Mrs. Suen (Jiangsu Hua)

 

 

Birth place:

Shanghai

Native language (L1): 

Jiangsu Hua

Status of L1: 

Very low in Shanghai

Low in China

Low in Hong Kong

Language(s) spoken other than L1: 

Shanghai Hua (L2)

Putonghua (L3)

Yunnan Dialect (L4)

Cantonese (L5)

Duration of residence in Hong Kong:

38 years

Time spent learning Cantonese: 

2-3 years to achieve a high proficiency

Occasions of using the languages: 

Jiangsu (with mother, other people within the village, maternal relatives)

Shanghainese (with people outside the village in Shanghai and the Shanghainese in Hong Kong)

Putonghua (with father, schoolmates, and other Chinese)

Cantonese (with husband, daughters, and Hongkongers)

Number of children: 

2 daughters (20 years old and 11 years old)

 

Avoid speaking Jiangsu in Hong Kong when she was small

 

Being used to moving from place to place following her parents, Mrs. Suen did not feel confused when she first came to Hong Kong.  But she avoided speaking Jiangsu Hua when she was small, thinking that people would classify her as a mainlander and discriminate against her. She tried to show that she was a Hongkonger even by avoiding talking to her mother, because her mother’s poor pronunciation of Cantonese would reveal their background. However, when she gets older now, she feels lucky that she knows Jiangsu Hua.

 

Environment affects the transmission of languages

 

Mrs. Suen has 2 daughters. Her elder daughter can understand a bit of Jiangsu Hua because she learned it from the communication between Mrs. Suen and Mrs. Suen’s mother, who was still alive when the elder sister was small. The younger daughter does not understand Jiangsu Hua at all as her grandmother had passed away before she was born and no one used the language at home anymore. Since the surrounding environment changed and Mrs. Suen no longer lives in Shanghai, she speaks Cantonese to the children. The children did not Mrs. Suen’s native language was Jiangsu Hua at first as Mrs. Suen has been using Cantonese with them since their birth.

 

Mrs. Suen did not deliberately teach them her native language. The children even equate Jiangsu Hua with Shanghainese. The elder daughter loves linguistics and she does show interest in learning Jiangsu Hua and Shanghainese. The younger daughter does not show a strong will to learn it but she sometimes asks Mrs. Suen for the translation of words in those languages. Mrs. Suen admits that it is always fortunate to know an additional language. If her daughters knew Jiangsu, it would be advantageous to their development.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Suen said that she would not teach them Jiangsu Hua in the future as her pronunciation was no longer accurate. There used to be a need to speak Jiangsu Hua to her mum. Although her mum was a passive speaker of Cantonese, she sometimes was confused with certain words in Cantonese. In contrast, her children speak Cantonese as their native language and no such necessity is required. As her mum has passed away for 20 years, she lacks the opportunity to practice Jiangsu Hua. It is particularly so since Jiangsu Hua resembles Cantonese in a way that it does not have a writing system and contains a lot of local slangs. Therefore, she only teaches her daughters some isolated vocabulary in Jiangsu Hua.

 

Though Mrs. Suen cannot point out how Jiangsu Hua is linguistically special, she feels a sense of solidarity when she encounters Jiangsu Hua-speaking and Shanghainese-speaking people. She reckons that every language should be preserved because diversity does not do harm to society. It is always better than losing them. To preserve Jiangsu Hua, it is important for the speakers to feel proud of their identity and use it with confidence.