Being Bilingual

[sandra]

just wanted to get a glimpse of whether most asian-americans are bilingual nowadays.

[tapestrybabe]

I really can't speak a word of my native language ... but I don't find it embarassing when others speak it....

[thaite]

I can cuss almost as well as my mom.

Really.

Though, nowadays I speak more Spanish (Hispanicphile?) and English than I do my first language. But that's because we moved around a lot when I was a kid, so basicially didn't fully speak my first language -- I had sort of a language I made up myself of English, Japanese, Mandarin and Thai. Only I could speak it. I was an odd kid.

Really.

[sandra]

[quote:e3f2e99215="buoywonder"]I can cuss almost as well as my mom.

Really.

Though, I speak more Spanish than I do my first language. (Hispanicphile?) But that's because we moved around a lot when I was a kid, so basicially I had sort of a language I made up myself of English, Japanese, Mandarin and Thai. I was an odd kid.

Really.[/quote:e3f2e99215]

wow. how well do you speak all of those?

[thaite]

About as well as any two-year old kid can speak his own language. :lol:

[Arex]

Why no option for us peeps who can order various types of food but wish we had a real mastery of the language(s)? 'cause that's me.

The only time I think it's embarrassing when people speak Chinese is when people shout while talking on the phone (in non-Asian locales) as if they think they must yell into the receiver in order to be heard. I guess that's kind of obnoxious no matter the language, but it's just more noticeable when it's done in a foreign tongue.

To those people I say: "Shut the fuck up! They can hear you just fine!"

Alex

[mrazntre]

i'm having some sort of trouble with my native language. the main reason is that most vietnamese people in thte US are from the South and they speak the southern dialect (it's more like an accent), whereas my parents speak the northern pre-1954 (i think that's what it's called) northern dialect. so basically i grew up speaking the northern stuff, just not all that well. so when i go to restaurant, my vietnamese is worse off than it really should be because i speak the northern dialect with a bad accent, which is definitely significantly different from southern vietnamese. and since i can't read vietnamese, ugh...i don't even know whether or not i'm actually saying a few words correctly. I just pronounce them the same way i have been since i was a child. I might think it's right, but it's probably wrong because my family has always heard me speak that way so they just accept my own little language. damn. i need to take a class or something.

[sandra]

arex:

why is it more annoying when people do it in a foreign language?

[OHTotoro]

My friends tell me that I sound like a country boy when I speak Korean. I can't tell at all. I think my Korean sounds just like everybody elses but I guess it doesn't. Both my parents were from Taegoo (sp?) which was in the country... then I think my dad's side moved into Seoul... hmm where's everybody going?

[Arex]

I said more noticeable, not more annoying. In a sea of English muttering, some person shouting in a foreign language just seems to stand out more than a person shouting more English, don't you think? But I guess it has been my experience that Chinese speakers tend to talk a little louder (whether into the phone or otherwise) than other speakers. Why is that? Am I the only one who notices this? Perhaps...

But yeah, I really envy all of you lucky bilingual people. In addition to allowing one to proclaim they're more in touch with their heritage and permitting one to pass on to their kids more than just a taste for the cuisine, it's also a valuable asset. I got jacked.=(

Alex

[angelaine]

I can speak, write and read chinese.. but the only problem I find with being bilingual is that sometimes I confuse chinese with english? Does that make sense? :? .. for instance.. I was talking to one of my caucasian friends once and all of the sudden I started saying something to him in chinese.. and he kinda stared at me. :oops: .. I think it's probably cause since I'm more used to chinese that I convert everything in english to chinese explanations.. but sometimes it doesn't work vice-versa..

[amietron]

[quote:a2f9425abe="angelaine"]I think it's probably cause since I'm more used to chinese that I convert everything in english to chinese explanations.. but sometimes it doesn't work vice-versa..[/quote:a2f9425abe]

I do that too, haha. The first time i realized that i did this was um when i was in like 2nd or 3rd grade.. for the multiplications tables. i had to recite them in japanese, then convert the answer to english.

i'm like.. 4th generation, too.

