Living Between Two Worlds
Dayton Kwok
Introduction
As an American born Chinese, I’ve always had to switch between using English and Chinese. This is especially exacerbated since I lived in San Francisco, a city dominated by immigrants hailing from Southern China and Hong Kong. One moment I’m using English to talk to my friends, and the next moment I’m using Cantonese to talk to my family. My native language was English, but I also learned to speak Cantonese around the same time I learned to speak English. My acquisition of both languages started at home, where my parents would expose me to English while the rest of of my family would expose me to Chinese, specifically Cantonese. Additionally, I was sent to a K to 8 Chinese immersion school where we were rigorously taught how to write and speak Chinese properly. As a result of this, I had to put in a lot of time to study and practice Cantonese and English. We also started learning Mandarin at the sixth grade, so as a result my Mandarin pronunciations aren’t as good as my Cantonese pronunciations. But I will be using Mandarin for this study since it is more well known. By the time middle school rolled around, I had no problem reading, writing, …show more content…
In Mandarin it would be pronounced as tæ with tone 1 (meaning a neutral tone) for both pronouns. On the surface level, one would argue that in Chinese culture and society, there are higher levels of gender equality. But historically, Chinese culture was never a culture that had gender equality into it, but rather viewed women in a more archaic way (such as being a housewife, etc). The Sapir- Whorf hypothesis does not work in the case of gender equality built into Chinese thinking
Dayton Kwok
Introduction
As an American born Chinese, I’ve always had to switch between using English and Chinese. This is especially exacerbated since I lived in San Francisco, a city dominated by immigrants hailing from Southern China and Hong Kong. One moment I’m using English to talk to my friends, and the next moment I’m using Cantonese to talk to my family. My native language was English, but I also learned to speak Cantonese around the same time I learned to speak English. My acquisition of both languages started at home, where my parents would expose me to English while the rest of of my family would expose me to Chinese, specifically Cantonese. Additionally, I was sent to a K to 8 Chinese immersion school where we were rigorously taught how to write and speak Chinese properly. As a result of this, I had to put in a lot of time to study and practice Cantonese and English. We also started learning Mandarin at the sixth grade, so as a result my Mandarin pronunciations aren’t as good as my Cantonese pronunciations. But I will be using Mandarin for this study since it is more well known. By the time middle school rolled around, I had no problem reading, writing, …show more content…
In Mandarin it would be pronounced as tæ with tone 1 (meaning a neutral tone) for both pronouns. On the surface level, one would argue that in Chinese culture and society, there are higher levels of gender equality. But historically, Chinese culture was never a culture that had gender equality into it, but rather viewed women in a more archaic way (such as being a housewife, etc). The Sapir- Whorf hypothesis does not work in the case of gender equality built into Chinese thinking