Richmond, B.C., considers banning Chinese-only signage

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I am completely fluent in Russian, much more so than French. A little less comfortable than English in that I say things with weird grammar sometimes, but I understand it fully and people don't have any trouble understanding me. I don't have an accent, and I can read and write, albeit with some funky spelling mistakes occasionally. I think I would probably be getting the same grades in all my classes right now if they were in Russian, and working in an office would be fine as well. What I'm trying to say is that if I speak English at a 10, Russian would probably be a 9.

Russian was my first language, and when we came to Canada my parents wanted to make sure we stayed fluent, as most kids forget it. So to this day, only Russian is allowed when talking to them or my brother (though him and I speak English to each other when they're not around ) From like ages 5-10, we both had to read an hour of Russian a day.

I want to mention though that we're an exception. All my parent's friends here are Russian, and most of their kids don't speak it very well at all.

Thanks for the insights! Two parents who speak it and at least part of early childhood in the old country really help out a lot.

From my observations with my kids, every single one of their friends who has immigrant parents from the same country still speaks the language. It's generally the same situation as with you: the immigrant language for family life, but the kids tend to speak French between themselves when the parents are not around.

Kids who have one immigrant parent and one Canadian-born parent tend to not speak the immigrant language, although there are a few rare exceptions.

Children whose grandparents were immigrants but whose parents grew up in Canada (generally my generation) generally know little to nothing of the old country's language. Often their other parent is not of the same origin: A French Canadian married to a Portuguese or a Lebanese, or a Haitian married to a French Canadian, or a Latin American married to a Portuguese. These kids will have French as a native language and their strongest second language will always be English.

I suspect that if and when you have kids it will likely be quite difficult to transmit a high level of Russian to them, even with super-human efforts.

[Acajack]

One reason that I asked this is that my sense is that most kids I see growing up in Gatineau who know their parents' language probably could not go to school or work in those languages, even if they speak reasonably fluently.

For many the language is Arabic (Lebanese, Algerian or Moroccan) and there is the additional challenge of a different writing system. Almost none of my kids' schoolmates who can speak fluent Arabic can write it or read it.

We also have friends of ours who have introduced us to some of their acquaintances who are from the former Yugoslavia. They've always spoken Serbo-Croatian at home and the kids are very fluent. One of their boys tried to go to university in the old country and came back after only a few months because it was too hard linguistically. I believe that kid actually went to school in the old country during his early years even.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I would however say that overall the new interconnected world we are living in will only delay the integration/assimilation process. It will not block it.

I agree with that. They will inevitably assimilate, but I think that given the dynamics of the current influx of immigrants, if it does in fact continue, then you will always have a sizable amount of very new unassimilated group of migrants who will likely find solace in living in an area where their ethnolinguistic community has a large presence.

I see nothing wrong with that. I don't have a problem with the slower assimilation. While both assimilation and reciprocal acculturation are inevitable, I just think that the host society (in Anglo Canada) should be more open to it. Reciprocal acculturation should not be feared, it should be welcomed.

All it means is that the reciprocal acculturation will be less asymmetrical than it used to often be.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Just wondering...

For saffronleaf and GlassCity and any others who learned a language other than English (or French) from your parents, how is your proficiency?

Would you be able to follow university-level courses in that language? Or work in an office setting in that language?

Answer as honestly as possible please!

I can read, write, and speak Tamil, but certainly not well enough to take a university course in Tamil.

But I think the thing with Tamil is that it is a very diglossic language, kind of like Arabic. Meaning that the colloquial conversational standard for Tamil is very different from the formal register of the language.

So there are, for example, many people in Tamil Nadu (a state in India with about 65 million Tamil-speakers) who speak Tamil daily but, if they happened to go to an English-medium school, they would not have sufficient proficiency to take a university course in Tamil.

My Malayalam is conversational only (can't read or write). Hindi is even more rudimentary; I can say basic phrases and make sense of slow, simple dialogue. French is about the same level as Hindi.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Thanks for the insights! Two parents who speak it and at least part of early childhood in the old country really help out a lot.

From my observations with my kids, every single one of their friends who has immigrant parents from the same country still speaks the language. It's generally the same situation as with you: the immigrant language for family life, but the kids tend to speak French between themselves when the parents are not around.