[angelaine]

[quote:d8160e59ae="amietron"]for multiplications tables. i had to recite them in japanese, then convert the answer to english.[/quote:d8160e59ae]

Haha.. I did that a lot in school.. I still count in chinese.. aiyes. :wink:

[thaite]

[quote:fbb2de6ac2="angelaine"]I can speak, write and read chinese.. but the only problem I find with being bilingual is that sometimes I confuse chinese with english? Does that make sense? :? .. for instance.. I was talking to one of my caucasian friends once and all of the sudden I started saying something to him in chinese.. and he kinda stared at me. :oops: .. I think it's probably cause since I'm more used to chinese that I convert everything in english to chinese explanations.. but sometimes it doesn't work vice-versa..[/quote:fbb2de6ac2]

HAH! I spent my last three semesters in college studying Spanish intensely. Spanish always on the brain. When summer began and I went to Thailand, anytime somebody said something to me that wasn't English, I'd answer in Spanish. Cousins would look at me like "WTF?" :oops:

[angelaine]

[quote:feaa12c9af="buoywonder"]HAH! I spent my last three semesters in college studying Spanish intensely. Spanish always on the brain. When summer began and I went to Thailand, anytime somebody said something to me that wasn't English, I'd answer in Spanish. Cousins would look at me like "WTF?" :oops:[/quote:feaa12c9af]

Oies.. it's always good to have everyone think you're crazy.. :wink: .. haha.. I find that sometimes I have to remind myself that I have to speak english.. not chinese.. especially embarassing in my seminars when we have group work and I start saying something in chinese and realize that no one understands what I'm saying. Ahhhhh.. what's even more annoying is when you can't explain something in the other language! :x

[thaite]

[quote:6d123ef6a9="angelaine"]Oies.. it's always good to have everyone think you're crazy.. :wink: .. [/quote:6d123ef6a9]
Believe me, everyone does. :wink:

[IKPakI]

Fluent - Korean, english

Halfway fluent, still learning - Japanese, German, definite spanish, alittle bit russian and some Ebonics...lol

[angelaine]

[quote:270a7941f6="buoywonder"]Believe me, everyone does. :wink:[/quote:270a7941f6]

Haha.. join the club! It's a wonderful feeling ain't it? :wink:

Wow IKPakI.. are you a language genius or something? :D

[IKPakI]

I just have friends who are from those countries. I teach them korean once in awhile and they teach me their language.

German i took in the 9th grade
Spanish I, II and III - in the 10th, 11th and 12th grade

[angelaine]

that's a great way to learn other languages.. hopefully they're teaching you more than cuss words! :) (just kiddin)

I met a girl once that wanted to learn all these different languages because she wanted to work as an ambassador :)

[IKPakI]

Instead of being an ambassador, work for the CIA. They would love to hire people speak many languages.

[DaBestSpooner]

I speak 3 languages, and learning a fourth and I get confused alot because I think in those languages when I speak to people.

multiple dialects is what fucks me up the most.

Sometimes I end my english sentences with a "ne."

[angelaine]

[quote:caa94ab886="DaBestSpooner"]I speak 3 languages, and learning a fourth and I get confused alot because I think in those languages when I speak to people. [/quote:caa94ab886]

Congrats!

[quote:caa94ab886="DaBestSpooner"]Sometimes I end my english sentences with a "ne."[/quote:caa94ab886]

The other day I was talking to some co-workers and I had to stop mid-sentence because I forgot what the words were in english.. and I was on the verge of saying them in chinese.

[ChinaLama]

I speak a BIT of Mandarin and I speak a bit of Shanghainese, so i can cuss SOME, and I can even write or read a few words! (see all those years of Chinese school and 1 yr in college weren't 100% useless ;)), but I'm not sure how I'd answer if i took the poll.

Cuz i dont REALLy curse well in Chinese (shanghai or mandarin), and i can't really order from menus because i don't really memorize food names (i just eat it, don't remember what it's called), but on the other hand, I speak Shanghainese at home regularly (w/ some English mixed in). So, I would sort of be above "order from menu," except I'm also sort of BELOW that since i dunno a lot of dish names...

