What did your mother think about this with regard to you?
You aren’t alone! There’s a mom coach who talks about her similar situation (Spot Full of Sunshine). This year, she moved to Taiwan so her child can do grade 2 or 3 there. She encourages parents to start small however they can.
I too am at a similar level in vocabulary as you. I’m increasing my Cantonese media to more mature anime at the moment. I also join the Cantonese Alliance discord to voice chat with people of different levels. (Just search for discord server on this sub) I can always learn something from everyone.
You just have to force yourself to speak it as much as possible to and in front of them. Ask them to do stuff so they’ll associate the words with actions. I’ve largely failed to do this with my kids but trying to make up for lost time now. They are 10 and 7.
The only reason for Cantonese is because outside of Hong Kong you meet up reasonably regularly with other family and their kids will speak Cantonese or if you’re planning to move to Hong Kong at some point.
My cousins teach their kids to speak Cantonese because each of my cousins talk to each other at times and they wanted their kids to understand each other and the other Cantonese people when out and about.
I married someone from Tianjin and her parents are around often and so our daughter speaks Mandarin. My parents can speak Mandarin but I can’t. I don’t mind because Mandarin is likely to be more useful and none of my siblings use Cantonese much.
Either way picking up a few words in each dialect is good when they’re young so it doesn’t hurt but their vocabulary will always be limited to everyday activities unless they study the language in depth.
It’s going to be hard juggling two languages but me and my sister turned out fine. You can speak Cantonese at home and let school teach their native language. Try to put up some Chinese shows but if your partner doesn’t understand it, that’s another barrier you’ll have to work with as well.
My Cantonese is pretty fluent but only up to middle school level. My sister can understand it but her proficiently much lower considering she watched less Cantonese shows than I did. I learned most of my Cantonese from movies and shows I’ve watched
There’s a pediatrician Dr. Betty who’s an ABC and blogs about this on her website Chalk Academy. She speaks mandarin, but she has the exact same scenario as you: not being perfect at Chinese, and has a non-Chinese spouse, and trying her best. She talks often about how despite her basic Chinese, something is better than nothing. She doesn’t let imperfection hold her back, and talks often about her struggles and impostor syndrome, and I admire her for that.
The result of her dedication is that her two kids are impressively proficient, engaged, and interested in learning Chinese. She used OPOL and shares tons of Chinese resources. I highly encourage you follow her and read her blog!
I think it’s gonna be a lot worse for me given how I’m supposed to be a Native Cantonese Speaker but only know a few things and can only say certain words only a child would say. (I was taught from my grandma who was from Mainland who would move to HK during British Rule then move to the US)
And it doesn’t help I was always primarily told to Speak English Growing up and never being able to learn the language fully. It’s awkward meeting up with fellow Asian relatives and being the one in your family that doesn’t speak it.
I grew up in a Mix of Cantonese/Caribbean Household in my life. My father speaks it but not at a good level (More of a Advanced/Intermediate Level) meanwhile my mother is just Jamaican and only speaks english.
Im am ABC and this was my situation. It’s fine for the 1st 3-4years, but as they get to an age where you need to explain things in more detail/complexity. The words you use will become too basic and can’t get the point across easily. We went from cantonese(me)/mandarin(wife) to mandarin/english. Even then our mandarin is quite limited and when we took them to kindergarten in taiwan, they were no where as good as the local kids. So now their English was not good, and mandarin was not good, and cantonese was all gone. After about 1yr in taiwan in full immersion, they still weren’t very good in any language, but they do know english/mandarin enough now, but the 1st 3yrs of cantonese is all lost.
Long story short, if there is no way for them to continue maintaining/learning new vocabulary/practice, then there is almost no point. Cantonese is so hard and there aren’t many cantonese bilingual schools.
My friends’ children (all ABCs) who can speak Cantonese grew up watching Chinese dramas and movies with parents. My own nephew spoke fluent Cantonese because of that as well.
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Have two kids myself, living in an English speaking country. Next to zero Cantonese speakers around me.
I think you are too late in teaching your kids Cantonese, but I also wouldn’t worry too much. If Cantonese is to flourish in the future in say, business or financial sectors, it will do so and those are great opportunities for your kid to get better at Cantonese
Otherwise, it’s extremely difficult for your kids to pick up Cantonese now. It’s a tough language to learn, as you yourself would know.
We spoke 100% Cantonese with out kids from birth, even though I’m not a native Cantonese speaker. It’s probably one way of seeing if the kids will keep it as they grow older.
We’ve met family in hk and they’ve been super impressed with the Cantonese the kids speak (lol, they’re better than me at it)
But once school started, my kids turned to English. There no opportunity apart from home where they use Cantonese, and even at home they mix English with Cantonese.
So yeah, if they want to learn it, sure give it a try, but if it doesn’t work out, not the end of the world either.
You know, people who say that they’re not very good at something sometimes are just too modest and know a lot more than they know.
I would teach your kids what I know and continue learning what I can. Then you will have a better understanding on what you say you lack and it’s two for the price of one.
Hope this helps.