Kids who have one immigrant parent and one Canadian-born parent tend to not speak the immigrant language, although there are a few rare exceptions.

Children whose grandparents were immigrants but whose parents grew up in Canada (generally my generation) generally know little to nothing of the old country's language. Often their other parent is not of the same origin: A French Canadian married to a Portuguese or a Lebanese, or a Haitian married to a French Canadian, or a Latin American married to a Portuguese. These kids will have French as a native language and their strongest second language will always be English.

I suspect that if and when you have kids it will likely be quite difficult to transmit a high level of Russian to them, even with super-human efforts.

I'd like my kids to speak Russian, but I know I'm likely going to end up having them with a Canadian, and it would be very hard to do if she didn't speak it. It kinda sucks, but I just see it as a sacrifice we've had to make to have the privilege of living here.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I'd like my kids to speak Russian, but I know I'm likely going to end up having them with a Canadian, and it would be very hard to do if she didn't speak it. It kinda sucks, but I just see it as a sacrifice we've had to make to have the privilege of living here.

I hope Canada isn't asking you to refrain from teaching your children Russian as some sort of payment to repay your debt to Canada for bestowing upon you the privilege of residing in Canada.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

I hope Canada isn't asking you to refrain from teaching your children Russian as some sort of payment to repay your debt to Canada for bestowing upon you the privilege of residing in Canada.

I don't think that is what he is suggesting (assuming you know this), but it is certainly difficult to achieve fluency for your kids in a language outside of its ''homeland''.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

I hope Canada isn't asking you to refrain from teaching your children Russian as some sort of payment to repay your debt to Canada for bestowing upon you the privilege of residing in Canada.

It's not, it's just hard to do. It'd be no different than trying to teach one of your friends a language. By the way, if there was a Russian-dominant area in Vancouver, I would be against it too.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

I can read, write, and speak Tamil, but certainly not well enough to take a university course in Tamil.

But I think the thing with Tamil is that it is a very diglossic language, kind of like Arabic. Meaning that the colloquial conversational standard for Tamil is very different from the formal register of the language.

So there are, for example, many people in Tamil Nadu (a state in India with about 65 million Tamil-speakers) who speak Tamil daily but, if they happened to go to an English-medium school, they would not have sufficient proficiency to take a university course in Tamil.

My Malayalam is conversational only (can't read or write). Hindi is even more rudimentary; I can say basic phrases and make sense of slow, simple dialogue. French is about the same level as Hindi.

Thanks for the insight. Languages like Tamil for a Canadian-raised and educated person also have the extra challenge of a different alphabet.

[mattpa]

The way i see it there should be dual signage my parents are immigrants i may be born here but English is my second language Polish being first. Fluent in both languages was fluent in french but i didnt need it learnt russian last year. Speaking another language effects your whole life through school i always had immigrant friends from all backgrounds we made fun of most of the canadian kids because we got higher grades we always had something in common about how are parents all have the same goals for us plus through kindergarten - 8 had to go to 1 of 3 polish schools making sure we never forget the mother tongue but i have friends where they speak 2 languages because each parent taught them its cool it as huge benefits. To me its sad that parents from europe integrate without teaching there children there language. my moms a nurse and most older people forget everything. Plus asian immigrants from china and india are mostly rich and arrogant thats why they do it.

well theres my rant

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I'd say the settlement patterns in Saskatchewan actually lent themselves to cultures lasting longer than the current urban settlement patterns. You had Ukrainian towns, German towns, Swedish towns, etc. For quite some time these settlements were pretty much homogenous. The schoolteachers and any local government official as well, the milkman, the cops, etc. were all from the same ethnic community. And so it was easy for most of life to go on in their language and according to their cultural norms.

It's much more difficult to maintain that in a large, diverse metro like Vancouver or Toronto. The mailmen, bus drivers, schoolteachers, Coca-Cola delivery guys, police officers, building inspectors, hydro linemen, etc. aren't all going to be Indo-Canadians even in Brampton or Chinese-Canadian in Richmond.

Not true. I'm the product of immigration to SK. Many of the immigrants during the homesteading peek of ~1900 - 1915 did not leave their homelands under favorable circumstances and were more than anxious to erase their pasts. Most communities were intermingled simply because homesteading was a matter of grabbing a section of land before someone else did. Who your neighbors ended up to be or the availability of schools in your native language was not of concern because anything was better than being sent to the gulag or being permanently denied the opportunity to own land by rigid European class structures. The prairies were not a conscious effort to not recreate a pre-existing culture.