[kboy75]

I can speak well enough to talk basic conversation with my parents and grandparents. I can't sit down and talk about politics or whatver though. My vocab sucks. I do however, understand much more than I can speak.

[odomo]

Same here. Hmm...seven years of chinese school did me no good. The only thing I remember practicing saying is "my head hurts" or "my stomach hurts" so that I didn't have to stand up and recite in class :oops: .What a waste

[ShyAi]

The only fluent language i can speaki is English. I don't think I can speak much of Thai. I can say stuff like "I want to go," "I am hungry," and stuff like that, which is kind of limited. Hell, I think I can speak more Japanese then I do Thai. (I acctually try hard in that class, Japanese. Alotta people, in my class, get mad cause I do better then them. . .)
Sometimes, when elders speak to me, I'm like wtf is she/he saying? Hey, someone give me a translation!

[princess]

nope. when i was younger my parents spoke a lot of japanese but then all the standardized test scores for california started showing poor english and math skills...so they switched over to english full time. i lost most of it. and since theres not THAT many japanese around....i dont get to use it too often anyway.

[ChinaLama]

It's weird. I noticed that it's not so much VOCABULARy or actual FLUENCY in a language that counts that much, but the sheer comfort level. Like i grew up speaking Shanghainese but Mandarin for me was always a foreign language because I don't hear it or use it much. So even though my Shanghainese vocab is probably not much better than my Mandarin vocab (cuz if i dunno a Mandarin word, I can try to translate fr my Shanghainese words, OR sometimes i'll know mandarin words that i dunno the shanghainese equivs for cuz i always LEARNED mandarin in school settings), but I'm VERY hesitant and stammering when I speak Mandarin. Sure i stammer in Shanghainese too, but I don't stammer as much because I feel more comfortable w/ it. So I'm willing to carry conversations or at least some exchange in Shanghainese while I'm very reluctant to even speak Mandarin in any extended setting. Even in front of Mandarin speakers, if I know they understand Shanghainese, I may use Shanghainese instead. Or if I'm in a room w/ ppl who speak Shanghainese and Mandarin, I tend to speak to Shanghainese ppl more cuz I just don't like USING Mandarin.

[SunWuKong]

[quote:0174b2060f="angelaine"]I can speak, write and read chinese.. but the only problem I find with being bilingual is that sometimes I confuse chinese with english? Does that make sense? :? .. for instance.. I was talking to one of my caucasian friends once and all of the sudden I started saying something to him in chinese.. and he kinda stared at me. :oops: .. I think it's probably cause since I'm more used to chinese that I convert everything in english to chinese explanations.. but sometimes it doesn't work vice-versa..[/quote:0174b2060f]


hey it's chinglish! and chinglish is cool!
any of you toronto people go to french schools? my cousins in toronto all went to french schools up until highschool. they're fluent in french and english but their cantonese sucks because they're so white-washed. my father has a friend in montreal and his little kids are fluent in mandarin, cantonese, english and french. they learned cantonese from their father, mandarin from their mother, english and french from TV and school. it's dizzy listening to them switch back and forth when they talk to each other. also, i have a friend from south america, she speaks dutch, english, spanish, mandarin, cantonese, and even hakka! the freaking hakka dialect. that's pretty cool.

[Saiko]

Yes! Chinglish! That's what I speak. My Cantonese is so bad, my boyfriend makes fun of me. And up until I was 10-11 or so, I've been saying "I am hungry fish." Then my relatives told me what I was saying. :oops:
I'm very fluent in English. Not bad at French. A bit white washed too, I confess. I also speak a bit of Latin and I used to speak some Japanese (I forgot most of it! I would so love to speak it fluently). Oh, and I'm pretty fluent in jibberish.

[SunWuKong]

you're entirely too young to have a boyfriend

[Saiko]

Oh, stop being like my parents.

[deez nuts]

I can speak, read and write Chinese (Parents used to stick me in Chinese School on Saturdays when I was a young lad, to learn how to read and write).

