Parking Some Chinese Language Learning Notes Here
Not planning to post routinely here, but do want to remember the (sometimes subtle) Chinese language learning moments w/ my hapas, so I can look back and say I tried.
My name is 余捷 and I speak Cantonese and Mandarin fluently. My husband is a professor in Classical Chinese Literature. You’d think the odds are good that our kids can pick up some Chinese dialects along the way - I’ll take any! - but the struggle is real. How we’re going to get our hapas to learn Cantonese and/or Mandarin remains a mystery, but we will try, and we’ll park some moments here, so we know we’ve tried.
A few hurdles:
We are predominantly speaking English with each other. It’s much faster that way in the chaotic moments between parenting handovers, and just less awkward.
I was raised by Tiger Parents, but I don’t want to be one! My childhood weekends were spent reading and reciting Classical Chinese poems I never thought I'd use, writing characters from dictation (the dreaded tīngxiě 听写), and memorizing multiplication tables in Cantonese and Mandarin, all the while fiercely protesting my parents' parenting methods with silent treatments, streaming tears, yelling contests, petty threats of running away from home, etc. Yeah, I don’t have their stamina to put up with mini-mes. No thanks.
Husband is the only Mandarin speaker, so the in-laws - as encouraging as they are - will only be reinforcing English as the primary language.
To add fuel to fire 火上加油, Chinese representation where we live is shockingly weak - considering we live by UCSB - and an immersive Chinese environment is nearly impossible to find.
Having moved around the Bay Area with my immigrant parents, and witnessing their struggles, I was so afraid of being seen as a FOB that NOBODY outside of our home knew I could speak/read/write Chinese until I needed the SATII score boost for college apps, and later for the easy A’s to graduate from college. Imagine how much more fluent I could have been had I not stalled my own progress??
Why Must They Speak Chinese Anyway??
It’s important for their multicultural ethnic backgrounds that they be multilingual, in case they want to learn more about their roots later on in life. They should at the very least get to know their Chinese roots, then maybe the interest in French and Czech will come.
Tom 余泰明 and I met while I was working for - and he was getting a Ph.D. in - the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton. So our passion for the Chinese language and literature - contemporary and classical - brought us together, and we hope to spark some joy into our children's lives with it too.
My abilities in Chinese got me a job at Princeton. When I managed to fall in love with the Chinese language finally, I received a master's degree in Chinese-language pedagogy, and managed the Chinese-language program for Princeton in Beijing and Princeton University for six fully immersive and intense years.
As parents, we tend to wonder what kind of knowledge we can actually pass down to our kids. For us, that’s our love of travel and the ability to at least get by using our combined language skills in 90% of the world.
Americans are notorious for being ignorant w/ other languages besides English. Let’s not play into that stereotype.
Honestly, I'd really just like for my children to discover the beauty and benefits of embracing their heritage without waging domestic warfare in the process. Fortunately, my husband is equally on board - and sometimes more eager to learn Cantonese when Mandarin starts to take a toll - so let’s just see how this goes.