[The Chemist]

All this talk about kids and languages is the main reason why I'll be staying in China for several more years. I want my daughter to go to school here for several years so that she can be fully fluent in Mandarin, including the ability to read and write, before we move back to Canada. I'll probably try to find a Mandarin immersion school in Calgary when I go back so that she can keep learning Mandarin too.

The written form of Chinese is such that if you don't use it daily, you start to forget how to write very quickly.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Thanks for the insight. Languages like Tamil for a Canadian-raised and educated person also have the extra challenge of a different alphabet.

I don't mean to try and compete, but Russian has a different alphabet too you know

[mattpa]

everybody has a diffrent alphabet polish uses a modified latin alphabet plus memorized the russian alphabet in a day but slavic similarities help

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I don't mean to try and compete, but Russian has a different alphabet too you know

Totally agree! I was thinking more of Italian, German, etc.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Doug

Not true. I'm the product of immigration to SK. Many of the immigrants during the homesteading peek of ~1900 - 1915 did not leave their homelands under favorable circumstances and were more than anxious to erase their pasts. Most communities were intermingled simply because homesteading was a matter of grabbing a section of land before someone else did. Who your neighbors ended up to be or the availability of schools in your native language was not of concern because anything was better than being sent to the gulag or being permanently denied the opportunity to own land by rigid European class structures. The prairies were not a conscious effort to not recreate a pre-existing culture.

Really? The only reason I know the expression ''(ethnic) block settlement'' is because I have read a bit about the history of Saskatchewan:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cansk/maps/ethnic-bloc-200.jpg

I do agree with you about the schools and language retention in general. Most immigrants are not super-adamant about retaining the old language intergenerationally. In some cases it happens almost accidentally or out of force of habit, and then at one point things take a different turn for some reason and within a generation or two the language is gone.

[Acajack]

For all its qualities vaunted on here, even the Anglo-Canadian societal model has some imperfections and a way's to go.

http://torontoist.com/2014/10/election-2014-city-council-still-doesnt-look-like-the-city/

[lio45]

I disagree with you both, and agree with mattpa, Russian doesn't really truly have a different alphabet the way the far eastern languages do...

Speaking from personal experience, having seriously studied both Russian and Japanese aiming for long term mastery of each at the time (different times, and I ended up abandoning in both cases, though my sis is now quite good at Japanese, having lived and worked there for four summers in a row)...

As mattpa says, someone who knows the Latin letters can learn the Cyrillic ones very quickly and never look back. The logic is totally the same as ours. Several letters are even the same!

Case in point, I made no effort to remember the Russian alphabet and still know it now... years later. On the other hand, my knowledge of written Japanese is all but gone.

[geotag277]

Originally Posted by lio45

I disagree with you both, and agree with mattpa, Russian doesn't really truly have a different alphabet the way the far eastern languages do...

Speaking from personal experience, having seriously studied both Russian and Japanese aiming for long term mastery of each at the time (different times, and I ended up abandoning in both cases, though my sis is now quite good at Japanese, having lived and worked there for four summers in a row)...

As mattpa says, someone who knows the Latin letters can learn the Cyrillic ones very quickly and never look back. The logic is totally the same as ours. Several letters are even the same!

Case in point, I made no effort to remember the Russian alphabet and still know it now... years later. On the other hand, my knowledge of written Japanese is all but gone.

I would say that Korean and Chinese use a different alphabet in the same way that Russian uses a different alphabet (Cyrillic versus Latin). It might be more natural for a native Chinese speaker to learn Korean compared to Russian but that doesn't mean Korean doesn't "truly" have a different alphabet.

[ssiguy]

Richmond-News reported about the Richmond mayor's debate and the issue of the language signs came up.

Malcom Brodie the existing mayor thinks "better education" is a better option while Richard Lee endorses a by-law against Chinese-only signs as he sees it as a reasonable limitation on business operation. Yes, the existing Caucasian mayor doesn't want any restrictions and the challenging Chinese descent mayoral candidate does.

As I have stated before, the vast majority of Chinese see Chinese-only signs as not only stupid but quite offensive.