From: yoichi@carson.u.washington.edu (Yoichi Ii)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Re: On Languages and Asian Americans
Date: 29 Dec 1992 05:46:53 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

mcovingt@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Maiko Covington)
>>approaches decent levels (I hope it will someday) then I'd certainly
>>want to teach it to my kid.
>>Maybe I'm really awful, but there IS a reason I'd teach my kid
>>Chinese if I were Chinese-cu, and Japanese because I'm from there.
>>It's simple: it is the language of the culture *I* am a member of. I
>>*want* to pass that culture on to my kid, so the language of that
>>culture is an obvious choice. There IS more to it than just learning
>>a language, in this case. I want my kid to understand ME, to
>>understand what world *I* live in, where I'm from. I'm going to
>>teach the kid that language so we can communicate these things, so
>>he/she can share in my world.
>>		Maiko

underdog@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dwight Joe) writes:
>I agree with this as long as (1) Mai-chan isn't forcing her children to learn
>the subject and (2) she agrees that it's perfectly all right for a
>Chinese-ge mother to encourage her children to learn Korean-cu instead of
>Chinese-cu.  Since she is approaching the matter from that angle, then
>more power to her.

Well, if you insist on point (1), then I'd say not too many kids will
be learning a second language.  Let me give an example of a Japenese
parents with 3 kids (all born in US) living here as a permanent resident.
I'll call them the N's.

They are employing the method #2 metioned by Maiko Covington, that is,
using Japanese at home (and English at school, of course).  For younger
kids (say, ages between 4 and 12) school and friends seem to have
overwhelming influence on the language of a child.  If the only thing
you do is speak Japanese at home, you are flighting a losing battle
as far as teaching the kids Japanese.  Slowly but surely the kids will
lose Japanese language ability, which they had acquired (to some extent) 
while they were younger and did not have much outside contact.  In the 
case of the N's, the oldest one spoke most Japanese.  The younger ones
spoke less because, even within the family, conversations between the 
siblings were carried out in English; ie. younger kids didn't have as
much period of isolation from English (my theory).

The "remedy" for such deterioration is to have other supplemental 
educations.  One is to take the kids to a Saturday Japanese school
available in some areas of the US.  Now, if you were a 7 year old kid,
would you want to go to a school on Saturday? :-)  Thus, unless you're a
very persuasive parent or the kid is unusual, you necessarily have
to use force to get them to attend such school.  Another method is to 
do some teaching at home.  But again you have to employ some force.  
The N's taught the kids at home since they didn't have Japanese schools 
nearby.  Yes, they had to use force. Maiko Covington also mentioned 
comics (manga) as one source of teaching Japanese (reading/writing). 
Well, in the case of the N's it wasn't really working because the kids 
didn't have sufficient reading ability to begin with.  They just looked 
at the pictures and guess what might be happening. 

If a kid has spent a critical time for language aqcuisition in Japan
(in our case), then the story is slightly different.  A kid who has 
finish grade school (say) tend to retain at least some minimum amount 
of conversational ability and materials like manga would help in 
retaining some reading ability.  But again some form of "encouragement" 
is necessary for a kid to go beyond this point.  I wonder if Ms. 
Covington's parents gave her an "encouragement" :-)

P.S. Above are all my personal observations. I'm not an educator or
     otherwise trained in such areas.  So take my opinion for what
     they are :-).


Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american