What problems did they encounter due to language barrier?
- "I want to show my friends in high school (that) I can talk (Cantonese) now." (Anju's transcript from the interview)
Anju and Naveed will let their children learn how to speak their native langauges and Mandarin. The basic motive for learning to speak Mandarin is because they have heard that it is useful. It shows the growing power of Mandarin in world's langauges, yet both do not show any motives for letting their children to learn Cantonese. Naveed pointed out that Cantonese is diffucult to learn as it has nine intonations. He rather learn Mandarin than Cantonese.
It is also interesting to know that Anju would let her children learn English as a first language rather than Japanese. From the above response, we can conclude that parents' language ability will affect their choice of language education for their children.
What languages do linguistic minorities want their future generation to learn?
How does this language barrier affect their lives?
1. Reduce job opportunity in the job market
Interviewees reflected that Hong Kong companies usually require people to be fluent in three languages, i.e. Cantonese, English and Mandarin. As both of our interviewees cannot comprehend Cantonese, they face huge difficulty in searching jobs. Naveed shared that he tried to apply insurance sales before. However, due to language problems, he was not hired by the company. The company explained without knowing Cantonese, it was hard to communicate with clients who were mainly locals and thus cannot promote their products. This shows that language barrier limits their choice of jobs and even promotion opportunity in the future.
2. Negatively affects social life
Without the knowledge of Cantonese, it does not only cause communication problems with locals who do not know English, but also with locals who can speak English. Both interviewees agreed that in school environment, they can do basic communication with classmates and friends. However, they found that Hong Kong students usually chat in Cantonese. It is difficult for them join their conversation. Though they can make friends with Hong Kong students and occasionally chat in English, they can hardly become very close friends. When friends ae chatting in Cantonese, they feel being left out and excluded. This situation not only occurs during chatting, but also happens during class discussion or group project discussion. This shows that knowing English is not sufficient in engaging in groups of Hong Kong students.
Though interviewees reflected that they have communication problems with locals, they both agree that it depends on the circumstances they are in. If they are in school or city like Central, there is less problem in communication problem. However, when they are back to local environment, the problem becomes serious, such as talking with the security guard in their own housing estate.
3. Self-esteem
Generally speaking, interviewees feel sense of inferiority in not knowing Cantonese because they can strongly feel that they are not in the same group with Hong Kong people when they are talking with locals. Anju even thinks that it is shameful for not knowing Cantonese as she lives in Hong Kong since she was born. Through observing interviewees’ tone and facial expression, we can feel that non-Cantonese speakers have lower self-esteem when communicating with others, especially locals who cannot understand English.
Although language barrier brings a lot of trouble to Naveed and Anju, it is happy to know that they are trying to overcome the obstacle now by learning Mandarin and Cantonese. It is hope that language barrier will be eliminated soon.