Since my mom is Cantonese and my dad is Fukinese, I can sort of understand Cantonese and Fukinese a little, but only if they speak real slow!

[sandra]

there's a univeristy in fukin!

[mizkisses]

i can speak mandarin fluently, a bit of taiwanese as well. i can barely read or write though. chinese school is hell.

[wylin]

[quote:344336997e="mizkisses"]i can speak mandarin fluently, a bit of taiwanese as well. i can barely read or write though. chinese school is hell.[/quote:344336997e]

i can speak mandarin also semi fluently, understand it perfectly. Taiwanese i can understand it...read write i suck ass.

and the only thing i know in cantonese is profanity.

[wylin]

[quote:ee89f88d76="mizkisses"]i can speak mandarin fluently, a bit of taiwanese as well. i can barely read or write though. chinese school is hell.[/quote:ee89f88d76]

wow taiwanese people up in the bay area amazing !

[amietron]

[quote:f843f5a247="wylin"][quote:f843f5a247="mizkisses"]i can speak mandarin fluently, a bit of taiwanese as well. i can barely read or write though. chinese school is hell.[/quote:f843f5a247]

wow taiwanese people up in the bay area amazing ![/quote:f843f5a247]

how many bay area people have we got?
karizma
bigwong325
mizkisses
the guy w/ the car icon crx?
me.
anybody else?
buoywonder?

[mizkisses]

[quote:a22981e263="amietron"][quote:a22981e263="wylin"][quote:a22981e263="mizkisses"]i can speak mandarin fluently, a bit of taiwanese as well. i can barely read or write though. chinese school is hell.[/quote:a22981e263]

wow taiwanese people up in the bay area amazing ![/quote:a22981e263]

how many bay area people have we got?
karizma
bigwong325
mizkisses
the guy w/ the car icon crx?
me.
anybody else?
buoywonder?[/quote:a22981e263]

me and crx got in trouble for talking about location and ish. tsk tsk. the young'uns starting trouble. tehehe. i'm such a baby.

amiieeetrooooon, have you been LJing lately!?

[quote:a22981e263="wylin"]wow taiwanese people up in the bay area amazing ![/quote:a22981e263]

60% of my school speaks mandarin. or a little less than 60%. but SHIIIIT, my school is filled with asian kids..

[PnaiAqui]

[quote:e0f9e02015="angelaine"]I can speak, write and read chinese.. but the only problem I find with being bilingual is that sometimes I confuse chinese with english? Does that make sense? :? .. for instance.. I was talking to one of my caucasian friends once and all of the sudden I started saying something to him in chinese.. and he kinda stared at me. :oops: .. I think it's probably cause since I'm more used to chinese that I convert everything in english to chinese explanations.. but sometimes it doesn't work vice-versa..[/quote:e0f9e02015]

Awww... That happens to me all the time. And, sometimes I forget even the simplest word in my language that I have to think about it so hard before i can remember. It's not that I intend to forget it, it just happens. It's really confusing.

[Green_Jade]

I can speak korean at converational level, read with out trouble, mostly..writing however...haha.. I suck, it'll be my 10th year in the states by this december, scary... It feels like only yesterday when my parents would keep me up all night until I had memorized that day's list o' vocabs...ugh. I shudder every time I think about that... :(

My primary language is now is english, I've long stopped translating everything into korean. I used to just think,..i neither thought in english or korean, now I usually think in english, but still think in this vague way... I still have trouble speaking my taughts though, not really because of language barrier or lack of speaking skills,... my weird ass mind has always managed to give me hard time conveying my ideas into understandable terms. I still have to do my multiplication tables in korean..haha. My grandmother had to do in japanese, b/c she grew up when ya know, japanese were in charge..she was from n. korea.

I also have conversational level of american sign language, one awesome language. :lol: ASL isn't manual form of english, in fact they have their own grammer and syntax..ect. ( There are whole bunch of different sign language used in US that are in english word order..ect.) The grammer is actually more like korean/japanese... but I rarely make that connection, because, I learned korean naturally, not the formal grammer stuff..ew. haha. ASL is a language full of expressions, body language (nope, it's not just gestures) and communication is done in compeletly different way than spoken languages are. Hm,.. so hard to explain something like this, argard.

