Cantonese vs. Taishanese: a Study of the Two Most Ubiquitous Dialects in Chinatowns Worldwide

Could you take a guess and tell from what culture a person is from by just listening to their voice? Could you also tell by looking to their appearance; The way they dress, the color of their skin, facial features? What about the way they carry their selves? Just like “The Chinese in All of Us” by Richard Rodriguez where he explains that he feels connected to all the cultures around America, with its “culture, a sound, an accent, a walk.” (Rodriguez 730). It does not mean and require that you must look a certain way to belong to a certain culture.

In 1998, Eric Liu wrote a book about his struggle with acculturation titled “The Accidental Asian”. A chapter within the book called “Notes of a Native Speaker” depicts an essay written by Liu which fully describes his struggles with race and how he overcame them. Eric Liu is an American born Taiwanese Asian. His parents immigrated to the United States before he was born and in so, gave him a mixed cultural background. He started becoming a writer after attending Yale University and graduating from Harvard Law School. In his “Notes of a Native Speaker” author Eric Liu argues that as he was “becoming white” he was achieving, learning the ways of the upper

Modern day Chinatown is a vibrant and bustling community full of bright colors and Chinese characters adorning buildings as far as the eye can see. Chinese elders roam around the narrow and unkempt streets while children frolic around from store to store with wide smiles, riffling through toy stores as store owners look on. Mothers scurry from store to store searching for the most tender meats to buy for the night's dinner or for the next day's lunch. Tourists from nearby downtown drift into the heart of Chinatown with large and expensive cameras, posing for pictures with Lion head statues and continue on, buying cheap Chinatown goods along the way. Everywhere there are signs of the Chinese immigrant's sweat, labor, and collective efforts

In contrast to Han China’s official Mandarin language, Classical India did not develop a unified language. During the Zhou Dynasty, the Chinese created the language of Mandarin. As a centralized dynasty, China made Mandarin its official spoken language, and brought about linguistic unity in the empire. Whereas, Classical India, being a regional empire, did not require a unified language considering the separated areas that could speak different languages and dialects in each region. The development of Mandarin aided Han China by creating a unified language that would enhance trade and communication inside the

Stories and stereotypes make many people want to change themselves negatively and assimilate just to fit in with society. As time passes, society’s stereotypes for how people of each race should be, which race is more dominant than others, and which race you should be, all play a role in impacting someone’s self-esteem and their insecurities. This is portrayed through Jin Wang, a main character in Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese” when Jin Wang thinks his crush, Amelia, he instantly becomes happy. But then he thinks about Greg and Amelia together and gets mad. He finally zooms into Greg’s blond hair. The next day he goes to school with the same hairstyle. The hair symbolizes Greg’s all American identity because the stereotypical American is portrayed with blond hair and blue eyes. To Jin Wang, this hair symbolizes what he wants to be, so he changed his hair to an “American” hairstyle to get Amelia to like him. Due to stereotypes about how Americans are suppose to look like, Jin Wang feels insecure about himself and wants to change his identity and himself as well to assimilate into American culture and stereotypes. These stereotypes and the Anti-Asian stereotypes impact Jin Wang greatly and make him hate himself as well as his background and where he came from because he believes that in order to be AMerica, you have to be white. Another way that this is portrayed is from a personal experience I had as a kid. Growing up as an Asian kid in America, I didn’t really know

The following are the Chinese dynasties in order from oldest to most recent: Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming, and Qing. The legendary dynasty is the Xia, which is believed to be around 2000 BC. The Shang (1700-1000BC) developed the first written Chinese language. The Zhou (1028-221BC) built the first roads, expanded trade contacts and trade routes, and also developed plows and irrigation systems. Trade at this time was expanding in China. The Qin Dynasty (221-207BC) built the famous Great Wall of China as a defense mechanism and also united all of China under one central government. Next is the Han Dynasty (207BC-AD220), which did a lot for China in terms of trading. They developed the Great Silk Road, a trading route that stretched from China all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. The Sui Dynasty (589-618) united almost all of China. Followed in suit by the Tang Dynasty (618-917) discovered one of Chinas' leading exports, porcelain. During the Tang Dynasty, the first block-style printing press was invented. The Song Dynasty (960-1279) came next, which took over all of China and later took the southern rule after being conquered by the Jin. The Song Dynasty is responsible for developing Chinese cuisine as we know it today. During this time period the compass and gunpowder were also discovered. The Jin Dynasty (1127-1234) took rule over Northern China from the Song. The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) brought a long period of peace to

Description: Advanced Placement Chinese Language and Culture (commonly known as AP Chinese Language and Culture or AP Chinese) offers high school students an opportunity to earn credit for Chinese courses at the college level. Like other College Board programs, it is available to anyone worldwide who wishes to participate.

