Irish Born Chinese

Via americanbornchinese.wordpress.com, this link to an audio clip on the discussion panel on discussions between ABCs and Chinese immigrants.

Some of the concerns rings home true for me here as well, e.g. I had to speak Cantonese at home when I was young. My brothers and cousins are lucky enough to speak English in front of our parents. One of the things that I would be thinking of would be, when I have kids, will they be fluent in Cantonese? I want them to keep part of their culture. Apart from talking to my mother, I don’t want my kids to grow up and think that we did not teach them Chinese (written and/or oral). I see that from what I see in the IBC forums that some teens are kicking themselves for not taking to learning Chinese culture seriously. Maybe it seemed too old fashioned, been told by your parents to do things almost always means the opposite for teens. Everyone has been through these phases.

For those who are lucky to learn Chinese, you are the lucky ones. Go to HK, and see the difference from being able to speak the language. The traders are not as despicable. This perhaps applies for all other languages as well.

One mother commented that she is finding it hard to convince her teenager that it’s good to learn Chinese, and the one answer that stumped her was “So?!?”. I hate that kind of apathetic reply, but that’s teenagers for you though. The fact that he kept saying that Japanese keeps coming out with cool stuff does not help her argument at all.

I wonder if anyone who reads this blog, or check out the forums, the experiences by the people who spoke in that clip, does that apply to you as well?