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Language and social justice

Language across three generations of Hani minority women

By September 16, 2021November 28th, 202195 Comments8 min read7,093 views

LI Jia and LI Yongzhen, Yunnan University

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The Hani are one of the officially recognized ethnic minorities in China, and can also be found across the border in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. Like other ethnic minorities in China, Hani people need to become bilingual in Putonghua proficiency for educational and social mobility. At the same time, ethnic minority languages are increasingly valorized in tourism and for China’s soft power project in its borderlands. Even so, the linguistic and social experiences of China’s minority speakers remain poorly understood. How do their linguistic proficiencies and life trajectories intersect? What are the affordances and constraints of using the minority language, the national language Chinese, and the global language English? Here, we examine the experiences of three Chinese Hani women from three different generations to explore these questions.

Hani folksongs bring comfort to older generation facing poverty and hardship

Hani woman singing Haba while weaving

Haba is a Hani folksong genre that was included by UNESCO in the world intangible cultural heritage in 2013. Official reports describe Haba as a men’s tradition. It is commonly assumed that only Hani men may sing Haba and win the respect and reputation it brings. This is not entirely true, as our research has found. Hani women sing Haba, too, as a daily practice of self-comfort. However, they do so without an audience. This may be particularly true of poor older Hani women without formal education.

Let’s consider the example of the Haba singing of Fang (a pseudonym). Fang is the aunt of the second author, Yongzhen. Yongzhen often hears her aunt singing Haba in private spaces. Fang’s Haba singing is full of lament and sorrow featuring narratives of the hardships and misfortunes of her life.

Born in 1966, as the oldest daughter in her poverty-stricken family, Fang’s life has been overshadowed by the pressure to bear a son. As a child, she did not have a chance to receive any formal education and so she remains monolingual in Hani and illiterate. At the age of 16, she was forced to marry a man who she had never met and who lived in an even more remote village. Shortly after, she gave birth to her first daughter. Over the next 20 years, she bore 13 daughters before the desired son was born when she was 40 years old.

Today, that son is her only surviving child, and Fang suffers from poor physical and mental health. Singing Haba is a way for her to digest her bitterness, to reduce her sorrow, and to comfort herself, as in this song (our translation):

I married you because I used to think that you would treat me well and live with me.
Now you don’t care for me and don’t even bother to talk to me.
However, I have delivered these children for you in your home.
How come you don’t talk to me properly?
I plant the land on my own.
Our children are born, and the land is planted.
I gave birth to our children. I don’ t want to leave them or abandon them.
The land is planted. I don’t want to leave it.
You often beat me, hit me with your fists and kick me with your legs.
I don’t want to stay here any longer.
I don’t want to eat at all. Neither do I want to drink.
I can only worry, about these children, this land.
I choose to endure the sufferings and stay.
But still you don’t treat me well, don’t talk to me properly.
In this house, I want to cry every time I pick my bowl and take my chopsticks.
This is not my home, but the home of others, your home.
I eat two meals a day, yet my belly is still empty.
The water I drink is never gulped down.
The threshold of this house is like a python by the river, lying in my way.
I dare not take a step in.
I don’t want to stay any longer.
I don’t want to eat another meal here.
A day here feels as long as a life time.
But I don’t want to abandon these children here and leave them once and for all.
I have no idea why you don’t care for me.
I can’t make up my mind just to leave.
My desire to leave has led my feet two steps forward.
But I still can’t leave.
But then you don’t care for me at all.
My desire to leave has taken three steps away from this home.
But I still can’t leave.
The dog never changes its heart to stay and guard the home.
It is the same with me and my children.
The deer in the wild does not wish to stay, either.
Upon consideration, I also decide to hold back and stay.

Hani becomes glamorous

In contrast to Fang’s mournful Haba, which can only be found in personal and private spaces, Hani pop music has been promoted by government institutions to enhance local tourism. Hani pop music is bouncy, joyful, and optimistic, and the famous Hani singer Mixian (米线) is one of its most famous exponents.

Mixian was also born into a poor Hani farming family in 1983. Her educational opportunities were slightly better than those of Fang and she received a primary education but had to stop school because her parents need her help with farm work (China’s nine-year-compulsory education was not implemented nationwide until 2001).

Like Fang, Mixian’s life was also transformed at the age of 16. However, in her case, she did not have to leave her family for marriage but for work, when she moved to a tourist-centered city and became a waitress. Soon, she combined waitressing with singing for tourists. During one of her restaurant performances, Mixian was discovered by Beijing Dazang Record Company.

Since then, Mixian’s has become a national celebrity. She has released several popular albums, which brought her much profit and fame. One of her most popular songs is “My Hani (Honey) Baby”, which is performed in three languages and combines ethnic and global elements.

The song “My Hani Baby” distinguishes itself from other Chinese pop songs through the use of Hani language, English, and Putonghua, and the integration of ethnic and modern music styles. Although there are four singers who all identify themselves as ethnic minorities (Hani, Wa, Hui, and Yao), only Hani language appears in the text and is performed by Mixian. Mixian thus becomes a symbol of local ethnic identity while the three male singers perform the cool aspect of modernity by switching between English and Putonghua.

The theme of the song is one frequently found in pop music: romantic love. What is challenged is the traditional identity imposed upon Hani women who are not expected to marry for love, as exemplified in Fang’s story. The lyrics form a dialogue between Mixian and the three male singers, where the female character boldly expresses her romantic love, and the male character reciprocates.

Choosing the romantic theme and combining the ethnic language (Hani) with modern languages (English and Putonghua) have served to increase the popularity of this song. Whether it contributes to the emancipation of Hani women is another matter.

It is also worth noting that the commodification of the Hani language apparent in this successful pop song has not only helped Mixian establish her reputation but has also drawn public attention to the Hani language in China and beyond. One Chinese netizen liked “Hani Baby” so much that he started to learn the Hani language by searching for relevant materials and posting Hani scripts online. His posts in turn have become a learning resource for Hani people to acquire Hani literacy.

A new generation of educated multilingual Hani women

Yongzhen is both the second author and the third Hani woman we will now turn to. Born in 1999, receiving a 9-year-compulsory education was normal for Yongzhen, as it is for women of her generation from all over China. Her childhood was also shaped by rural poverty but in a way that is very different from previous generations. Like hundreds of millions of rural people from China’s underdeveloped western regions migrate, both her parents migrated to work in factories in Zhejiang and Guangdong.

Yongzhen introducing her bilingual translation project to university professors

As a result, Yongzhen became a left-behind child at an early age and was raised in a boarding school. Yongzhen distinguished herself by excelling in school and pursued her university dream. Her parents’ migration and labor experiences in developed cities were crucial in forming her ambition to pursue higher education and her parents have been unconditionally supportive of Yongzhen’s ambition.

Choosing English as her major was mainly driven by her parents’ aspiration to get a stable job working as an English teacher in the future. Now that she has been exposed to the Course of Language and Society with a particular focus on linguistic diversity, Yongzhen is motivated to become a new broker for Hani language and cultural heritage.

