From: kaberi@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (chakrabarty kaberi)
Subject: Re: On Languages and Asian Americans
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:18:04 GMT

bhchan@soda.berkeley.edu (Billy H. Chan) writes:

>Recently, a poster mentions that since her son, who is Half
>Hispanic and Half Chinese (actually, might be Half Korean, 
>don't remember correctly), will be going to school soon, that
>she wants him to be bilingual, Spanish and English.  A
>question came to mind, "What about Chinese?" (or Korean)

>Which leads me to my main question.  To all the Asian Americans
>out there, how much do you value your native (no...Asian) 
>Language (ie, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, those spoken in India
>(I'm not sure how to spell them), etc.etc.etc)?

>From personal experience, I've known many ChineseAs who regret that
>their parents didn't force them to learn Chinese (note, I didn't use
>the word force by accident).  I've also known many who could care
>less.  I myself right now am trying relearn the handful of Cantonese
>I know.
>So I ask you, what will you want for your children?  In the growing
>interracial marriage scene, should we expect our children to learn
>3 or 4 different languages (Spanish/English/Chinese trilingual in the
>aforementioned poster's son's case).  (and lets keep this a friendly
>debate :)
 In my case, my mother taught me a lot of Bengali when I was very young, but
 as I went on assimilating into white culture I began to slowly forget it.
 I never much resented being asked to speak it at home, and am starting to
 appreciate it more as they years go by. She also taught me to read and write
 the alphabet, which I understand from other Indian Americans my age is fairly 
 rare. I find that I can still read, although my vocabulary is now so limited
 that I don't understand much and my spelling is very bad. It is nice, though,
 that I can, for instance read the poetry of Nobel laureate Bengali poet
 Rabindranth Tagore in the original, rather mellifluous language (although
 my mother still has to translate a lot of it into English for me!)
   My brother, on the other hand, who is six years younger than me and was a
   always more interested in assimilating with Caucasians than I was, has
   basically forgotten whatever little Bengali he knew. I don't think he
   cares particularly.
     I am a little sorry that, if I ever have kids, I won't be able to teach
     them much Bengali. I pride myself on my linguistic ability, but it's so
     hard in this linguistically xenophobic country to find anyone that teaches
     Indian languages that I doubt if I'll ever speak the language really well,
     the way I did when I was three years old. IMHO, the more languages anybody
     knows, the more people he or she can communicate with, and the more varied
     experiences he or she can have.
     In case you were wondering, I am a graduate student in Spanish linguistics
     whose goal it is someday to speak fluently all the major languages of the
     world.:-)
					      Kaberi Chakrabarty
					      uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
						
P
>-- 
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>*	Billy H. Chan		<bhchan@ocf.berkeley.edu> 	*
>*	Lost at Cal!!!   	<bhchan@soda.berkeley.edu>	*
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american