February 2019 – Page 3 – Educational Sociolinguistics

How included we feel and how much included we want to be: a newcomer’s perspective

Fangzhe

This morning, I was commuting to my class. There were only two days left before the traditional Chinese New Year, but the joyful atmosphere, which has already been rare even in China these days, was apparently nowhere to be found in a carriage of the subway in a country thousand miles away. Suddenly, a naïve voice from a Chinese boy next to me drew my attention: “妈妈，中国农历新年是在情人节那天吗?”(Mum, is Lunar Chinese New Year on the Valentine’s Day?) His mother did not say anything, and the boy quickly added: “还是你也不清楚呢?” (or…you are not clear either?) , followed by an awkward silence. Thanks to the conversation still, that is one of the few things that remind me that Chinese New Year is around the corner.

Currently, the Chinese population no doubt takes up a considerable proportion of the immigrants in Quebec. However, a lot of us will find ourselves outsiders of this ‘unique’ French-dominant place (Allen, 2006).

Translating Journey Part 1 – Training your brain

Lucía Ringuelet

While lately I have been trying to be more flexible, I have always had a clear tendency towards a “monolithic” type of interaction, or “double monolingualism” (Rymes, 2014, p. 5). My family immigrated from Argentina to Canada when my brother was 15 years old and I 12. From the moment we arrived, both my brother and I refused to speak in a language other than Spanish in our home, with our parents and among ourselves. I believe this can sound odd, as it is usually the parents who adopt that stance, seeking to protect the development of the mother tongue. Instead, my mother wanted to practice French with us, but we refused. Code-switching was almost taboo a for us. We wanted to speak “proper” Spanish. To be honest, I am not sure where this strict distinction came from at such a young age. It was certainly more emotional than rational.

Today, as an adult and from a rational point of view, I can find good reasons for it. In fact, I am happy we did it that way. It allowed my brother and particularly I, being the youngest, to maintain a good mastery of our mother tongue. The avoidance of code-switching to mix French in our Spanish has lent us to practice a wider range of vocabulary in the latter language. When I go back to Argentina or I speak with other Hispanic individuals whose repertoire does not include French or English, I am much more confident in my abilities to express myself solely in Spanish.

Haitian Kreyol Dialect, or a language

Anne

In 1961 Kreyol was recognized as one of Haiti’s official languages along with French. Haitian Kreyol is based on French and other languages such as Spanish and some west African languages. It is often described as a “French Dialect” or as a “broken French.” I have always asked myself if Kreyol was a broken French, why do people who speak French do not fully understand when someone speaks in Kreyol?

In Haiti, only 10% of the population speaks French, and a Haitian who speaks Kreyol is sometimes unable to understand another Haitian speaking French. It is unlikely to see the opposite because in Haiti the colonizing language has been prioritized over the Kreyol. Within Haiti there are three forms of dialect of Kreyol: the northern dialect of Kreyol, spoken in Cap-Haitian, the second-largest city; the Central dialect, spoken mainly in Port-au-Prince, which is the capital of Haiti, and also spoken by the majority of the population, and finally the southern dialect, spoken in “Les Cayes,” another big city located in the south.

Like any other language, Kreyol has its own and distinctive grammar that is different from French. One such example is the use of verbs, we do not have subject verb agreement and there are also no verb tenses. Instead we have markers that precede the verb to indicate the tense. For instance, we use “te” to indicate the past tense, “ap” for progressives, and “pral” for the future

Japanese Loanwords in Modern Chinese

Yidan

Since Kanji (Chinese characters) is an integral part of Japanese writing system, and a fair chunk of its vocabulary came from Chinese in ancient times, people tend to believe that Chinese language is in a dominant position in linguistic exchange between Chinese and Japanese. However, the situation has been changed since modern times. Modern Chinese has borrowed a great number of words from Japanese since the 20^thcentury. According to the work by Wang Binbin on the subject of Japanese-word borrowings into Chinese (1998), 70 percent of the modern Chinese words relating to sociology, humanities and natural science originate from Japanese. Representing new ideas, advanced thoughts and scientific knowledgefrom the west, those “Japan-made” words have been assimilated into Chinese so smoothly and naturally that most Chinese don’t really notice their Japanese origin.