New Hani voices

When the Covid-19 pandemic was still prevalent last year, Yongzhen organized a team with three other ethnic minority female students to conduct a small project in their communities. They investigated how ethnic minority people in their hometowns might understand Putonghua-mediated public health information. Their findings are very similar to others conducted in minority-centered regions in China and featured in the Language on the Move Covid-19 archives.

Based on their research, Yongzhen and her teammates designed a bilingual app inspired by the national emergency language services. Their bilingual translation product has been recommended by the College of Foreign Languages at Yunnan University to participate in the national project targeting Chinese university students’ innovation and entrepreneurship.

Through the multilingual translation project, Yongzhen and her teammates developed their empathy towards their ethnic minority communities and learned of the importance of providing language service to linguistically diverse populations. Additionally, the have felt it their duty to become a voice for their peoples, especially ethnic minority women.

While writing up this study and having access to knowledge about linguistic diversity via Dr Li Jia’s course and the learning materials on Language on the Move, Yongzhen has come to understand how her aunt and other female Haba singers have been linguistically, economically, and culturally marginalized, and how the official and commercial discourses about the Hani people only reveal a partial truth while sometimes simultaneously erasing minority voices. As a multilingual and educated Hani woman, Yongzhen has developed a new faith devoting herself to the sociolinguistics of gendered trajectories of Chinese ethnic minority women for equal social participation.

Li Jia

Author Li Jia

Li Jia obtained her doctoral degree from Macquarie University in 2017. She is an Associate Professor in the College of Foreign Languages of Yunnan University in Kunming, China. Her research interests include multilingualism, language in education, and intercultural communication. She is passionate about improving language education in Yunnan and beyond.

More posts by Li Jia

Join the discussion 95 Comments

  • Hana says:

    It was not a type of story I had seen before, so I was very impressed and enjoyed reading it. It was also surprising that the a woman helped establish the national identity and the reputation of its own language, and brought the attention of the public. In reality, the fact that women of these minorities have led to equal participation in society is not a story we often hear around us. Even in Korea, historically, many tribes engaged in the fight for territory. In the middle of the battle, the peoples of each tribe were trying to maintain their culture, including their names, language, food, and songs. Looking at these stories in this day and age, I realized that the identity of a nation seems to be important in how long it continues and how often it contacts with people.

  • Logan says:

    Thank you for allowing me to think about language and identity. It is very helpful to learn a so-called dominant language to make money or get a better job. As an English teacher, I often mention this part as a motivation to students.
    I was so impressed that two Hani women are learning and using the so-called stronger languages to protect the identity of the people they belonged to.
    While reading this article, I remembered “Geography of Thought” by Richard Lisbet. Since the identity of each culture is contained in language, it seems that language comparison allows us to learn more about the identity of that culture. For example, in Korean, which emphasizes community, we use the expression “our mom, our school” instead of “my school, my mon”. I would like to know how languages will affect the formation of identity.

    • Thank you, Logan! I haven’t read The Geography of Thought but these easy contrasts (“Asians are like this, Westerners are like that”) are bound to be wrong. This kind of essentialism does more harm than good. For instance, where would the three Hani women fit in? Or your own bilingual self?

  • KATE says:

    Thanks for the insightful story. I have sometimes read articles about Koryo people who reside in the former Soviet Union, primarily in the now independent states of Central Asia. Koryo is a historical name for Korea, so the Koryo people mean they are ethnically Korean. However, they left the country in the late 19th century because of the decline of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty. The article I’ve read said Koryo people are still trying to maintain their culture, including cuisine, personal and family names, and language! I believe they know to preserve their own culture as Koreans is how they remember who they are.

    • Thank you, Kate! Are you following some a the news about Koryos ‘returning’ to S Korea in recent years? What are the experiences of those returnees?

    • Hana says:

      hello, Kate. I think your comments were interesting, Thank you for your interesting story.

      I am currently studying in Korea. When I study Korean when I was young, I was shocked that there are many words composed mainly of Chinese characters. Also, in the case of Japanese, I notice that there are many foreign words derived from Japanese due to the historical background.
      However, it seems very interesting that this kinds of parts are also found in Australia through your comments. I’m curious to know what cultural differences are there for indigenous people and how they affect the way people live in Australia today. I’m also curious about the unique bus stop logo with Latino and Australian identity that you mentioned before. Thanks for the interesting comments.

  • Clara says:

    Thank you for the thoughtful article about language in contact and identity.

    This article raised a thought that I had in my mind for a long time about how to retain the Vietnamese language for youngsters in immigrant families. As a teacher, I have taught many students who are older than me, and they moved to English-speaking countries to work and have a better life. I was astonished when I heard their answer for motivation to learn English. It is not only to communicate with a native speaker but also to talk with their own child at home. Many people confessed that their children hardly ever spoke Vietnamese, and it appeared that English was their mother tongue. It is easy to understand why they are fluent in English as most people around them, from teachers to friends, communicate with them in English. They solely use Vietnamese with their parents at home, which is obviously not enough to deeply understand this language. Their children still could comprehend partly what their parents said to them, but they denied replying in Vietnamese. I wondered if this circumstance persisted for a very long period, whether the children would ever lose their Vietnamese cultural identity. It is clearly evident that language is a potent symbol of cultural identity. When children lose their first language, they may lose their identity too. This raises serious concerns since Vietnamese background and culture are gradually becoming unnoticed by Vietnamese next-generation children.

    • Thank you, Clara! First generation migrants often want to shield their children from their own difficult language learning experiences – without realising that for children growing up in Australia English is easy and Vietnamese hard …

  • Qi says:

    Thank you for sharing great articles. From reading this article, I love how Mixian puts her own language into the songs, it’s a wonderful way to get more people to know her language. In Thailand, a large number of people migrated from China to Thailand during World War II. My grandfather and grandmother were one of them, they immigrated to Thailand when they were teenagers, so they can speak Thai and Cantonese. So most of my family members are bilingual. But over time, people pay more attention to Mandarin, because it is a very common lingua franca, they no longer see the importance of Cantonese. However, what is worrying may be that some family members or the next generation may not realize the importance of the language and that it may be forgotten as it used to be one of our family’s languages.

    • Thank you, Qi! It’s fascinating how Mandarin is taking over other Chinese languages, even in the diaspora. What has your own experience with learning Mandarin been like?

  • Thank you, Jhonny, for sharing this tribute to Anastasia Candre Yamacurí!
    I was touched by the obituary and her timely poem, as so much of the world is in drought and humans seem hellbent on destroying the natural world of which they are a part …

    • nesrine says:

      Thanks for sharing this special article, this story reminds me of my background as an Algerian and how Algerian lost their language and culture because of French colonisation for more than 100 years and how they were prevented from learning their Arabic language. Therefore, this made the French language our second language instead of English and even nowadays French still our Language after Arabic instead of English. However, when we moved to Australia my parents had a lot of difficulties with English and they mostly talk in French as there is a lot of similarity between the two languages. On the other hand, my brothers they completely lost both languages Arabic and French as they came here at a young age and they integrated with other kids which strengthen their language and made it difficult for my parents to communicate with them. Also, because of the usage of code switching between French and Arabic in our family this made learning the languages difficult for my brothers and confused them more which made it easier for them to choose the English language their comfort zone. I believe parents should work on keeping one language at home by avoiding code switching between many languages as this can cause the neglect of both languages and will not benefit the kids.

