feel more comfortable speaking in English. And whenever they speak Mandarin to each other, I can fully understand what they are talking about. The same thing applies for daily conversations between friends and strangers that I overhear.

Spending a couple of years of my childhood in Taipei and going to school there really helped my Mandarin speaking and listening abilities. As an ABC, I'm glad that I did not live my entire life in the US. Living in the place where my parents grew up helped me to gain an exposure to Chinese culture and an understanding of the Chinese way of thinking.

My Korean grandmother speaks Mandarin, and we always speak Mandarin with each other, in contrast with my parents.

By the way Super_zebra, did you grow up in Irvine?

[gougou]

I speak English with my parents. That's because my parents and I speak English with each other.

I love it when people get all logical around here...

[WilsonFong]

I'm a CBC (Canadian Born Chinese) in Toronto and I'm only semi-fluent in Cantonese. My parents immigrated here when they were in their early 20's and never really got around to being fluent in English, so I've had to communicate to them in Cantonese my whole life, but I don't really speak Cantonese outside of the house (I don't go to Chinese shops/restaurants often, and most of my friends are white).

When I was young I never really had an interest in learning Chinese. My parents forced me into Chinese school and I did terribly because I thought it was way too difficult and different from what I learned in school. But in the last few years I've became more curious and interested in my heritage, so I've decided to try to improve my Cantonese and learn some Mandarin. I'm still not very good though. I can recognize about 150 characters, if I have any conversations in Cantonese I have to throw in a lot of English, and I can only have the most basic conversations in Mandarin.

As for CBCs in Toronto, when I was in high school most people divided the Chinese there into two categories, the ones who were born and raised in or near Chinatown, and the ones who lived in Markham/Northeren Scarborough (Agincourt), i.e. HK fobs. The ones who were from Chinatown usually could not write Chinese well, if at all, and their spoken Chinese usually wasn't perfect (they were the ones into hip-hop, riced out import cars and "AZN pride" "). The HK fobs pretty much spoke perfect Cantonese and could probably read and write pretty well also (they were the ones with brown-dyed mullets, flared jeans, and loved sappy cantopop).

As a sidenote, does anyone know if people in China/HK are aware of the term "fob" (fresh off the boat)?. And do the HK kids with mullets understand that only trailer trash in North America wear mullets?

[yorkie_bear]

And do the HK kids with mullets understand that only trailer trash in North America wear mullets?

why should they care?

[WilsonFong]

why should they care?

I don't think they should care. I was just curious.

[Quest]

yorkie bear, are you pazu?

WilsonFong, no offense, personally I think HK kids on average dress better than NABCs. Trends are different in different countries and within different racial circles, what looks good on Americans may not necessarily look good on Asians. I think you should study the story behind 井底之蛙, you never know who's the FOB.

[yorkie_bear]

yorkie bear, are you pazu?

who is pazu?

Wilson - soooorry, don't want to appear rude. I just don't think HK kids look to the US for their inspiration when it comes to style. i.e. it's homegrown, or it's Korea, or Japan or Taiwan or whatever their pop idols are doing....

[skylee]

I think you should study the story behind 井底之蛙, you never know who's the FOB.

Hear hear

[WilsonFong]

Wow, I never thought people would get so worked up about this....nevermind then....

But back to the original topic, I always wonder how well CBCs and ABCs in general retain their native language compared to the second generation of other ethnic groups. I always hear Italian-Canadians who can speak perfect Italian and English and Latin-Americans who can speak perfect Spanish and English. I don't think I've ever met a person who can speak flawless, accent-free English as well as Chinese.

I remember when I was young I had a Chinese friend whose parents were from Fujian. One day at his house I overheard his parents speaking and I didn't understand what they were saying so I asked him what language they spoke. He didn't even know, and had to ask his parents (in English) what language it was(he was 12 at the time).

[bhchao]

I remember when I was young I had a Chinese friend whose parents were from Fujian. One day at his house I overheard his parents speaking and I didn't understand what they were saying so I asked him what language they spoke. He didn't even know, and had to ask his parents (in English) what language it was(he was 12 at the time).

I think it is important for Chinese kids born overseas or in North America to understand the language spoken by their parents, for both cultural and practical reasons. Multilingualism will be a huge asset to have in the years to come. For this reason, Chinese immigrant parents and their American-born kids should converse in their native language (the parents') as much as possible.