In my case, I’ve had such misunderstanding about Japanese’s impact on modern Chinese language. I have visited Japan many times. When I see vocabularies written in Kanji in Japanese books, newspapers or other places, I can understand almost all of those vocabularies and in the subconscious I believe it’s because they were all from Chinese. I never thought that many of them were actually created by Japanese language and then were imported to China.

Is the sky blue? No, really. Is it?

One of my first days working at a Japanese elementary school, a second grade girl approached me.

“Victoria-sensei! I drew this picture for you! It’s me and my friends outside at recess.”

“Wow, it’s great! So here’s you and here’s your friends, and there’s the playground, but what’s this red circle in the sky?”

“That’s the sun! You’re silly, Victoria-sensei. You don’t even know that that’s the sun!”

While I’m ashamed to say it now, I do have to admit that in that moment, my instinct was to judge that little girl. Drawing the sun as a red ball in the sky seemed ludicrous to me, because there was nothing red about the sun in my opinion, except for occasionally during sunsets. Suns were clearly yellow when up in the sky. After all, that’s how I’d drawn them on my own elementary school artwork, complete with sunglasses and a goofy smile (very realistic).

However, in that moment, I remembered a previous experience learning Japanese on exchange in Kyoto where our instructor had told us that green traffic lights were called “青信号” (‘ao shingo’ – blue signal light). When he said that, we had all looked at each other and giggled to ourselves. What were the Japanese thinking? Green lights were clearly green, not blue. There was just no mistaking the colours, and yet, the word was what it was. Our instructor, in his infinite wisdom, took the chance to humble us.

Will someone please give this child water!!

By Andréanne Langevin

4:45 PM, rushing to pick up my 2-year-old from daycare. I am just in time again, phew! I walk in and my son immediately sees me among the parents crowded at the entrance. He runs and jumps straight into my arms. The best feeling. After a comforting hug, he says, almost in a frenzy: “mul, mul, mul! 물, 물, 물 ” (water, water, water). I then turn to Serge, his caretaker, and ask him to hand me a glass of water. Taeho grabs it from my hands as if he had been stranded in the desert for a week. This happens almost every week. My son had been thirsty and no one could answer his need, no one understood. My heart aches. How long had he been asking for water? One hour, two?

The issue is that my son is not able to decipher between languages yet. At home we speak three: French, Korean and English. When our son speaks at home, we get very creative simple sentences and find it perfectly adorable. However, when he is out and about and interacts with other adults, our baby is constantly frustrated. We tried explaining to him how Grand-Maman speaks French, Hal-mo-ni 할머니 speaks Korean, and his best friend the neighbour only understands English. We have not been very successful thus far. We are hoping it sorts itself out soon, at least for Taeho’s safety and to have his basic needs met.

Language learning is about “stepping out of your comfort zone”…

Yating

It’s already been five months since I came to Montreal last September, and what makes me feel ashamed and frustrated is the fact that having been living in such a French-dominant environment for nearly half a year, I still found little improvement in my French skill.

Being exposed to everyday life with almost everything in French (eg. menus, food labels, road signs, metro stations, daily communications between people etc.), I couldn’t figure out why such a supportive learning environment made little contribution to my French learning. It was until one day, Chen, a friend of mine, told me that, “You can never truly learn a language if you just stay inside your comfort zone”, that I finally realized that in the matter of language learning (either in French or English), I have to push myself to “seek discomfort” before achieving the desirable outcome I have long been expected.

How to talk like cool kids

By Mengting Liu

Urban dictionary has become the most frequently used tool for me recently.

As I becoming to know more and more young people from parties and social medias in Montreal, I find out that they talk in a certain way, in which tons of slangs are used. In order to blend in their group, which is composed of Hip-Hop lovers, party goers and “fashion killers”, etc., I start to learn and imitate the way they talk.

“Ayeee, fam, wassup” is for daily greetings; “I dig” means “I understand”; “on fleek” means “flawless, perfect”; “clean” stands for “good, superb”; “no cap” represents “I’m not lying”; “no shade” equals to “no offence”; “Travis Scott is GOAT! Dat tour was liiiit!” means “Travis Scott is the Greatest Of All Time”…