For asian immigrants in u.S., a wall of words separates generations

Sung Jong Chang and her 16-year-old son have trouble talking to each other. They barely communicate, in fact.

The reason cuts far deeper that the normal parent-teenager divide. Mrs. Chang, a Korean immigrant who works seven days a week in the family restaurant’s business, speaks almost no English. Her son, John Kim, who came to the United States as a toddler, knows little Korean. At home in Fairfax City, Virginia, she watches Korean television and videos. In the car she listens to Korean radio. At work and church, she speaks Korean with her friends and colleagues. Working 12 hours a day, she has little opportunity, or need even, to learn anew language.

John, however, is 100 per cent Americanized. His friendships, his classes at school, his tastes – all are firmly rooted in the English language and American culture.

In a society that insistently hammers into parents the importance of talking to, and spending time with, their children, many immigrants can hardly do either. Working one or more jobs to provide for their families leaves little time for family life, never mind learning English. At the same time, there is evidence that the children of today’s immigrants are loosing their parents’ language much faster than second-generation children did ten years ago. The result, say sociologists and other who study the effects of immigration, is a troubling new family dynamic on the rise: a generation of children growing up almost strangers to their parents.

“For most of us, it would be an easy choice,” said Kattleen Harris, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina. “Of course you would learn to communicate with your child. But not if it meant you couldn’t have food on your table.”

Twelve years after arriving in the United States, Mrs. Chang has come to believe that she is loosing her son across a great cultural chasm. It pains her greatly – but she lacks the means to tell him even that much. Instead, she relies on her daughter to speak to her. 18-year-old Sun Mi Kim, who grew up speaking English and is now learning Korean, serves as go-between for her mother and brother, translating nearly everything that passes between them, even their shouting matches. But because Sun Mi’s Korean is limited, much is left unspoken – and many feelings explored – in the family.

Now, when Mrs. Chan sees her son despondent when she comes home at night after her long working day, she wonders if their language barrier has taken its toll. “I’m afraid that by now my son might have given up trying to communicate,” the 47-year-old mother said through a translator one recent afternoon while taking a break from her kitchen duties at one of the family’s restaurants.

Previous waves of American immigrants converted from their native languages to English over three or four generations, with a buffer between: An English-speaking child might grow up having difficulty to his Italian-born grandfather, for example, but usually the generation sandwiched in the middle was fluent in both languages. Now the change is happening much more rapidly, said Ruben Rumbaut, a sociologist at Michigan State University. “We are seeing this country become a language graveyard for the second generation,” he said, “with children and parents living under the same roof but unable to talk to one another.”

In a continuing study of 5.300 immigrant families, Mr. Rumbaut found that 73 % of the youngsters surveyed in 1991 said English was their primary language by the time they reached seventh grade, but 94 % of the parents spoke another language at home. In 1995, the figure of the parents was about the same, while the number of the children speaking mainly English had jumped to 88 %. A survey of immigrant families in Fairfax Country, Virginia, last year found that 53 % of the households had at least one parent or guardian who spoke little or no English; in 27 % of the families, no parent or guardian could speak English.

Adding to the dissolution of communication is the fact that many cultures – particularly those in Asia – do not encourage parents to sit down for heart-to-hearts with their children or get actively involved at their schools.

(David Cho, Washington Post Service

April, 13, 2001

International Herald Tribune)

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