[Ian_Lee]

Wilson:

Unless you have studied Italian and Spanish for a long time, otherwise how can you tell those second generation Italian Americans and Latin Americans can be fluent bilingually?

None of the third and fourth generation Polish Americans and German Americans that I got acquainted with in mid-west can speak any Polish or German.

For American born Chinese, unless the kids are very self-disciplined and hardworking with backup from parents, otherwise it is awfully hard for them to master any Chinese that is up to 4th grade level.

Even I. M. Pei's children don't know Chinese.

P.S. According to Census 2000 Questionnaire, there is no such ethnic group as "American Born Taiwanese" in US.

[geraldc]

With the internet, satellite TV, DVDs, VCDs etc, it's a lot easier for kids to maintain links with HK/Taiwan/China's popular culture. Most Chinese families in the UK have access to at least one Chinese language TV channel, so now kids are being brought up watching HK soaps and listening to canto pop etc. The children of Chinese emigrants now, shouldn't have any problems retaining their parents language. In fact in the UK, they'll probably have better mandarin skills than their parents, now most Chinese schools in the UK are teaching mandarin as well as Cantonese.

ABCs do tend to be slightly different, I have ABC, Dutch born Chinese and HK cousins. All of us are pretty much the same, with the exception of the ABCs. I think it's mainly because ABCs tend to return to HK or China a lot less than other overseas Chinese. My ABC cousins have never been to HK or China, whereas everyone else tends to return at least once every 2 or 3 years. Probably something to do with the tiny amount of holiday leave Americans get...

I don't think you see many mullets on asians now, I think most people have variations on whatever Nicholas Tse's latest haircut is, although there is a vietnamese poker player who appears on TV a lot with quite an impressive permed mullet.

[4real]

I'm an ABC from NJ. My mom's Chinese-Filipino and my dad is from China (born in Soochow). My parents predominantly speak English with occasional Mandarin words for food and other things because they speak two different dialects (my dad = Shanghainese and my mother = Hokkien). I really want to be fluent in Mandarin, however, it is sometimes hard for them to speak it to me b/c they aren't native Mandarin speakers and don't know lots of vocab. However, I do know more Hokkien because I used to listen to my mom's family speak and lived with her family for about a year and a half during high school. Still, it is hard for them to teach me and constantly use Chinese at home b/c they aren't accustomed to and also I live in predominantly Caucasian area. If I lived in Flushing, Queens, it would be a different story. It's a matter of assimilation and the willingness to practice and keep your customs and language.

[hunxueer]

why do people get down on the kids for not being able to speak their parents' language? isn't this mostly the fault of the parents, not the kids? i mean, how many kids were actively asking their parents to speak a language that would clearly mark them as outsiders of the mainstream society? anyway, my mother's from toisan and then hong kong and i speak about 14 words/phrases of cantonese. it was at my father's demand that she not speak to my siblings and me in chinese growing up as he didn't want to be a "foreigner in [his] own home." plus i think he somewhat villified (and still to some extent does) the language and culture/chinese people other than my mom and us kids. at the urging of my kindergarten teacher i did ask my mom to teach me, so she taught me to count to ten, which stuck with me my entire life, probably because i promptly taught my older sister and forced her to chant it with me in the backseat. other than that i picked up a few random phrases here and there but really not much, and there wasn't much exposure to the language in my household other than hearing my mom talking on the phone to friends/family or in person to my grandfather, but this all tapered off steeply after his death when i was about 10. my mom said had my father not dissuaded her from speaking to us that she would have taught us, but also that her chinese was "horrible," i.e., coming from toisan she's not even a native cantonese speaker, and probably has psychological scars from relocating to hong kong in the late 1950s where they put her in a class with kids two years her junior, and she speaks very little mandarin at all.

for the past three years i've been living in china and have finally acquired enough mandarin to have a conversation and get around most vocab i don't know by explanation, but of course i'm sure i still sound like any ol' foreigner with an american accent and awkward phrasing. i started studying cantonese, lazily, on my own, about two years ago, and completed the pimsleur and started working on the fsi and hired a tutor, but at the moment that's on hold while i work on some other projects. i find it hard to maintain motivation to study a language i don't have an immediate need to use. so i'm annoyed by the attitude expressed by my father, yes, particularly when i'm in hong kong or guangdong, but oh well. what can you do?

