Language in the Asian American Community Language is important to everyone. The English Language is used in everyday interaction with people. However, language could impose social and linguistic issues to those whose native language is not English in the United States. Asian Americans are one of those groups who faces these kinds of issues. In the chapter, “Asian American Voices: Language in the Asian American Community,” from Language in the USA, authors, Thom Huebner and Linda Uyechi discussed about the issues that many Asian Americans faced with language in the United States. These Asian Americans struggled with language due to the multiple identities across culture and generations and the racism and language discrimination in the …show more content…
They were more diverse and dispersed. They lived in close communities based on their ethnicities, therefore they spoke more of their native language; making the trace of their ancestry of how they spoke more inevitable. The second wave of Asian Immigrants were young and urbanized. They were balanced between the sexes. Together, the second wave and first wave created a more diverse Asian American population. Acquiring the English Language was one of the many language issues due to language maintenance and language shift, language discrimination, and language as a marker of …show more content…
Many Asian Americans face language discrimination due to their proficiency of English. Many Asian Americans who struggle with English, struggles with the accent side of language. Huebner and Uyechi mentioned about Manuel Fragante, a Filipino American, who was denied a service job at the Honolulu Department of Motor Vehicles due to him having a Filipino accent when speaking. Manuel Fragante was denied a job due to the way he spoke is language discrimination. As Huebner and Uyechi also stated, “Asian Americans who are non-native English speakers may be more susceptible than other non-native English-speaking Americans to discrimination that is language focused.” Asian Americans are more susceptible to language discrimination due to “Yellow English,” which are the negative images of Asian English that are portrayed by the media. “Yellow English” sets stereotypes on Asian American as either verbose or monosyllabic speakers. Those stereotypes sets Asian Americans aside from other non-native English