Sat 24 Jan 2009
Is it wrong to teach kids BROKEN ENGRISH?
Posted by 馬先生 under Language
I live in Hong Kong and I am seeing an increasing trend of Chinese parents only speaking broken English to their children.
Obviously the parents think English equals Money, so they try to create some dodgy fake English only environment for their kids to help give them some head start or advantage.
Perhaps I’m too extreme, but to me it just falls short of a form of child abuse.
Its actually none of my business, but does anyone else feel sickened by this?
Hong Kong
January 24th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Well to be fair I think the parents are only trying to do what they think is good for the kids… although I agree that if their English is bad, they shouldn’t speak in English to their kids that often.
January 24th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I wouldn’t go as far as to call it child abuse as I think the parents are only trying to help their kids and teach them a language they feel will give their children an advantage in their future working lives. Many parents believe early exposure to a language is the key to mastering it, which is certainly a valid point.
Having said that, I don’t like the idea of parents teaching their kids a language they barely know themselves. This is often leads to the children picking up their parents’ bad habits and may prevent them from learning English properly at school. Native speakers, or at least people with near-native fluency, are the only people who should teach a language. I would prefer to learn, say, Japanese from a Japanese speaker than from an English speaker using a set textbook..
January 24th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I suppose they are only trying to do what they think is best but I don’t think it is very good for the children. They will want to express themselves and won’t be able to do it properly because they have been given only a small and inconsistent subset of English to use. It’s like that bloke who tried to bring his kid up speaking native Klingon. He only spoke Klingon to the poor kid from birth, but the mother spoke English to him. In the end, the child totally rejected Klingon because it wasn’t a fully formed, expressive enough language.
Have a good one,
Jim
February 1st, 2009 at 2:19 am
I kind of think, for this issue, and the issue of the McDonald’s guy, it’s just best to try to understand how Hong Kong people view Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, and each of their perceived proper roles. I recently read Don Snow’s fascinating book– “Cantonese as a Written Language”, which discusses those socio-linguistic issues. I think, at least for me, observing people’s attitudes from a detached anthropological point of view, makes frustrating situations and behaviors seem more acceptable.
As for speaking to children in (broken) English, I don’t see anything wrong with that as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of learning one’s own native language. I was once in Beijing at a restaurant, and I overheard a woman speaking English to her roughly seven-year-old daughter in English. The woman’s English was fairly good, but clearly she was not a native speaker. Her daughter, however, was speaking back in an accent that was much more natural (ie. better pronunciation, words running together naturally, without individual breaks were words are separated on paper, as Chinese tend to speak). My hunch was that through real audio materials from native speakers and probably through lessons with a real laowai, the daughter was able to make her pronunciation more “correct”, but still building on the foundation that her mother gave her.
With this in mind, in light of the fact that many educated Chinese yuppies have decent English, and in light of the fact that English is a key component on just about every major exam on the Mainland (ie. the gaokao), it’s really amazing that more people don’t speak to their kids in English. Of course, I think that to do it well would take a ton of determination and effort and the part of the parent, which many people may not have.
Ideally, such a project shouldn’t come at the expense of learning Cantonese, Mandarin, or written Chinese. It should be possible to recognize the important role English plays in as the world’s de facto lingua franca, Mandarin’s dominating role as the PRC’s lingua franca, and Cantonese’s important role in HK culture and beyond.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
I can sort of see both sides here. Some have said that if the parent isnt fluent in English they shouldn’t teach it to the child. My Cantonese is far far from fluent, but I have a 6week old son that I want to teach Cantonese to. The main reason is that I think it is important for him to speak Cantonese (as well as English) as he his half Chinese, also by teaching him I hope to improve my own Cantonese
)
But I wont stop teaching him any Cantonese just because I am not fluent. My wife speaks to him in English and I have to keep telling her to speak only in Cantonese to him (so I can pick it up too
I guess being a native speaker of English it is annoying when you see non native speakers teaching poor English, but hey its probably better than nothing for them, even if it is bad habbits.
Native Cantonese speakers may get the same feeling when they hear Caucasians trying to speak Cantonese which is not perfect.
February 14th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I really don’t think it’s a big issue, as many HK Chinese employ a Fillipino maid, many of whom are just as bad in speaking English that the children they care for often end up with a fillipino accent rather than a pure HK Cantonese accent. Combined with the many HK mothers attempts to ‘help’ their child with English by speaking to them in Chinglish, the kid often ends up with a wierd accent and is mistaken as mainlanders. I have heard some HK parents trying to just teach the English alphabet to their kids and it sound like
A
B
C
D
E
F(foo)
H(choo)
I
J
K
L(oh),
M
N,
O
P
Q
R(low)
S(see)
T
U
Double v W
X
Y
eZed!
No matter how many times you tell the mothers they are pronouncing theindividuals wrong, they say this is how they were taight by the teachers in school!
