Early Generation Vietnamese Americans : An Investigation On Attitudes

Language has clearly become a powerful force in many countries where different communities actually want to split apart on the sole basis on the language they speak. An article about Spain’s language diversity explains how people feel so passionate about their native languages that the country had to create autonomous regions for each of the major languages, and people are still fighting to have their language become the dominant dialect (Berdichevsky 276). This is also seen repeatedly in America’s history where immigrants to the country struggle to keep their languages alive. These immigrants realize the important role that language plays in keeping a community together, and many immigrants from the same country will choose to live by each other in America and are resentful when they are forced to learn English. My own great-grandparents chose to live in an Italian neighborhood in Ohio when they first came from Italy so that their culture would not be lost. This allowed my grandma to learn Italian as well as English, and even though she was going to an English school she was still taught the morals of her culture because she was able to talk with the older Italian people who did not speak English. My grandma says that this has helped her throughout life because even though she lives in America she says, “I respect my Italian heritage,” and that it has helped “build my confidence” (12 April 2003).

Unconsciously, we all speak different languages; we categorize the way we speak by the environment and people at which we are speaking too. Whenever a character enters an unfamiliar environment, they experiment with language to find themselves and understand reality. For immigrants, language is a means to retain one’s identity; however, as they become more assimilated in their new communities their language no longer reflects that of their identity but of their new cultural surroundings. When an immigrant, immigrates to a new country they become marginalized, they’re alienated from common cultural practices, social ritual, and scripted behavior. It’s not without intercultural communication and negotiation

I was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and live in the U.S. I went to Lowell High School and took all ESL because I didn’t know much about English. In order to succeed, I started to read and speak more English than my first language, yet I speak Khmer at home because my parent doesn 't want me to lose my native language. In America, there are a lot of immigrants that are trying to come and to get a better opportunity. According to Joel Swerdlow, in “Changing America,” “before 1965 more than three-quarters of all immigrants to the U.S. came from Europe, owing largely to quotas that favored northern Europeans.” (313). In 1965 Congress removed those quotas, and since then more than 60 percent of immigrants have come from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Latin America. However, do children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity in order to be American? Children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity because they are changing their own culture identity regarding three topics: Language, Dress, and Behavior.

The way in which our world functions today is a result of colonialization. Language death and linguistic endangerment is woven with colonialization and the history of oppression toward indigenous communities. We cannot speak of language death without first acknowledging the speakers and the systematic oppression that indigenous communities continue struggling to resist. In present time language shifts due to economic incentive of hegemony and the mediating role of language ideologies are two of the most important causes of language death. Language shift and language ideologies that ultimately cause language death are current consequences of colonialization. The death of a language has both of linguistic and cultural consequences to the particular community affected and to the world’s diversity as a whole. Languages serve as carries of cultural knowledge, as identity and verbal art, hence when a language is lost cultural resources, identity and verbal art are lost.

. For centuries, America has continued to grow into a culturally diverse nation. Everyday immigrants come into the country with the goal to become successful, and for many this success comes through education. In many cases, children and adults have to learn the English language or improve on their English speaking skills in the first years of being in the country. The process of being successful in a language is a process that happens in more areas than school. People are able to pick up languages from television, shopping, listening to the language and practicing speaking and reading the language. According to Cummins’ dimensions of language proficiency, this process can take over 5 years of penetrating second language exposure.

According to the United States Census, millions of people speak another language other than english in their home. In the past, second generation children were encouraged to adopt the customs, culture, and language of what was identified as the majority culture. Today, children can be expected to go through some periods of mixing the two languages and borrowing vocabulary

The development of language overtime illustrates the relationship between language and culture. To have a holistic appreciation for language and meaning, this relationship must be understood. It is likely that all human languages developed from one single language (Gee & Hayes, 2011). As human moved, language developed in relation to the different cultures as they inherited and this led to the creation of the 6,500 languages that exist today, which does not include those which no longer exist (Gee & Hayes, 2011). Cultural influence has not only been responsible for the creation of different languages, but has also created differences among the same language within different places. English for example exits in many different forms around the world. The variances in Englishes began to emerge as a result of colonisation. The colonization of America for example, led to the creation of American English, a transformation which took only weeks, as American settlers had to evolve the language to adapt to their new experiences, which British English could not accommodate as the culture in England did not include these American specific experiences and ideas (Crystal, 2013). Variations in language are specific to certain contexts. Understanding language requires

In chapter 12 “Language Diversity and Schooling” of Banks et al. (2012) talks about the US demographic changes in the last decade and the challenges this learners face in our educational system. They say that the new immigration waves are the primary sources of new linguistic diversity in the US. Additionally, they also state that immigration today is more diverse than ever, new immigrants are exhibiting a significant range in educational level, social class, and economic capital. Present immigrants are more likely than native-born populations to have family members who have graduated from college and “they are not just simply assimilated into mainstream society as was once assumed” (Banks et al., 2012, p. 221).

