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a language of love
Lately I've been finding myself speaking to my baby toddler Amelia in Xin-Ning, a dialect/language that is spoken by no one in my extended family except for my semi-senile (otherwise healthy) 95-year old grandmother (who, by the way, lives halfway across the globe in Singapore). Most days, she forgets she speaks the language herself, because she's only surrounded by people who don't speak the language (she lives with my uncle, a.k.a. her son, who speaks it, but since his children and wife don't understand it, he speaks to my grandmother in Cantonese, which is the mutually understood language). She has 10 grandchildren, and my sister and I (both in USA) are the only ones in our generation that speak it.
I don't know anyone else who speaks the language-- I don't even speak the language well myself-- so it's a tragically futile attempt as I know Amelia will never fully learn nor understand it, yet I tragically continue to do so, because when I do, it reminds me of my mother.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishanese and several other sources:
Xin-Ning is also known as Taishanese or Toishanese. It is a dialect most closely related to Cantonese, from a small poor region outside the main Guangzhou town. "Taishanese" and "Cantonese" are commonly used in mutually exclusive contexts, i.e. Taishanese is treated separately from "Cantonese". The phonology of Taishanese bears a lot of resemblance to Cantonese, but Taishanese pronunciation and vocabulary may sometimes differ greatly from Cantonese.
Until the 1960s, two-thirds of all overseas Chinese originated from this tiny region, making it the dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in North American Chinatowns, including San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Vancouver, and Chicago. It was poor and overpopulated and became fertile recruiting ground for all the 'coolies" who built the American transcontinental railroad, and generations who emigrated to become laundrymen and restaurant workers. While the language is still spoken in many Chinatowns by older generations of Chinese immigrants, but is today being supplanted by mainstream Cantonese and increasingly by Mandarin in both older and newer Chinese communities alike across the country. It is, sadly, a language that is dying.
I don't know anyone else who speaks the language-- I don't even speak the language well myself-- so it's a tragically futile attempt as I know Amelia will never fully learn nor understand it, yet I tragically continue to do so, because when I do, it reminds me of my mother.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishanese and several other sources:
Xin-Ning is also known as Taishanese or Toishanese. It is a dialect most closely related to Cantonese, from a small poor region outside the main Guangzhou town. "Taishanese" and "Cantonese" are commonly used in mutually exclusive contexts, i.e. Taishanese is treated separately from "Cantonese". The phonology of Taishanese bears a lot of resemblance to Cantonese, but Taishanese pronunciation and vocabulary may sometimes differ greatly from Cantonese.
Until the 1960s, two-thirds of all overseas Chinese originated from this tiny region, making it the dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in North American Chinatowns, including San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Vancouver, and Chicago. It was poor and overpopulated and became fertile recruiting ground for all the 'coolies" who built the American transcontinental railroad, and generations who emigrated to become laundrymen and restaurant workers. While the language is still spoken in many Chinatowns by older generations of Chinese immigrants, but is today being supplanted by mainstream Cantonese and increasingly by Mandarin in both older and newer Chinese communities alike across the country. It is, sadly, a language that is dying.