Mandarin Chinese: It's Greek to Me
A front-page headline in today's (October 22, 2009) New York Times reads: "In Chinatown, Sound of the Future is Mandarin."
Learn Chinese,The story below it said:
Cantonese, a dialect from southern China that has dominated the Chinatowns of North America for decades, is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants.
The change can be heard in the neighborhood's (Manhattan's Chinatown) lively restaurants and solemn church services, in parks, street markets and language schools, especially
Chinese for kids . It has been accelerated by Chinese-American parents, including many who speak Cantonese at home, as they press their children to
learn mandarin for the advantages it could bring as China's influence grows in the world.
This matter of Chinese languages -- Cantonese, Mandarin, whatever -- is a sore point for me, as I have indicated in previous posts.
Here I am, a Chinese American guy in my seventh decade of existence, a product of Oakland, California's Chinatown, yet I can barely speak a little of the village dialect of my long deceased immigrant parents, Toisanese (or Taishanese, as spelled by the New York Times).
The history of
Chinese languages and dialects in America reflects the immigration history of ethnic Chinese to this country.
The first large group of Chinese immigrants -- lured by the discovery of gold in the California foothills in 1848 -- came from the Pearl River Delta region, especially from villages near Toisan, a city southeast of the provincial capital of Guangzhou (formerly called Canton). American Chinatowns of the 19th and early 20th centuries were populated by Toisanese and Cantonese speakers.
That is still the case today, but the pattern of ethnic Chinese immigration to America greatly diversified after World War II. Cantonese and Toisanese Chinese continued to come, but so did those from other regions of China, who spoke other Chinese languages and dialects such Mandarin, Shanghainese, and Fujianese, among others.
Learn Chinese, That is what is happening in New York's Chinatowns -- the old one in lower Manhattan and newer ones in Queens and Brooklyn. To a lesser extent, that's also happening in California's old Chinatowns and newer suburban Asian settlements like Monterey Park in the Los Angeles area and Cupertino in Silicon Valley.
What does this all mean for the Bay Area, California, and America? No simple answers here.
The rise in popularity of
mandarin Chinese -- in traditional Chinatowns and in other parts of America -- is a byproduct of the ascension of the People's Republic of China on the world stage, 60 years after its founding by Mao Zedong, who defeated the Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek in China's civil war.
China's now a major international player, and western business interests seeking to gain an economic foothold in China undoubtedly are encouraging their people to
learn mandarin Chinese. They must know
how to learn Chinese.
It also signifies some progress in that languages other than English are at least tolerated in the Bay Area, California, and the nation. But there is still active resistance to any language other than English in the United States.
Some Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans get the picture too, especially
Chinese for kids . While I also understand the trend, I am choosing not to acquire Mandarin Chinese to conform with what some non-Chinese Americans as well as my ethnic soulmates are doing.
I came of age at a time when Chinese stuff had no value whatsoever to America or Americans (except for a teeny elite that liked to collect Chinese art and crafts and wanted to convert the heathen Chinese to Christianity).They want to know
how to learn Chinese. At least I can count my blessings that I wasn't born 50 years earlier, at the height of the dreaded Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
My childhood and adolescence were a version of what's been going on in America for more than two centuries, the shifting, sometimes tense, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes frustrating, sometimes confusing weaving together of dual or multiple ethnic and cultural identities.
For me, the English language was the winner. Despite the paucity of a
Chinese language facility, I maintain a deep emotional link to my ethnic heritage, while regarding myself as quintessentially American in the broadest definition of that label.
