Do you think it's important to retain your mother tongue?

Question

I am a Chinese young adult living in the U.S. who has preserved the Mandarin language to fluency due to my mother's prodding. I feel like it's a big part of who I am, and it gives me the ability to talk to Chinese on a personal level, as well as expresses my value on this culture that is in my past. I think it's an admirable trait in anyone else who has also taken the initiative to re-learn Chinese as their "mother tongue".

My boyfriend is also Chinese, but is very very Americanized and knows almost no Chinese. As such, he is not able to communicate with my parents (not much English). All his life, his friends and family have told him to learn Chinese, to learn more about his own culture. I have started to want him to consider putting learning Chinese into a part of his life. He is very lazy about it, since it's a very painful language to learn, no instant gratification.

How can I convey to him that it's important (to him and to me)? Is this the wrong thing to do? Thoughts?

Answer 1

My personal opinion is that if he is not interested in learning his native tongue, I would not pressure him. Maybe you can start to use your language to your advantage and help other people. The gratification that you will get from helping others may actually spark the interest in him. However, if he does not become interested in learning it, you have no choice but to let it go. Some people are happy with what they know. If you two do end up getting married and having children, when you teach your children your native tongue, your children may influence him to learn it as they are learning it. Good luck to you.

Answer 2

Though I agree that keeping your mother tongue is very important, I also think that it is important to learn the language of the country you are living in. That being said, it would be nice for your bf to learn chinese, but maybe he doesn't want to. I mean , he might not want to be reminded of his culture, not saying this is true, but it is a highly likely possibility. But the only thing you can do is let him know exactly how you feel about the whole situation. It's going to be up to him whether or not he decides to learn it, but if you push, you might push him away. Also, why don't you speak and write notes in Chinese around him? Especially love notes! That would definetely give him a hankering to want to at least translate the note, which in turn would be teaching him some Chinese. Good luck dear!

Answer 3

I think you're WISE for keeping both languages alive.
I too wish your boyfriend would want to be fluent because it could only benefit him and he could have such a GREAT time communicating with your family and so many others who speak Mandarin.
Thing is.... You CAN'T force him to and you may end up really irritating him by trying to "prod" him to learn. It is definitely a difficult language for an adult to learn and he may be worried that he won't be able to learn, therefore he may say to himself "why try"?

What about simply speaking to him ONLY in Mandarin? It wouldn't take long and he'd start figuring it out because he would hear it so often.

Could both of you arrange your lives to be able to move to China to live and work there for six 6 months? Honestly, that's the easiest way for him to learn and he'll come back to the States fluent. What do you think he would think about that? How committed are you to his learning? Would you commit to that?

If nothing else.... YOU keep the language alive....and enjoy it... speak it often and I'm sure he will pick up many words from hearing them spoken.....

Good Luck

Answer 4

You are very lucky, the emergence of China as a world power has already made the knowledge of Chinese and English languages a valuable asset in the job market. It is an investment that will bring about personal opportunity in the future.

Answer 5

Language is a means of comminication. If u can communicate in any language as far as he can understand that would be the prime cause.

Go a step ahead and ask him to reply the question u ask in Chinese, in English, so little by little he can come back to Chinese.

Answer 6

It's good that it's important to you and you learned the language because you wanted to, but he may not feel the same as you do about learning it. It's not fair to try to push it on him if he doesn't want to. Maybe just teach it to him gradually, if he's willing, but don't cram it down his throat. The easier you make it for him the more receptive he will be.

Answer 7

Yes...my mother did not pass her birth language on to any of us (4)...and to this day we all regret it as part of our heritage and her past. She is now 70 and we moving up the years and we all regret it.
Frequently elderly persons lose the ability to speak a secondary language as they age, how sad if you could not speak with your Mom in the end....

Answer 8

Arabic may be very principal. For me I might like to be trained it so I would then larger recognize my Glorious Quran as an alternative of getting to consistently depend on translations. I handiest talk and understand English but when there may be one language I might wish to be trained it is Arabic seeing that Quran is in Arabic

Answer 9

retaining a language is a wonderful thing to do. especially one that complex. do you know how much money can be gained for mandarin-english speakers? i've heard it's alot. if your bf doesn't want to learn mandarin, stop speaking english and only speak mandarin to him. that'll give him some motivation. :)

Answer 10

Don't worry about it. I'm chinese myself and I can't speak a word of Mandarin or write it for donkey years. Somehow last year, it just came to me that I want too and I'm ready to embrace my roots fully.