      • Thank you, Nes! It’s really hard when parents and children speak different languages, particularly when there are difficult topics to talk about or when your parents reach old age … maybe you’ll have to act as interpreter between your parents and your brothers in such situations?

  • Thanks, ‘Em! Social media are certainly opening so many new opportunities for my minority language speakers!

  • Thao says:

    A week ago, I was doing my shopping at a Middle Eastern shop and while looking for spices in one of the aisles, I stood next to a lady looking to be of African origin. I was not aware of her presence while engrossed in my search for spice until I heard her saying children’s rhymes in English. I turned to see that she was saying the rhymes to her baby in the pram. I cannot remember the rhymes but I know it was familiar and I was more taken aback by the fact a woman in head scarf was saying English rhymes to her baby, and this is no disrespect, as I completely felt it odd that she was not teaching her child Arabic or some other language. I felt the urge to tell her how important it was for the child to be bilingual and that there will be plenty of opportunities for that child to learn English. I myself came to Australia when I was 10 years old, and I feel glad to be fluent in 2 languages as it affords me 2 identities and opens ups another dimension to my life.

    • Thank you, Thao! I appreciate your passion for bilingualism – and am an advocate for bilingual child rearing myself – but I also think you did well not to say anything. Parenting is difficult enough without strangers interfering …

    • XM says:

      Hi Thao, thanks for the sharing. I have the same feeling that it is a pity not to inherit our first language to our next generation. If I have a chance to encounter this situation, I would tell her the benefits of being bilingual in terms of learning and scaffolding. As a parent, the lady might have some worries over first language influence. But to my personal experience, children do not mix up with languages as easily as we thought. It depends how we teach. I would speak only one language at a time, but not mixing both languages in a sentence or even an idea to my children. That’s how I perceive a better way to develop their bilingual mind.

  • Dass says:

    After reading this text, i started thinking of my family and how we speak English today. We live in Punjab so punjabi is our mother tongue. It was very hard for my family to speak and understand the english language. After they had myself they started speaking and understanding few words of the english language. As the time passes day by day my family became expert in speaking and understanding english language. Thankfully i and my brother speak fluently punjabi and english language. However, the next generation kids have concern. For example, in my village other families and children hardly speak and understand english because they are grown up in a family where both parents fluently speak punjabi and they are not able to understand english. Therefore, the children understand and hear more punjabi than english as they are studying in punjabi medium school.

  • Jhonny says:

    This incredible display of endurance from Hani women brought to my mind a woman who became a linguist and an ambassador of Colombian Amazon Indigenous Communities:
    Anastasia Candre Yamacurí was a pioneer, an advocate of language, culture, research, and activism through arts. She grew up in La Chorrera, in the middle of the jungle. She nourished herself with the cosmovision of Uitotos, Ocainas, Muinanes, Boras, and Andokes; listening to her grandparents’ memories about the rubber genocide, when thousands of fellow indigenous were tortured or killed during the Peruvian Amazon Company era.

    Due to health conditions, Anastasia moved to Leticia. There, she worked as a cleaner and attended to adults’ school, then she obtained her bachelor’s degree in linguistics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Her resilience and knowledge of Portuguese, Spanish, and Uitoto allowed Anastasia to work as a teacher, researcher, and poet.
    Anastasia represented indigenous identity and traditions in a wide range of arts and academy scenarios, her work constitutes an indelible footprint of the Amazon’s vastness.

    In memoriam of Anastasia Candre Yamacurí (La Chorrera 1962 – Leticia 2014)
    https://waterandpeace.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/anastasia-candre-yamacuri-in-memoriam-1962-2014/

  • Em says:

    Thank you for sharing this interesting story and showing the matters of equality.
    I am not an expert in this as we did not learn about this at school, but I would like to tell you about Sámi people. They are the only indigenous people in Europe and most of Finnish Sámi people live in the Northern Finland. They speak Inari Sámi, which is in danger of disappearing, and do fishing, hunting and reindeer keeping for living.
    I follow an influencer in Instagram, who shares her life as a young Sámi mother, living in Southern Finland and still raising her child with Sámi values including speaking Inari Sámi to the child, which she sees as an important matter considering the child’s future identity. She found her belonging to Sámi later in life even if her father is speaking the language and living by the values. The influencer has shared some mean comments she got after sharing her Sámi identity building in a small Sámi speaking village in Norway in television, which almost got her to quit showing who she is. It is very sad that even in 2022 you cannot publicly show your identity as an ethnic minority living outside their area, without hate speech.

  • 烏 (からす) says:

    I applaud the efforts of the women in this article to bring attention to their local language. By some estimates, 90% of the world’s 7000 currently spoken languages will have died out by 2050.

    I am reminded of Beijing’s continued campaign to entrench Putonghua as the “true” Chinese language. In APPL8120, we discussed language ideologies, such as unification. China has declared Putonghua the only permissible medium of instruction in schools and actively promotes its use, exemplified in such slogans as “Speak Putonghua Together, Join Hands in Prosperity”, coined in 2020:

    https://inews.gtimg.com/newsapp_bt/0/12467421288/1000

    But unificationist ideologies are not to be found only in Asia. Another prime example sits squarely in Western Europe: France. As recently as 150 years ago, Occitan was the mother tongue of ~40% of France’s population. Paris, however, undertook an aggressive campaign to eradicate its regional and minority languages, known as La Vergonha. Proficiency in Occitan is now rare, and most surviving speakers are elderly, even in the regions in which it was traditionally spoken:

    https://i.imgur.com/OGAQjcZ.jpg

    France’s refusal to this day to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a monument to enduring attitudes of nationalism and linguistic imperialism.

    • Thank you for your comment! I’m not sure that the fate of the 3 women would be any different if there was no Putonghua promotion. In fact, the emancipation of the younger generation is via education and Putonghua is central to their education … as so often in life, it’s complicated…

  • rebma says:

    Thank you for the insightful article about language in contact and identity. I agree that language is a tool to express our identities, and marginalized population in the society should be given equal opportunity to overcome language boundaries and make their voices being heard in the wider world.