[TheAliBabaCorporation]

i do all my sums in Malay. I never really understood that. must be cuz of school or my grandma having taught me my numbers in Malay or something. once I get to mid-level math (long division, fractions, algebra) I think in Hakka. once I get to high level math gotta use English, i'd know the words like integration, derivative, matrix, vector if I saw it written down, but i can't remember how write them, and I doubt if I'd understand it if someone said it to me, regardless what dialect. but I'm studying abroad in HK next semester and taking a math class taught in Cantonese. that's gonna be weird as all hell.

I read Chinese fine, write like a hick (too many dialect words) with messed up grammar, speak Hakka with my grandparents, really bad Hokkien with my Malaysian Chinese friends, and Cantonese with my HK friends at university, and ever since I emigrated from Malaysia at age 6, my speaking ability in Malay basically disappeared, though I can understand stuff okay. also understand some Mandarin cuz of the TV and karaoke.

I studied spanish in middle school and high school. 9 years. then I started taking Japanese once i got to university. for the first month of Japanese class, I kept putting in Spanish pronouns. I got around that problem. but then I was trying to speak spanish one time later and busted out "yo MO quiero un vaso de MIZU tambien" (i wanna glass of water too, but I said water and too in Japanese) and the waiter just kinda looked at me like i fell outta the sky. i never had that problem between English, Chinese, and Malay. maybe just cuz Japanese and Spanish sound similar - the way there's lots of vowels.

-Eric http://mixedasian.blogspot.com
come see how political issues mess up my mental health these days

[SunWuKong]

hey that's really cool, you know a number of dialects and languages. i have a friend from south america that speaks hakka, cantonese, mandarin, english, dutch, and spanish.

what university in HK will you be taking that course in by the way? to the best of my knowledge, the universities in HK all teach in english.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

[quote:d2a854fdbb="SunWuKung"]hey that's really cool, you know a number of dialects and languages. i have a friend from south america that speaks hakka, cantonese, mandarin, english, dutch, and spanish.

what university in HK will you be taking that course in by the way? to the best of my knowledge, the universities in HK all teach in english.[/quote:d2a854fdbb]

[i:d2a854fdbb](this is still me, the confirmation email for this login finally came through after several hours)[/i:d2a854fdbb]

speaking dialects is kinda useless though, gotta improve my mandarin or everyone will think i'm a hick or a foreigner.

most universities in HK have some regulation like "teaching shall be conducted in English and supplemented with other languages at the discretion of the instructor." so in practice that often means the prof. lectures in English and the teaching assistants use the mother tongue. but Chinese U. actually allows their profs to lecture in mother tongue (or in Mandarin) as well, which is why I'm going there ... I'm not gonna go 10,000 miles just to hear a bunch of English again.

-Eric (ericlien@jmail.co.jp (mailto:ericlien@jmail.co.jp))
mixedasian.blogspot.com (http://mixedasian.blogspot.com/) - come see what political issues harm my mental health

[aexa]

most people are surprised when i tell them that i can read/write/speak cantonese without a problem. this is because i came over to canada when i was 5 ... i went to chinese school for like 10 years, but it never helped ... i actually learned chinese on my own and with the help of my fob friends in grade 9 of highschool ... took me bout 2 years but i got it DOWN ... heh heh heh ... 8)

[artsfartsyjanet]

Originally posted by Arex@Jun 5 2002, 07:14 AM
Why no option for us peeps who can order various types of food but wish we had a real mastery of the language(s)? 'cause that's me.

The only time I think it's embarrassing when people speak Chinese is when people shout while talking on the phone (in non-Asian locales) as if they think they must yell into the receiver in order to be heard. I guess that's kind of obnoxious no matter the language, but it's just more noticeable when it's done in a foreign tongue.

To those people I say: "Shut the fuck up! They can hear you just fine!"