this all is in contrast to a couple groups of kids i had the good fortune to work with while i was living in los angeles--korean americans in glendale and then taiwanese americans in monterey park. both were attending enrichment schools or whatever you'd call them; the korean one was a little more general, but the students were all required to take korean language; the taiwanese school was specifically a chinese-language school (i was hired to teach a weekend college-prep essay-writing class--in english), and all the kids, most of whom were kids of taiwanese immigrants, but a few who were first generation themselves. they attended class several times a week or maybe even daily for a few hours after school, learning not only to speak mandarin (which many did with their parents anyway) but also to read and write, from kindergarten to eighth or ninth grade. one of my worst students in terms of effort and performance was a 13-year-old who called himself a fob and was able to speak mandarin and cantonese (as well as english) fluently. another girl was half-chinese and tended to win all the chinese calligraphy and speech contests, which always amused me; then to compound the amusement i learned she lived with her (caucasian) mother and (chinese) grandmother, who spoke to her in cantonese, while her brother lived in another state with their (chinese) father and could not speak a word of chinese and when he came for a visit in the summer seemed completely out of place with his sister and all her peers. of course when i went for a visit after having been in china for a year and a half, my former boss, the principal and head teacher of the school, told me i was too old to learn chinese!

[md1101]

isn't this mostly the fault of the parents, not the kids?

in my case, hunxueer, its correct for me. i really wish my mother spoke to me in cantonese as a kid. but then she did try this with my older brother and apparently he just wasn't interested. but i think she started too late. late enough for him to make a conscious decision that he knows English already so it's easier. My father (english only speaker) never stopped my mum from speaking cantonese to us though. If anything it's been him that has encouraged or at least helped me and my older brother learn chinese by supporting our studies in china for a little while and working there for 7 years himself (which influenced us). Mum, who is Malaysian Chinese never had the foresight to force cantonese down us. Admittedly it's not mandarin which is what I'm learning now but 3 languages would certainly be very nice especially if i didn't have to work very hard for 2 of them. Don't get me wrong though I'm not in any way angry with her. She had a tough enough time as it was raising three boys plus her English is fluent so it did make sense her speaking English in the household with dad around.

[wushijiao]

why do people get down on the kids for not being able to speak their parents' language? isn't this mostly the fault of the parents, not the kids?

That’s a great question. From my point of view, it really isn’t the kids or the parents fault, really. It’s just structural.

First of all, to speak Chinese at a level more sophisticated than just daily home stuff, it would seem to me that the parents would have to become de facto educators themselves, reading books to the kids, playing games, giving them homework, hosting “playgroup” activities in Chinese…etc. Parents would have to create a linguistically rich, but slightly artificial, learning environment. How many parents are aware of that? How many have the economic means, the time, or the educational level to do that?

Second, as far as immigrants who have not fully mastered English, I would bet that parents who receive an economic salary below their true talent level would be more likely to encourage their children to focus on English, even at the expense of their own L1. Parents may calculate that focusing on English is better than letting their kids feel the sting of being discriminated against, even though that’s a false choice.

Even though it would seem rational for parents to fully educate their kids in English and their native language in order to be better prepared for the future, the historical record just doesn’t bear that out. Every immigrant group to the US, from diverse geographic locations and from diverse linguistic traditions, seems to lose their original language in the same basic pattern. Why would Chinese be any different?

But anyway, thanks for sharing your experiences hunxueer and md1101. It's interesting.

[hunxueer]

well, all right, i didn't mean to really pin the blame on the parents--at least not in most cases--but to point out that it's not like most kids who grow up bilingual or trilingual choose to do so--it's just that they are put in an environment that forces them to. this works the opposite way too: i notice people tend to value/envy/look at multilinguals as more gifted* than monolinguals, but unless the additional languages were learned with conscious effort (i.e., not as a child), it seems to me one of those luck-of-the-draw type of deals, like being born with good looks or citizenship into a wealthy nation or a family of high social status, and not something really within the individual's control.

*this isn't to say that growing up in such an environment doesn't expose them to certain factors that would give them valuable qualities--just to say that it's not a willful choice they make.