    The empowering stories of Hani minority women remind me of the Ainu indigenous population in Japan. The Ainu people, indigenous population of Hokkaido (Northern Japan), lost their lands, languages, and cultures caused by Japanese colonization and later forced assimilation policy by the Japanese government during the 20th century. Although the Japanese government acknowledged Ainu people as an Indigenous population in Japan, and recognized their distinct language and culture, the Ainu language is endangered due to the small number of speakers nowadays. In 1997, Ainu Pen Club published the Ainu Times, a magazine in Ainu language written with Japanese scripts katakana (カタカナ) and romanizations (romaji) to retain their languages, cultures and traditions. More recently, young generations of Ainu minority such as Maya created a YouTube Channels (しとちゃんねる) to publish engaging videos about Ainu food, languages and traditions that express their unique identity and foster cultural diversity in Japan. Here is the link to her amazing channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsvS5QjLwvlVhWpK48L57Cg

  • BJYX_sengarun says:

    My country, Vietnam, has a wide range of languages as there are 54 ethnic groups and each group has its own language. However, the Kinh language is not only spoken around the country but is also recognized as the official language known as Vietnamese. Besides, according to OpenDevelopment Vietnam, there are 8 groups of languages among Vietnamese ethnic groups. In this day and age, when tourism in mountainous areas is swiftly developed, many ethnic minority people are learning to speak Vietnamese. When my friend traveled to Lao Cai, she was surprised by how fluent ethnic minority people there spoke Vietnamese and how fast they switched from speaking Vietnamese to speaking Mong Language.
    Another intriguing about language and identity is that Vietnamese itself also has different dialects which are Central, Southern, and Northern Vietnamese. I have two friends coming from Nghe An province in Central Vietnam and they speak Central dialect with each other. However, when they talk with me or other friends from Northern Vietnam, they switch to the Northern dialect. It is so exciting to see how flexible they are when using different dialects in a conversation.
    It’s interesting to know that people are integrating by learning the official language and still keeping their language alive.

    Reference: Ethnic minorities and indigenous people. Open Development Vietnam. (2019, March 30). Retrieved August 16, 2022, from https://vietnam.opendevelopmentmekong.net/topics/ethnic-minorities-and-indigenous-people/

  • Quynh says:

    Talking about language and identity, I want to share with you my concern about preserving the purity of my first language – Vietnamese in the globalisation era.

    Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam, used by about 87% of the population as their mother tongue. The language is also widely used in many countries such as Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Australia and the Czech Republic. With the integration of the Internet and foreign cultures into the country, the Vietnamese language has experienced constant changes, mostly made by young people. However, this change might not be healthy as people expected it to be.
    Young Vietnamese insert numerous English words during their conversations and often associate using these foreign words with “being cool, trendy and prestigious”. Moreover, code-switching and code-mixing can be found nearly everywhere in mass media, newspapers, music and others. More than for the reasons of convenience, or a solution to improve English, they abuse this practice to the point of considering it to be a norm, in turn undermining the purity of their mother tongue. The prevalence of this is the signal that many Viet lexical terms will be replaced or fall for disuse at any time soon.

  • Haein says:

    Joseonjok, often known as Korean Chinese, are an ethnic minority in China. They are East Asian ethnic groups who inhabit the Korean Peninsula and surrounding Manchuria and Primotsky Krai, share a shared cultural sphere, and speak the Josoen language. They emigrated to China during the Japanese colonial era and the Korean War, and later, with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the name Joseonjok became official. For this reason, they have a national identity as Chinese and a cultural identity as Korean people, that is, a dual identity. The Joseonjok who migrated from Korea formed a Korean Chinese community by living in a certain area before the treaty of amity between Korea and China, and they kept the Joseon language as their mother tongue. However, after the establishment of a treaty of amity between Korea and China, the Joseonjok society was rapidly dismantled due to the movement to Primorsky in China and the movement to Korea, and the Josoen language was rapidly declining. Many Josoenjok still use their language in Korea and China. However, in the Chinese Joseonjok society, there is a higher rate of using Chinese instead of the Joseon language in the younger generation. For this reason, i guess Chinese might replace the Joseon language in Chinese Joseonjok over time.

  • Thanks, Kat! Two years ago one of my students did a project on the use of minority languages in public health communication in the early phase of the pandemic, and they found that Vietnam was really good at disseminating information not only in Vietnamese but also minority languages, including Vietnamese Sign Language

  • sinem emre says:

    After reading this great text, it got me thinking of my family and myself and how we speak Turkish today.
    My parents migrated from Turkiye at very young ages. They had little, almost no English. After they had myself and my sisters, they started to adapt to the English language as they had to teach us both languages. However, at home only Turkish was spoken and hardly any English as they themselves started to learn the English language.
    Thankfully, my sisters and I speak fluent Turkish and English. However, the next generation kids have been a concern. For example, my cousins children hardly speak and understand Turkish because they are grown into a family where both parents already speak fluent English. Therefore, the children understand and hear more English than Turkish.
    For my community and myself, this causes us a great worry and concern as our background and our culture is slowly becoming unrecognized by our next generation children. The children would have an idea of their culture, however refuse to understand or speak it because of the idea of “we live in Australia and speak English everywhere”. I disagree with this as understanding any other language is such gift and intelligence to have. Especially a great gift in order to not lose your ancestral heritage and background.

  • Bob26_5 says:

    Thank you for such an interesting read. Vietnam is a multi-ethnic country, with 54 ethnic groups scattered all over the country. The Kinh people are the majority, making up over 85% of the entire population, the remaining ethnic groups make up 15% of the population and concentrated mostly in rural and mountainous areas of the country. My family and I are Kinh and we live in Saigon, one of the largest population centers in Vietnam, most of the people I know are also Kinh, so my experience with linguistics and ethnic minorities is somewhat limited. However, this topic reminds me of an old friend of mine in middle school. He and his family are Hmong, a group of people mostly concentrated in the north of Vietnam, though his family had moved to Saigon in the late 1990s.

    In a 2015 survey of ethnic groups in Vietnam (https://vietnam.opendevelopmentmekong.net/topics/ethnic-minorities-and-indigenous-people/), due to the nature of their lands, most ethnic minorities have limited (or lacking entirely) access to basic amenities and education, especially those who live in rough terrains. Because of this, compared to the Kinh, ethnic minorities have a lower literacy rate and therefore lower income and quality of life. However, ethnic minorities in urban areas tend to be more affluent than their rural counterparts. What I remember most about my friend was his story of how his parents had had to move to the south, worked odd jobs in the morning, take night classes to learn the standard language so that they could secure a better future for him and his sisters. By the time my friend was born, his family have not been visited their hometown in over a decade. My friend also told me that he did not know how to speak the Hmong language; and at home, his family also speaks standard Vietnamese.

  • Miumiu says:

    I believe that “the language spoken by somebody and his or her identity as a speaker of this language are inseparable” (Tabouret-Keller, 2017). Languages help to shape one’s identity and personality. This is most evident in Australia’s immigrant and migrant communities. They try to incorporate themselves into the new, more dominant culture but also remember to preserve the language and identity. This creates cultural and language diversity within the country. Studying abroad is a once-of-a-life-time opportunity providing me with new lenses through which I can see the intersection of different cultures in Australia.
    The story of the Hani people reminds me of the story of Aboriginal and Torres Islanders. They have more than 250 groups of languages spreading across the nation. Their languages, cultures, and values are embraced by the government. I also find it interesting that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art – a unique form of language – is among the oldest forms of art in the world. It is used to continue telling stories and passing them down from one generation to the next.
    In summary, I believe all of our lives, regardless of our background or culture, are profoundly influenced by the language we speak. Therefore, becoming more aware of our culture and identity is essential.