March 9th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Becoming proficient in any language involves interaction. Children should have good models for their own first language. If their first language is based on a faulty model, then they are at a distinct disadvantage when they go to school and effectively they have no proficient first language. Their peers will heavily influence social language but academic language is important at school. Proficiency in a first language will facilitate transfer when second language instruction is encountered. Transfer can not occur if there is no good first language to transfer from.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:17 am
i know what you’re saying, it’s as though not knowing cantonese means the child is higher class or something.
in my view the parents are very short sighted and don’t see the actual benefits in the long run of having a child fluent in multiple languages, and they probably don’t understand that if they are raised using broken english that’s what they will speak.
they should stick to their native language and leave english to the professionals who will teach them properly
August 23rd, 2009 at 6:56 pm
I have 2 nephews in Hong Kong who, in the first 2 or 3 years of their lives, were only spoken to in English by their parents. They were also only allowed to watch English spoken TV programmes. Their parents are fairly fluent in English but have a heavy accent and the usual hiccups with grammer (eg. with the use of he instead of she, etc). At the time I thought that they were being a bit extreme about it. However, the children are now 6 and 8 and are tri-lingual - in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. They speak fluent English with just a little bit of an accent.
The thing is, children in Hong Kong will definitely learn to speak Cantonese and Mandarin anyway at school and hear Cantonese all around them so cannot fail to become fluent in this.
To the person who mentioned that he has a six week old baby and is trying to speak Cantonese to him as much as possible - keep it up! And keep reminding your partner to do the same, especially as she is a fluent speaker. I am half chinese and didn’t learn any Cantonese when I was a child as I was brought up in the UK and my father didn’t speak to me in the language at all. I have learned a bit as the years go on from visiting Hong Kong and because my partner is from Hong Kong. I have two older children (age 11 and 13) but I felt that my Cantonese was too poor to be able to teach them and when they wer young, my husband worked very long hours so spent little time with them. By the time they were 3 he gave up trying to teach them because they weren’t understanding very much and also didn’t respond in Cantonese when he spoke to them. They now have very little understanding of Cantonese. Since then we have had another child (who is now 2) and can both speak a little Cantonese and understands most of what is being said to her too. Let’s say we have learnt from our mistakes! My husband is very persistant in that if she asks for milk in English he will repeatedly say the word in Cantonese until she eventually requests it in Cantonese. He speaks to her only in Cantonese and although I speak to her mainly in English, I also quite often use familiar phrases to her in Cantonese, despite not being fluent.
It has been the experience of my relatives teaching their young children English, as well as my older children’s inability to speak or understand Cantonese that has inspired us to try much harder this time round. And it has been worth it!
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:30 pm
I think it’s absolutely disgusting for chinese parents speaking broken English to their kids. I agreed with Jake. To most of the Chinese people, speaking English gives them a sense of “higher class”. Hence, they’ll send their kids to so-called international schools (no offence, but I met some HK Chinese claim that they don’t really speak Chinese because they went to an international school & yet their English is appalling).
I can speak Cantonese. I heard parents tell their kids to speak to me and my husband because we’re English speakers. They don’t say it for any reasons but to be heard. A common example will be a Chinese mum keeps calling their child’s English name even though the child is next to her. If a mum repeats the same English word/phrase when speaking to her child right beside you often enough, then you’d know what I mean. I guess that it’s out of inferiority that they do this. They’re not abusing their kids, they’re abusing me through their feebleness!
May 4th, 2010 at 1:17 am
As for having Filipino maids, that actually started in the 80’s. Nowadays, it’s a trophy for Chinese to show off they have an English speaking maid. I may sound cynical but I’ve known a lot of Chinese think that it’s prestige to be in this position. They don’t really care whether Filipino has an accent, as far as they’re concerned, they speak English!
Yeah I agree with a number of points raised regarding this topic. I have seen a real decline in good spoken English amongst the Hong Kongers over the years. I first came to HK in the early 90’s and was impressed with the high level of English spoken. Unfortunately since 1997 and through the last decade standards have become poor. What I do witness daily is often very disheartening. Hearing kids speaking English with a Filipino accent is one of them. Chinese parents making feeble attempts to speak English to their children, often deliberately when I or other Westerners are present, i.e. on the MTR etc. Aren’t you Chinese proud of your own language and culture? Instead of trying to impress Gweilos with this absurdness, especially if the English is substandard, don’t bother. By the way most Westerners are not really worthy of your attention anyway. For your enlightenment, the sun don’t shine out of a Gweilos proverbials. Lastly, there is a real annoying way that some Chinese have with making English words pronounced totally incorrectly. e.g. “two”, yes the number 2. It must be the trend amongst young Chinese to pronounce it as “tsoo”. Mind you, they also do it with their own language, i.e. “yat go” as in “yat go chaang” which translates as “one orange”. Some say “yat gorrr”. Totally over pronounced with a heavily accented American rrrr…. These two examples are part of literally hundreds of deliberate mispronunciations in both languages that have developed over the last number of years. Upon watching HK TV Chinese channels, especially icable, their Cantonese is often mispronounced to make it sound as if it’s not their first language. So if you want to learn Cantonese, be careful where you learn it from. I would suggest the old ATV & TVB dramas from the 70’s to 80’s. Whereas the present day one are too “err”.
I find it very very insulting for Chinese and English as these two wonderful worlds of vocabulary are being bastardized by ill educated people. You hear it on the television all the time, adverts are the worst offenders. But even on the News where you would expect them to set a good example, it is sad day indeed. I know every language developes lots of colloquial/slang words continually. But the aforementioned examples are beyond the acceptable criteria and are just plain stupid. So please save your/our language.