mostly of Caucasian. Although I am a quick learner, it was especially hard for me

5. Jake Gittes misjudges Evelyn Mulwray towards the end of the movie when he accuses her of killing her husband. The reason he accused her is because he found bifocal glasses in the salt water pond in her backyard and Hollis Mulwray died with salt water in his lungs, however, Mr. Mulwray did not wear bifocal glasses. Mr. Gittes also misjudged Mrs. Mulwray after she lied to the police about hiring him because he assumed that she knew more than what she was letting on. His speculation eventually became true after Mr. Gittes and Mrs. Mulwray discussed the affair and her payment at the dinner table. Mrs. Mulwray made it easy to assume that she was the killer because of her secretive activities and uneasy behavior she exhibited during conversation.

To be orphaned from my native language felt, and still feels, a crucial decision” (Li 144). Yiyun mentions how she does not write in Chinese nor does she have her books translated into Chinese. The reason for Yiyun distancing herself from her native language is because it is not “her private language.” In her memoir, Yiyun expands on how English is her private language. According to Yiyun, “English is my private language. Every word has to be pondered over before it becomes my word...In my relationship with English, in this relationship with its intrinsic distance that makes people look askance, I feel invisible but not estranged. It is the position I believe I always want in life” (Li,146). In the English language, Yiyun felt she could truly express herself. Every word she thought and wrote down belonged to her. Chinese, on the other hand, was her public language. In Chinese, Yiyun questioned if “one could form a precise thought, recall an accurate memory, or even feel a genuine feeling” (Li 147). In other words, Chinese limited the way Yiyun could express her emotion and ideas, which is why she chose to distance herself from it.

The gentrification of Chinatowns across the United States represent an environmental racism, because it forces people of of their homes on the streets. Most of the Chinatowns are located in the centers of the majors cities, surrounded by financial districts, and other rich neighborhoods. With current economy trends we can see an increase of new companies moving and opening new offices around different towns. With limited space available for new companies to open their business, landlords sell their building for big sum of money resulting in evictions. Such injustice is hard to stop because its not illegal, and all of the stakeholders besides the Asian Americans living in Chinatowns are happy with development. The possible winnable solutions to the problem of gentrification would be to strengthen the community so that the city representative could hear their voice and opinions when it comes the their problem. Asian Americans should try to be involved as United States citizens more as well, they should learn how to speak and understand english language and local laws better. Based on the book by Bindi Shah, Laotian Daughters, we can learn that organizing community and getting involved politically can help in reducing the environmental injustice, as well as reducing the negative stereotypes regarding Asian American minorities. Racial solidarity, critical incorporation and ethnic reconstruction that were used by APEN and the young Laotian girls could definitely help in reaching

Racism, the belief that one culture is superior to another by rite of birth or genetics, is at the heart of most cultural skirmishes. It is seen in all of the cultural interchanges covered in the two books Chinese San Francisco by Yong Chen, and The World They Made Together by Mechal Sobel. We see racism in two categories: conscious and unconscious. Together the books cover the history of multiple groups of people entering California. They talk about and the cultural interchanges that occurred as the Spanish continued their quest for domination in the new world by bringing settlers to create ranchos, then what happened as the Anglos moved in from eastern America to settle towns as the Chinese travelled across the pacific to find new economic

The U.S.A. has been a zone of language extinction in which immigrant tongues die out to be replaced by monolingual English. (Rubén G. Rumbaut and Douglas S. Massey, 2013) People came to the United States from all over the world, and as generations grew, they developed to use English, no matter where they came from. Well, except Chinese. I once met these two elderly citizens in La Crosse's farmer's market, the descendants of the earliest southern Chinese immigrants, who still use their 'Chinese' to greet me. Although I don't know their "Chinese" but

The Chinese alphabet is very different from the others because characters represent whole ideas, concepts, or words. The dialect does not determine the symbols to be used and they are uniform throughout the different dialects. Chinese people speak the Mandarin and Cantonese. Cantonese dialect happens to be common and it is mainly spoken in the south while Mandarin is common in the northern part of the country. It is worth noting that a dialect is the way words are pronounced but not how they are written. Moreover, it is

The verbal languages spread across China is one of diversity, the dialectal variances between areas within China is amazing. The history surrounding the spoken languages in China is also rather remarkable. “When a republic was declared in 1912, there was no common spoken language in China. Yes. Imperial officials had communicated in tongue used by the elites in Beijing. But the rest of the vast country was linguistically fractured…The lack of a common tongue has always seemed to threaten the daunting