    Reference:
    Tabouret-Keller, A. (2017). Language and identity. The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, 315–326. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405166256.ch19

  • SunKyung says:

    I was surprised that some women from minority ethnic have been still suffering from unendurable situation! Moreover, the lyric of the song was so much understandable
    how much the women’s life including Fang belonged to ethnic minority was so harsh both physically and mentally.

    I thought the minority women’s suffering ended because ethnic problem was not so severe than before and they also socialized in our societies. The good thing though was they made their situation positively and some of them showed their talent to the world! That is very crucial I think.

    I could catch how much they frustrated with their life that they, themselves couldn’t break out however, finally they achieved something valuable in their lives on their own desire and eagerness for joining one of the world members. That was terrific and the most touchable to me.

    • Thank you, SunKyung! I also find all these 3 Hani women from different generations so relatable. Music and stories allow us to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

  • Kat says:

    It is wonderful to see the widespread promotion of ethnic minority languages in China. Mixian’s use of language in her music is a smart way to introduce people to her native language.

    There are approximately 53 ethnic minorities in Vietnam, resulting in a large number of ethnic languages. However, only these ethnic groups use and preserve their native languages. When communicating amongst ethnic groups, Vietnamese is favoured. Due to its lack of economic capital, the languages of ethnic minorities are maintained mainly within the ethnic minority community. Vietnamese is the predominant language used in educational settings, so kids must learn Vietnamese before attending school. Even if some people do not go to classes, they still need to learn Vietnamese in order to engage in commerce or tourism. Unfortunately, in Vietnam, there have not been many projects or efforts to promote ethnic minority languages.

  • Dung says:

    In Vietnam, there are 54 ethnic groups recognized by the Vietnamese government. Every ethnic group has its own language, customs, and subculture. Vietnamese Kinh people account for just over 85.32% of the population of Vietnam in the 2019 census and are officially known as Kinh people to distinguish them from the other minority groups. I and my family are Kinh people. I was born and grew up in a mountainous area of Vietnam, Lam Dong Province. It was originally the living area of Koho which is an ethnic group in Vietnam. Because of the cool weather, Kinh people have moved to this region to settle down since 1975. Koho people speak Koho language, a southern Bahnaric branch of Mon-Khmer language. This language has both spoken and written forms and it is still widely used in Koho people’s daily life. This group is aware that protecting their own language means protecting their identity. Therefore, previous Koho generations often compose short songs to remind future ones not to forget their identity and language. These songs are often sung at big festivals of Koho people. This ethnic minority’s folk religion worships a pantheon of gods, including Yang N’Du, the Supreme God, forest god, water god, fire god… The majority of the Koho people now identify as Christian because it was the first religion introduced to Koho people in the 16th century by French missionaries. According to some research, there are even some French words existing in Koho language. It is the result of language and culture contact in the 1600s between Koho people and French missionaries. For example, Koho people also call baguette with a nearly similar sound /bà-ghét/. The local government in Lam Dong Province has special classes for Kinh people to learn Koho language and discover the customs and subculture of the indigenous group of this mountainous area.

    • Thank you, Dung, for sharing! I’m curious whether you and your family learned Koho? Or generally how frequent/rare it is for Kinh people to learn Koho?

      • Dung says:

        When I was in Grade 9, I attended a Koho language class with some of my friends because we were curious about this language. To be honest, it was amazing because I was not only taught Koho l but also this ethnic group’s customs. Because I learned Koho for a very short time (two months), I could only have some very simple conversations in this language. However, it was quite fun because I could sometimes make bargains in their language at local markets. It is rare for Kinh people to learn Koho, just some who are interested in it or government officers like my father.

  • Lily says:

    Thanks for sharing this beautiful story. It’s really heart touching and provide an important lesson about maintaining mother language and being able to be multilingual at present time to be able to survive anywhere.
    I come from the Middle East specifically from Lebanon. In my country it’s mandatory to learn at school Arabic and either English or French. I personally learned French because when I was at school French was more important than English and because Lebanon was delegated by France from 1920 till 1943 French was very popular and important language to learn. To be honest I never spoke French and when I came to Australia I forgot the language because I concentrated on learning and improving my English. We never speak English at home and that is because my parents speak poor English and we have set a rule that only Arabic is to be used at home. Sadly the new generation now prefer and find it easy to speak only English. For example my nieces and nephews struggle to improve and maintain their Arabic language, they only use English to communicate and we try to convince them to use Arabic for the sake of grandparents so they can understand them but I believe our new generation is loosing our mother tongue language especially in Australia. Even though we try to teach them Arabic at school but still we are not succeeding. I find people now using code-switching and language borrowing a lot trying to find a way to keep reminding our new generation of their mother language, I guess this way helps a bit but still our children are loosing their second language, which is a disadvantage for them. I always believed being multilingual is great advantage for me but I never let one language take over the other.

    • Thanks, Lily! Sadly, your nephews and nieces are not unusual – language shift to English by the 3rd generation is typical of most migrant groups in Australia. As you say, it’s a loss for the children …

  • Jane says:

    It was so delightful to go through the writing and knowing about Chinese’s ethnic minorities , there struggle to connect with world and adjusting in large community cause of their monolingualism. I can surely connect myself and the community to the Hani people of china as I belong to minor community of Nepal(Newar community), and our native language is Newari, it reminds me the people of my ethic community their struggle of not knowing the national language Nepali and facing humiliation of not being able to speak it. Due to being Monolingual, people had to struggle to get jobs as there was not trend of sending children to school which was major reason of not having communicative competence of lingua franca Nepali .
    Coming to my generation people have realized about the importance contact language to survive in their own community so, started sending their children to school and learn not only Nepali but English there. In my personal experience when I was a child, being a multilingual child and serving is quite difficult, I was raised by teaching my native language but we had to communicate with teachers and friends who belong to different communities in Nepali and was quite difficult for us, and sometime we get bullied for mispronunciation some of the words as Newari and Nepali have different language families and knowledge of one language interfere another one. differently condition has been change but sometimes being multilingual child kind of curse until u realized how interesting is it to have more knowledge about multiple languages.

    • Thank you, Jane, for this first-hand account of the struggles of Newari children. Being bullied is such a common experience of minority kids. Can you tell us more about the proportion of Newari speakers in Nepal, your city, your school?

  • Justin says:

    It appears that multilingualism can help promote and preserve minority languages, as some speakers, with better education, can develop a greater sense of identity, thus avoiding being marginalised.

    In another context, I’m currently staying with a three-generation Vietnamese-origin family in Sydney, which allows me to see how acculturation differs among its members. The grandparents migrated to Australia few decades ago, followed by their son years later, who then had two children born in the territory. Three generations speak English and Vietnamese with different proficiency levels. The grandparents hardly speak the former but a few common words and phrases, while their children can use it well in daily communication. The main language spoken at home is Vietnamese, and they seem to relate more to this national, cultural, and linguistic identity.