Alex
I feel your pain. hahaha..... No one else in my family except for my grandfather yells into his phone. My brother and I laugh all the time actually because it's just become apart of our lives.

[artsfartsyjanet]

I consider myself bilingual, but here's the breakdown:

1.0 goes to English
0.5 goes to speaking Cantonese (my written skills need refining)
0.5 goes to writing French (my oral skills need refining)

My family's a bit different. Most of the people in my family are QUADlingual. They speak and read Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and English fluently.

[kimpossible]

English, obviously. Japanese, I'm so-so. At one point in time I was doing business meetings and public speech but lately I think I've been core dumping Japanese for more Mandarin. With Mandarin I'm really hit or miss. I get in a lot of situations where I understand 90% of what's being said but I'm missing like one key word or idea. My reading and writing is okay, but I can't read simplified mainland stuff. I understand more than I can speak.

What I really love is Russian. I can read and write pretty well (the easy part) but my grammar and vocab is atrocious.

[SunWuKong]

here is a really good chinese language resource site:

zhongwen.com (http://zhongwen.com)

each chinese character is a link, and if you click on it, the definition comes up.

and for those of you who are into tang poetry:

zhongwen.com/tangshi.htm (http://zhongwen.com/tangshi.htm)

they even have the art of war:

zhongwen.com/bingfa.htm (http://zhongwen.com/bingfa.htm)

and tao te ching:

http://zhongwen.com/tangshi.htm



<!--EDIT|SunWuKung|Aug 12 2002, 03:46 PM-->

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Originally posted by Hello_Hapa@Aug 12 2002, 04:27 PM
What I really love is Russian. I can read and write pretty well (the easy part) but my grammar and vocab is atrocious.
Russian grammar in general is atrocious. i didn't even get through two weeks of that stuff before I gave up and switched to Japanese.

last time I went to Taiwan, I ended up core-dumping mandarin. my friends were all amazed - I came back and my Hokkien was a lot better, even my Japanese was better, but my Mandarin had gone downhill!?!?!? i think it's hopeless.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Originally posted by artsfartsyjanet@Aug 12 2002, 04:15 PM
I feel your pain. hahaha..... No one else in my family except for my grandfather yells into his phone. My brother and I laugh all the time actually because it's just become apart of our lives.
hmm ... I always figured it was genetic. chinese people all over the world have horrible phone manners. only in the US, Canada, and Japan will you see people of Chinese descent remembering to put their phones on vibrate mode and speaking in a normal tone of voice.

[kimpossible]

I have THE stupidest accent. Not only do I sound American when I speak, but I kind of have a south Taiwan/Taiyu accent because those are the speakers I hear most often. But I can do a couple of tongue twisters. The 40 stone lions and eating the grapes but spitting out the seeds.

[artsfartsyjanet]

Oh gosh, a friend of mine who doesn't even speak my dialect but another Chinese dialect (not Mandarin) laughed his head off on the fourth of July when he heard me speak to my grandmother in Cantonese on the cell phone. It was hard keeping a straight face trying to sound sane with my grandmother, but after I hung up the phone, he said that I sounded like a FOB in my native tongue.... He pissed me off because at least i can understand Cantonese and communicate with my family. At first it was funny, but then I really thought about how insensitive he was. What's sad is that he's a resident physician. So, you'd think he'd be more mature than that. :(

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by artsfartsyjanet@Aug 13 2002, 10:20 PM
Oh gosh, a friend of mine who doesn't even speak my dialect but another Chinese dialect (not Mandarin) laughed his head off on the fourth of July when he heard me speak to my grandmother in Cantonese on the cell phone. It was hard keeping a straight face trying to sound sane with my grandmother, but after I hung up the phone, he said that I sounded like a FOB in my native tongue.... He pissed me off because at least i can understand Cantonese and communicate with my family. At first it was funny, but then I really thought about how insensitive he was. What's sad is that he's a resident physician. So, you'd think he'd be more mature than that. :(
ah don't worry about it. i'm sure he was just having fun with you. :D

i think you need to speak more cantonese then!