summercomfort | "We're learning Chinese songs"

Why am I so sensitive about language acquisition?

A colleague-type person told me that she is sending her 2-year-old to a class where he learns Chinese songs, because she wants to give him a good grounding for bilingualism. Because 0-7 is the crucial age to language acquisition. So I ask, "oh, what kind of songs? C-pop or Communist?" And she balked. "Definitely not Communist. There were some songs that sound a little more miltarist, but we don't participate in those." And then we spent 10 minutes carefully talking around each other. I was trying to say "Communism isn't what you think it is." She was trying to say "Learning many languages will make my child multicultural." Then I tried to say "Knowing a language will only get you that far into understanding another culture. It takes academic study, too." And then she starts talking about the 0-7 thing. And then I try to talk about the struggle of keeping a secondary language when you don't have the environment for it.

I'm just frustrated at how frivolous it all seems. Yes, your child will be able to distinguish tones from this once-a-week Chinese song class. So what? Yes, your child can count from 1-10 in Chinese and Spanish, but not in English. Great.

Maybe I'm just sensitive about these things because I'm bicultural. Having both world views at the same time. I get frustrated by people who are so steadfastly planted in their own. "Look at this novel culture, isn't it quaint?" Always an Us and a Them, when it's so much more complicated. The suspicion regarding Communism was so immediate! And then saying, "You probably have a more natural suspicion about these things than I am." Um, no. No suspicions whatsoever, actually. I was inquiring from a cultural point of view. This is why I feel American when I'm in China and feel Chinese when I'm in America. The question is, how do we rattle the cage?

Thankfully, I generally hang with people with more fluid identities. A lot of my students are bicultural, too. They just don't know it, yet.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm highly skeptical about early language acquisition stuff like that. I took spanish from around age 4 and got no good out of it at all.

I have no doubt that kids who actually are exposed to the language in context and real use can get quite skilled at it, but just learning songs and numbers outside of cultural or even narrative contexts seems worthless to me (and, in my experience, was worthless.)

The gap between "growing up with the language around you as a living thing" and "going to school once a week as a kid" is huge. And that's not even touching the "other cultures are so quaint" stuff that you're talking about. :-(

yrs--
--Ben

I *know*. I was trying to tell her that. Like, "Look, I came to the US speaking Chinese, but do you know how hard it was to keep that?" But I just met her today, and she's kinda my supervisor/advisor person, so I couldn't come right now and say it as I would with a friend. Plus when I said something like that, she got this look on her face that she was about to quote lots of research statistics to me. :(

It seriously matters more to me how much you understand another culture rather than how many words you can speak from that culture. Yes, they're interrelated, but language is not the only way to be exposed to different cultures. And if you go in with a closed mind, you won't get it no matter how fluent you are in the language. Mou.

So here's a thought: probably an old hat to you linguist types but it's new to me.

Language is communication, right? By definition. So clearly being able to navigate the various situations of life in another culture is as important to "language skill" as vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation. Someone who doesn't understand, say, the concept of "guanxi" is just as linguistically limited (in terms of communication) as someone who, say, can't make retroflex sounds properly.

yrs--
--Ben

Hm... very interesting point. I'm not a linguist type, but I agree, there are all these cultural subtleties that cannot be communicated through language alone. To be able to interpret an action or a decision given its cultural context is important in international relations, too!

Yes! Also, things like understanding the cultural implications of words, and when to use which words and things like that are important language skills. Especially for a language like Chinese. If your accent is perfect, that's great, but you're never going to be mistaken for a Chinese person face-to-face, and perfect tones only get you so far. Being able to effectively communicate is a far more valuable skill, I think.

I don't think you're being oversensitive at all. Thinking that learning songs in another language will make your two year-old bilingual is silly, and thinking that it will make you understand the culture is even more so. I learned tons of Inuit and Tlingit songs as a kid here in Alaska, and not only do I not remember any of them, I also have no knowledge of either language, and all I know of the cultures are the bits I remember from fourth grade.

Indeed! But if you *were* to learn Inuit or Tlingit now, would you have more "native" pronunciation than your average person?

...no.

I could read Chinese newspapers when I was three. But I never felt more illiterate than realizing that I can't understand 75% of Chinese online slang these days.

哈哈。不过，中国人也不懂美国的 l33t-speak 呀。We were teaching them how to say "This is the shit"

然，如以古语于之，又几人能解？

::dies::

Actually I can understand that better than Chinese netspeak. At least, the not-too-heavy stuff like 西游记 and 水浒. Don't throw any philosophical stuff at me though or I'll get squashed.

I think that's what you should do when you encounter Chinese netspeak: fire up the really old stuff. ;)

My mother is a 2nd generation Greek, but 100% Greek, so I was the first generation that didn't have as much of an Us vs. Them mentality. This caused problems in stuff like, say, not dating a Greek girl. I too studied Greek at a young age and didn't retain any of it. I think the key is that little kids can't *study* anything at that young age, they have to *learn* it. Is that too hand-wavy? What I mean is that if a kid is going to take advantage of learning a language young, it has to be important for them in some way, and they need to have lots of repetition.

I also don't think that it's a bad idea to get a kid to take the classes. She just shouldn't hope for a Chinese miracle.

About the communist thing: though it's an excuse, do remember that the mother may have grown up during a time when everyone Just Knew that Communism is Evil (depending on how old she is). I'm sure she imagines that exposing her kid to Communism is only a little better than Satanism.

When I first read that, I thought it said, "2nd generation Geek". :X

But yea, there's all these ethnic groups here, which means that there's all these bicultural people who have to deal with being Greek/Chinese/Jewish, and being American at the same time.

I totally agree with you about language needs to be academically learned and not just "natural", because it'll get lost. That was the point that I was trying to make to said person. Alas, she has all sort of data proving otherwise...?

About the Communist thing: misconceptions just frustrate me. I get just as peevish about Chinese misconceptions of American as a perfect foreign place. (They eat bread! Every day! Every meal! They are a happy land of many immigrants!) The concept of racism doesn't enter their heads at all, for example.

"We're learning Chinese songs"

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