    What’s interesting is in the grandchildren, who understand and manage to converse with their parents and grandparents in Vietnamese, occasionally code-switching, yet talk to each other and their peers solely in English. Their identity can be defined as Vietnamese Australian, but it’s unknown in the future how proficient in Vietnamese they’ll become, and to what extent this origin matters in how they define their identity.

    • Thanks, Justin! Sounds like a typical pattern of immigrant bilingualism across generations: with the 1st and 1.5 generation dominant in Vietnamese, and the 2nd/3rd (Australia-born) generation dominant in English – does that sound right?

      • Justin says:

        That sounds like the right pattern. Also I’m curious about whether this bilingualism will evolve or diminish among this third generation in future, when contact with previous generations becomes less frequent.

    • Em says:

      Wow! That must have been so interesting surrounding to be a part of and learn from!

  • Brownie says:

    Thank Ingrid for your helpful article!

    I have a friend who is Stieng which is an ethnic group in Southeast region of Vietnam. His great grandparents and grandparents lived in the period when Vietnam was colonised by France and America respectively. They lived in the society in which French and American were dwelling in their local areas so they can speak French and English to communicate with foreigners and they also used Vietnamese and Stieng Bu Deh which is a dialect of Stieng language in communication with their neighbours and families. When the war was over, the need of using French and English was not as necessary as it had been, as a result, the next generations just use Vietnamese and Stieng Bu Deh to communicate to each other. Across several generations, although their language has seemed to be a substrate language, their descendants still inherit language heritage. I belive that Stieng people will keep a continue flow of Stieng speakers through the following generations.

  • Ying says:

    As a Cantonese, Cantonese is an important part of Cantonese culture. But some time ago, Douyin even banned Cantonese, and I can’t help but feel sad. Being in a Cantonese-speaking area, I am deeply saddened by the decline of Cantonese-speaking culture. From elementary school to high school, in addition to teachers speaking Mandarin in class, we live in a fixed Cantonese area for daily communication (the mobility of people from elementary school to high school is not strong), so our daily communication with classmates is basically Cantonese, rarely Mandarin.

    Later, when I went abroad to the university, my friends came from all over China, so I basically used Mandarin to communicate in the university. I usually go home once a year from college. Whenever I come home, when I take the elevator to meet my neighbors or chat with my parents, I am surprised to find that many Cantonese expressions suddenly fail. Similarly, this aroused my surprise. When I use a language for a long time, it will form a kind of inertia. I have been speaking Cantonese since I was a child, but for a moment, the form that I want to express in my mind is actually Mandarin.

    As a kind of culture, language needs to be carefully maintained. Behind every language, there is a group’s way of thinking and a unique regional culture. However, this diversity gradually disappears with economic and social exchanges. Perhaps we can We can resist the fusion of cultures, but we cannot resist the exchanges produced by the economy and society.

  • Durian says:

    From reading this text, all I had in my mind was my grandfather who had passed away last year. From his firm decision, he sacrificed many things and my family was able to migrate to Australia. I want to add on Ella’s comment about how ‘many Korean families migrated to the US for children’s education’. I can relate to this personally as my grandparents migrated to Australia in 1980s not just for education but for his family to have a better ‘life’. However, to stop losing and forgetting Korean, I was always told to speak Korean at home and never lose our culture.
    Thanks to my grandparents, and my parents ofcourse, I am able to speak fluently in Korean which I cannot thank enough. I have realised many bilingual children do not want to speak their native language but English only. Today, parents find it crucial for their children to learn English only which eventually deteriorates their native language. If I have a child, I know I will be speaking in Korean and assist my kid not to forget their root language. Also, I agree with Ella about how one should never stop using the language to continue one’s identity. This can be debatable, but I personally think one should never lose their root from living in a different country or from learning a different language.
    However, I do feel guilty at times, especially watching the World Cup, or other sports competitions- I go for South Korea. I am unsure whether I am classified as Australian (for being born here), or Korean (appearance-wise). No matter what it is, I am happy for who I am and even in high school, my friends referred to me as a ‘banana’ as I am an Asian but have a western style of thinking, a white-washed.

    • Thank you, Durian, for sharing your story and struggles! Really well done by your (grand)-parents to maintain Korean into the 3rd generation! Another way of looking at the World Cup dilemma is that you can celebrate twice, depending on who wins 😉

  • Japanda says:

    Thank you for sharing the interesting article with us. The story of Hani reminds me of the Ainu people, who are the indigenous people in Hokkaido, Japan. The Ainu have had a great influence on present Japanese culture and language. For example, many place names in Hokkaido have their origin in the Ainu language, and Chinese characters were added later according to the sounds of place names. Therefore, they sound quite unique to most Japanese people.

    Thanks to the efforts of past people and laws, the Ainu people and their cultures are currently widely accepted, but they were discriminated because of their differences from Japanese people for a long time. In the 19th century, they were forced to change their names and learn subjects in Japanese so that they can be like Japanese people. In addition, they were called “旧土人” (Kyuudo Jin, aborigine), which implies discrimination against the Ainu.

    Even though Japanese people learn this history in school, we rarely care about this in our daily lives because there are only around 16,000 Ainu people in Hokkaido, and we seldom communicate with them. Therefore, we do not think of it as our own issue. In my opinion, Japanese people can learn a lot of things from the story of Hani because people could develop their understanding of the Hani language and identity of the Hani through the song “My Hani Baby”. I have realized that the key to facilitating more understanding of the Ainu people and their identity among Japanese people might be exposure to their language and culture with pop culture like music, in addition to learning it at school.

    • Thanks, Japanda! For those of us who are not such much into pop music, the article has some really good ideas about how to support minority languages and speakers through our academic endeavors, too 🙂

  • Emma says:

    Hi Ingrid, after reading your inspiring article about Hani, I immediately think of the story of children from minority ethnic groups in my country – Vietnam. There are more than 50 ethnic groups within Vietnam’s territory, and Hmong is one of the prominent minority groups. Their literacy is considered relatively low, but if you have a chance to visit Sapa (one of the renowned tourist attractions of Vietnam), you will be surprised by the fluency in English of the Hmong children there. I believe that one of the main reasons for this is that they have a chance to interact with tourists from all over the world, which coincidently creates a highly naturalistic environment for them to learn English.

    However, compared to students who learn English in the big city, the grammar aspect of these children is rarely correct. That was when I realized that social status greatly affects the relationship between language and identity. While students from high social levels receive a formal education, which enables them to use English properly, children from minority ethnic groups usually have grammar problems when communicating in English.

  • Milla says:

    Language and identity are closely related since language offers a pathway to culture. In families that have lived for decades in countries whose culture and language differ from the ones in their origin, the native language may no longer be used by the younger generations. Their linguistic identity may be very different from their parents’ one.

    I wrote my Master’s thesis about the narrative skills of multilingual children with and without DLD (developmental language disorder). While doing research on the topic, I found some interesting articles.