As language continues the shift, the question as to what causes the subtle changes in vernacular and syntactic structure has separated linguists into two main avenues of thought — internal and external influence — and how the two can work independently or together to promote noticeable shifts in language. As stated in a 2001 article by Nicola Woods, “Those in favor of internal/language- inherent explanations focus solely upon structural or psychological motivations and argue that linguistic change is motivated by . .

Entering Tran Phu High School, I remember there was a huge white banner with bold letters, “For the sake of ten years, we must plant trees; for the sake of a hundred years, we should cultivate people.” In fact, the process of “cultivating people” requires lots of effort, as much as planting a tree. To ensure a tree develops successfully, not only do people plant it into the ground, but they must also take care of it regularly. Undoubtedly, sharing the same task as planting a tree, education plays an integral role in contributing to people’s success. Fortunately, having a chance to experience with Vietnamese and American educational systems, I have realized each one has its own value of educating people. Although both attempt to cultivate people, they have striking differences.

(Fishman, 2013). Giacalone Ramat (1983) succinctly defines language shift as “the change of habits by a linguistic community as it gradually substitutes one linguistic variety of traditional use with another variety, either long present in the community itself or newly introduced” (p. 495), and mentions that language shift is the precursor to the terminal phases of language death, language loss and language extinction. Fishman (as cited in Department of Internal Affairs, 2014) adds that the stages to language shift include increased contact with mainstream groups, an increase in the new language being spoken by migrants, and learner proficiency in the new language that subsequently leads to better opportunities. These stages fit with events and views held in early colonial New Zealand and were the impetus for language shift in New Zealand.

“Migrants need a high level of motivation and a good deal of ingenuity to get started. Migration often requires learning a new language and adapting to a new culture. [Ember, 482-486]. The statement above truly depicts the circumstances surrounding new immigrants. As soon as they enter into the host country, negotiation of identity through language starts. In order to communicate and get access to opportunities and resources, they would have to speak the existing the language. This is a good example of multiculturalism, although they learn a new language they do not unlearn their native language and still continue to speak it to each other or the members of their community. Mama brought up an interesting narrative about circumventing this apparent problem faced by new language learners, by learning how to code switch. This is reiterated by this statement “It was as though there was white and black people English. I could not understand because when I spoke proper English my neighbors teased me as being fancy, many of my friends saw it as proper. I had to learn to switch back and forth with ease.” More so, she recollected times when people would make their mouths rounder and slowed down their words because they thought they had to “dumb” down in order for her to understand them. Now as a French, Soninke and Bambara speaking child in Mali, Mama learned some English in school and taught it to many kids. However, as an immigrant in the

The current sociopolitical structure of developing and developed countries is a result of colonization and imperialism. Language death and linguistic endangerment is woven in with colonization and the history of oppression toward indigenous communities by the colonizers. We cannot speak of language “death” without fist acknowledging the speakers and the systematic oppression that indigenous communities continue struggling to resist. The death of a language has both linguistic and cultural consequences within the particular community affected as well as the world’s knowledge diversity. Languages serve as carriers of cultural knowledge, thorough identity and verbal art; hence, when a language is lost key cultural resources, such as continuity and oral traditions are lost. In this essay I will discuss how economic incentives interrelated with the hegemonic language and language ideologies are two great causes of language death or sleeping languages. In addition, it will highlight what is lost when languages die and will examine how Jane Hill (2002) and Peter Whitely (2003) critique the scholarship on language endangerment. Furthermore, I will share my perspective of Hill and Whitely’s critique of linguistic scholars trend to popularize concepts of universal ownership, hyperbole and apolitical concept of language rights.

One of the fundamental features of language is that it is always changing. Language change is the manner in which the phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic and other features of a language are modified over time. Two linguistic disciplines concern themselves with studying language change: Historical Linguistics and Socio Linguistics. Historical linguists examine how a language was spoken in the past and seek to determine how present languages derive from it and are related to one another. Sociolinguists are interested in the origins of language changes and want to explain how society and changes in society influence language.

The language transfer is considered as an important part in applied linguistics and language learning studies, which concentrate on the source or interlingual cause of error and relates this case to the mother tongue language system. The transfer has attracted researchers of different