    Before, it was thought that multilingual children were at greater risk of being diagnosed with DLD, and in clinical decision-making, it was not supported to use multiple languages with the child. This was due to a hypothesis, that doing so would delay their language development even more. However, in the light of more recent evidence, this hypothesis is not supported. Isolating children from their native language environment could lead to restrictions on the child’s ability to communicate with their family and relatives. And of course, the child could not become integrated into their own linguistic or cultural groups, and they lost a crucial part of their identity.

  • Mandu says:

    Ethnic minority groups are an interesting topic in many ways. Not like China, Korea is not ethnically diverse. But we have our own unique history as well: North Korea. North Korean defectors are treated as a minority in the South. I’d like to talk about the Korean language between North and South.
    Since the civil war, we have been apart for over 70 years by now. The language has diverged due to the length of the separation. Also, the attitude that each government has toward the outer world has contributed to the gap between the two languages.
    We are basically sharing the same language. They are not that different in sentence structure or grammar. But when it comes to vocabulary, they differ in many ways. First, the south has borrowed many English words and used them as they are while the north has adopted words from Russia or stuck to using pure Korean. And the difference in political systems makes the languages apart as well. For example, we call a friend Chingu (Which means a friend) while North people call them Dongmu (Which means a comrade in Korea).
    The language difference will pose a greater challenge to the two Koreas over time. We can predict easily just by seeing how much North Korean defectors are struggling to adapt to South Korea due to language issues.

    • Thank you, Mandu! The plight of North Korean defectors in South Korea demonstrates clearly that language differences are usually only part of the picture, and inclusion and exclusion are much more complex.

  • Ziadah Ziad says:

    Li, this is such a heart-warming story. It is started with a folksong “Haba” picturing the struggle of Hani women in the first generation, then the description of a modern bilingual pop song “My Hani Baby” featuring Hani Language and English words in the second one, and it is beautifully ended with how Hani female scholar contributes to preserving Hani language. This story is a grand triumph for the Hani people, an example to show that being a minority is special (an asset), and definitely an inspiring story, especially for me, as a woman who speaks one of the endangered languages in the world.

    Hani women’s struggle and movement remind me of what feminism really is. As Nawal El-Saadawi says, “Feminism is historical, it is everywhere, it is in every country, women were rebelling in all religions, in India, in Egypt, under Hindus, under Judaism, under Christianity or Islam, women are fighting for their rights, so we call ourselves historical, feminism is not a western invention, feminism was not invented by American women as many people think, no, feminism is embedded in the struggle of women all over the world.” She also added that “feminism is not a something that girls or women have to study, they become a feminist without learning about feminism.”

    This article also makes me think that the role of women in passing down and nurturing a language is central (let me just claim it for my own sex 😊) since often mothers are the first speaker whom we (humans) acquire and learn a language from. Our first language is even called a mother tongue.

    • Thanks, Ziadah, for making this important connection to feminism and how it is a global struggle! I’m curious what your mother tongue is 🙂

      • Ziadah Ziad says:

        I speak Sasak, spoken by people in Lombok. Peter. K. Austin says that my language is endangered. Have you been to Lombok? Do you know any words in Sasak? I notice in the class, you pronounce Sasak and Lombok exactly like how Lombok people do.

        • You are flattering me 🙂 … I’ve never been to Lombok but learned about Sasak from one of my former students, Kamaludin Yusra, who is now a professor at Universitas Mataram. Together with colleagues he has just published an article in Multilingua, which you might find interesting:
          Yusra, Kamaludin, Lestari, Yuni Budi, & Juwaeriah, Yulia. (2022). Commodification of English and English-like structures in shop names in Lombok Island, Indonesia. Multilingua. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2021-0151

  • Bakuteh says:

    I’m really impressed by these beautiful voices in three languages. It reminds me that blending a few languages in pop songs also happens in my city – Hong Kong, which somehow reflects the identity of us who live together.

    Apart from singing, mixed language (and even code-switching) also occurs in this bilingual city, especially when people text each other on the phone. Many would agree that typing English is more time efficient than typing Cantonese characters which have too many strokes to hurdle. But we would rather switch back to Cantonese when it is more authentic or accurate to describe a situation.

    When I listen to “Singlish” (Singaporean creole) from Singaporeans, I feel the uniqueness of this identity which they should be proud of. Similar to Hongkongers, the language they use is cultural and regional specific that nowhere else can replace. Such a feeling was even stronger when I got to meet some Cantonese diasporas. Through our conversations, my friends may not understand the vocabulary which originated in my city, so I have to explain to them in English. Sometimes, I pretend to be Cantonese from another country by using different wording and intonation and manage to cheat my new friends!

  • Abed says:

    Very interesting story! I liked how music and songs have helped the minority groups to be recognized and to blend in with society and promote themselves and their culture to the whole world. I can relate to a similar cultural heritage music that have been abandoned a long time ago, but strangely enough have been revived by the new generation, authentic materials seeking people.
    For instance the art “Dah’ha” dance فن الدحة in the northern part of Saudi Arabia which was practiced in ancient times before the wars to stir up enthusiasm among the members of the tribe, and at the end of the battles in ancient times to celebrate the victory and to describe the battle and the tournaments, but now it is practiced on occasions such as weddings, holidays and other celebrations.
    The theme in the song Hani (honey) baby is universal and it was beautifully embodied by Mixian who came from a culture that consider marrying of love is forbidden. It doesn’t surprise me as a fact that the main theme of the song is about love, Isn’t that what unit all of us? 🙂

  • Yoonie says:

    One of the minor ethnic groups, “Han Jok(Korean Group)” came from Korea. Under Japanese invasion to Korea, many Koreans were forced to move to Russia and China. They could not come back home since Korean war occured right after the liberation. Until today, they could keep their way of speaking and living. However, as China is pushing hard for their new ideology, “One China”, they cannot use their language anymore. Every school in those regions of minority groups should now teach only in Chinese. Lanuage is indeed a core part of one’s identity, so I think this new policy would be a starting point to take away diversity and independence jurisdiction.

    • Thank you, Yoonie! Koreans in China have long been described as a model minority with a dual identity (as ethnic Koreans and Chinese nationals) and high levels of educational achievement (Kang, 2008; Lee, 1986). Are you suggesting this has changed in recent years?
      With regard to Koreans in the former Soviet Union, I noticed that there was a lot of media attention to Korean Ukrainians in the early phase of the war (e.g., this ABC report) – were Korean Ukrainians also a bit topic in the Korean media?
      References
      Kang, Jin Woong. (2008). The Dual National Identity of the Korean Minority in China: The Politics of Nation and Race and the Imagination of Ethnicity. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 8(1), 101-119. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-9469.2008.00005.x
      Lee, Chae-jin. (1986). China’s Korean Minority: The Politics of Ethnic Education. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429035630

      • Yoonie says:

        Dear Ingrid, thank you for sharing your insight.
        I saw articles on Korean second generation both in Russia and China are struggling due to the recent change in the government policy. They cannot use Korean language at at school. In China, it was allowed to take a university entrance exam in Korean instead of China, but it is now banned. This would eventually mean that they are less likely to achieve a higher social status. This idea really got me worried when I saw the news.

  • Ella says:

    I’m really impressed by the story of the Hani!
    The folksong part reminds me of the life of my grandmother. She used to sing a song with a very strong dialect of the region she lived. And the song contains the feeling of “한(han)” in Korean, which features sorrow and lament, just as the Hani’s folksong.

    I do not have any experience where encountering ethnic minorities, but language and identity are always interesting fields for me. When I was in middle school, so it was around early 2000, and many Korean families migrated to the United States mainly to make their children receive a better education. There were quite a few families with children at ages like 3-4 (very young..). And they got their entire education in the U.S, enabling them to speak English as native speakers, but they end up losing Korean, which should be their mother tongue. Whether it’s okay to lose Korean and gain English ability or not was debatable. However, one should not forget their roots wherever in the world they end up living, and in this sense, I believe that language is the way to protect and prove one’s root – the identity.

    • Thank you, Ella, both for sharing the story of your grandmother, and your reflections on Korean migrant families. Would you agree that Koreans in the US are a minority group facing similar pressures to assimilate and give up their language as the Hani in China?

      • Ella says:

        Thank you for your comment, Ingrid! And sorry for the late reply.. I went on a holiday with my family on the weekend..

        Well, in the past when the Koreans just started to migrate to the US, I assume they were like the Hani. They probably did not have any choice but put English over Korean as their main language, I mean.. to survive.
        However, now more than 1.9 million Koreans living in the US and the community is pretty big. I believe that Koreans who are living in the US (and in other countries around the world) do not give up Korean. Rather they make a lot of effort to protect their identities within the community and learn English at the same time assimilate into new cultures.

  • Ste says:

    Hi Ingrid, thanks for sharing the inspiring article. The stories of the three women prompt me to think of the language and identity we have across generations in my hometown.

    My maternal and paternal grandmothers were both Cantonese and were born in a remote area in Guangzhou. My paternal grandmother only spoke Cantonese while my maternal grandmother spoke Cantonese and Hakka dialect. In the far old days, both my grandmothers’ marriages were decided by their paternal parents, and they were also somehow “half-persuaded-half-forced” to marry my grandfathers (also Cantonese). Contrary to the author’s aunt, my grandmothers were much luckier and had happier lives, but they still did not receive formal education and could barely be literate. Reflecting on my experience as a child and later as a grown-up companioning them, both my grandmothers were a bit xenophobic, showing dislike or prejudice towards people speaking Putonghua or other Chinese dialects unknown to them. This might partially be owing to the situation back in the 70s when the reform and opening-up policy was just carried out. From that period onwards, a huge number of people, who were not speaking Cantonese but Putonghua and other dialects, were pouring into Guangdong to work or do business, and thus brought some cultures and customs “deemed” to be incompatible with the Cantonese region, which might be a huge shock to the locals. Both my grandmothers had a relatively bad impression on people who did not speak their language and dialect.

    Great changes have taken place in my parents’ generation and my generation. My parents have received formal education. Marriage is totally up to their own choice and willingness. However, when they were in their mature age, they still held the view that one should be very cautious about marrying someone not speaking Cantonese. Later, compulsory education was carried out a few couples of years before I was born. I am much more inclusive than the previous generations and always open to different cultures and ideologies. I was raised in a Cantonese family and was taught in a Mandarin schooling environment, and I now consider myself as a Cantonese member of the big Chinese family.

    However, things have changed a little bit in the next generation. For example, my nephews and nieces, who are now between 6-12 years old, speak less Cantonese than I do regularly. They tend to speak Putonghua rather than Cantonese (even at home to their parents). What’s more interesting, their Cantonese sometimes sound like Putonghua style. For example, in Cantonese for a vase I would say “Hua Zun 花樽” but they adopt the Putonghua phrase and say “Hua Ping 花瓶”; and for boiling water, I would say “Gun Shui 滚水” but they just say “Kai Shui开水”. When I ask my nephews and nieces what their first language is, most of them answer with “Putonghua”. Is Cantonese changing in the generation of my nephews and nieces? Will Cantonese fade away in Guangzhou in the near future? It would be interesting but a bit worrying for me to observe and witness!

    • Thank you so much, Ste, for this fascinating account! So much change in just 4 generations! Doesn’t it perfectly encapsulate the great acceleration of transformation in the past 50 years?

    • Li Jia says:

      Thank you Ste for sharing your personal observation with us. Truly we’ve seen the shifting multilingual profiles across different generations in one country. Apart from your account of speaking less Cantonese and mixing up with Putonghua from your nephews and nieces, have you noticed the recent valorization of Cantonese among the youth via various social media, like TikTok? That would be an interesting topic to explore on how social media might create a new space for young Cantonese to be who they desire to be.

  • Sharkie says:

    Hi Ingrid,

    To answer your question here I will try to be a bit more specific.

    The family from my mother’s side are European gypsies and she uses Romani language for conversations with my grandparents, but she uses Cantonese for conversations with my father. Interestingly, I was exposed to English during my early childhood. Later on during preschool, that was the time that I started to learn Cantonese. It was because my parents believed that I needed to understand the language in order to survive in my own country. Therefore, Cantonese has replaced English as my dominant language both at home or at school. I wouldn’t say I’m strong in either language but strong enough to survive either in a Cantonese-speaking or English-speaking country. But most people think I am stronger towards the English side.

    • Thank you, Sharkie, for sharing about your heritage! What a fascinating story! I believe it’s quite rare for adults to learn Cantonese well as an additional language – really impressive that your mum did that! And Romani itself is one of the most fascinating stories in language and culture contact.

  • Sharkie says:

    I always find the story of ethnic minorities can be different and fascinating, especially while surviving in a specific country such as China, where the dominant language is Mandarin. When language dominance exists, specific groups of people may need to work extra harder to earn an identity or be recognized by others.

    I was born in a Cantonese speaking country and was raised by a mixed cultural family of Chinese and European gypsy. European gypsies are considered as distinct minorities. Therefore, English was taught as my first language since nobody else would understand the Romani language. Spontaneously, learning Cantonese was also crucial in order to make daily communication or find a job in the future in my country.

    No matter how fluent I am in Cantonese, people would never have guessed that I am a local citizen, since the way I express in Cantonese can always be different from others, such as the Cantonese syntax structure can become an English syntax structure (e.g. 借紙巾比我 – Borrow a tissue to me” becomes “借比我紙巾 – Borrow me a tissue”). This condition gives me a sense that I do not have a specific language identity.

    • Thank you, Sharkie, for sharing your fascinating story! Is English the language your parents use with each other? Is that how it became your stronger language?
      The language practices of bilingual couples and their children have always been of great interest to me and I wrote a book about Bilingual Couples Talk, which you can find in the library (and we’ll hear more about that research later in the semester :-))

    • Li Jia says:

      Thank you Sharkie for sharing your unique stories with us! I believe your multilingual learning experiences will contribute to a better understanding of linguistic diversity and social justice. Expecting to read your work in future:-)

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