For context, I am largely a Mandarin and English speaker but I can speak from my experience.
Even the tiniest of the exposure can go a long way. My parents are not native Cantonese speakers, the most they have taught me was “where” and “who” for cantonese because I asked them after I watched a cartoon translated to cantonese. As a kid, I watched quite a bit of cantonese translated cartoon (due to limited availability then - in the 90s era without Netflix and such)
I had no chance to speak Cantonese until I went to Hong Kong for a University Exchange Programme. So by then I was already in my early 20s, I took Cantonese class in the university and absorbed the content like a sponge. So I guess I can say that the cantonese module was somehow in my brain already and the exposure in Hong Kong unlocked it for me. So in about three months, I was able to communicate with the locals decently. And I was able to bring my family around Hong Kong like a tour guide.
Moving from there my proficiency increased even more as I frequently consume the TVB dramas and also through online gaming where I happened to chance upon Hong Kongers and it was really fun since I could engage with them very well.
So yea, I think you don’t have to worry whether or not you are fit to impart the language, so long as you know the language, even the tiniest bit can help. Get your kids interested and the remaining journey will be much easier as long as they want to learn more eventually
I think teaching them that base level is still helpful. I have 2 heritage languages as my parents are from different backgrounds. I absorbed an elementary level of my Mom’s language as a child because she would drop in little phrases here and there mixed in with English. But I learned absolutely none of my father’s language because he never spoke it to me.
When I got to college age, that’s when I had my cultural awakening and wanted to speak the languages of my parents. I was able to pick up my mother’s language quickly because I already had a basic understanding of how it works, and now I’m reasonably fluent. Unfortunately I’m still struggling with my father’s native tongue … Cantonese lol … but I’m still determined to master it. Or at least vastly improve it. I just spent a week in HK and was able to communicate more than I thought I could, but it would have been so much easier to pick it up with a baseline level already under my belt.
Clearly you have a sentimental attachment to Canto but the practical reality is that the same limitation you experienced will likely be experienced by your children even more so.
Lack of practice, opportunities, context, exposure to Cantophones, Chinese language resources, books, media, music, humour, puns, etc as day to day things picked up in life your children will lack all of these unless you can somehow inject that into their life in the most impressionable way possible before reaching their teens and belonging to the world.
Also, being European, say in a place like Switzerland, your children would need to be bi or trilingual in English, French, German, Italian, and maybe other languages if you wish them to be have well adjusted Continental European manners with regional cultural proficiency and room for advancement/achievement.
Much of that will be beyond your control if the school system basically owns your child. All you can do is focus your energy on a supplementary education and or a home school type learning environment. Though both have their drawbacks and your kids may inevitably feel disconnected to and unable to relate to their peers later.
What I found works in our family is for sentences at home to be said in multiple languages, as regularly as possible. There is a significant discrepancy between Anglophone-only households even when parents are fully native in Canto (but do not speak it).
Before school age is also precious. As a parent you may want to actively learn Canto yourself during this time while relaying your education, be it traditional or online content, to your kids as you yourself re-learn.
If you can do that for a few years you’ll already have instilled a Canto foundation in their “mother tongue”, but as others have said, realistically even native speakers born in HK who later spend their teens or tweens in the West eventually forget Canto in middle age or sooner.
By senior high school, complex literary topics, ideas, writing essays, emails, etc, are all in the native local language so Canto/Chinese will inevitably become stunted or handicapped.
Many Chinese German girls have identity insecurities from internalised racism and their non conformance to local beauty standards etc. Similarly for boys the concept of masculinity is very different in HK/Asia, being not only very “Canto” but Chinese culturally dominant/chauvinistic (漢民族主義 or 香港民族主義 in the most positive sense - leadership, chivalry, etc), that emphasises intelligence, academic performance, self-sacrifice, and complimentarian, a-misogynistic) virtues considered “feminine” by Western standards.
Kids I see with lower intelligence or tenacity who get bullied in school etc often cope by denying their Chineseness, which would undo any education you are instilling. This was/is common here in Australia for ABCs in the 70s until 00s I notice, as “Chinese Australian” identity was/is not really a thing with anti-sinitic culture prevalent here similar to Germany. If your kid is in this group they’ll have to re-learn Canto/Chinese in adulthood independently, irrespective of what you teach.
On the flip side kids with a strong Canto education pre-teens seem to retain that foundation (in dormancy) even if adopting a strong Australian identity to assimilate better into society. It never fully goes away. Much of that being credited to and contingent on a strong parent who actively teaches children (with lessons worth “teaching”). And this group seems to be better adjusted as they know both cultures clearly/intelligibly enough.
So I would encourage you as a mother to focus on the later, as your duty and obligation, but also be realistic in your expectations, and honest with your kids, like they most likely won’t be reciting Tang poems, or watching Cantonese News and TV any time soon, or ever.
You’re basic goal would be to in still the absolute minimum foundation as your grandma/elders did for you. Right? Maybe think of ways to replicate your experience, or improve upon it.
Do you have access to parents/aunts/uncles? Do you have any Cantophone networks, maybe willing to babysit regularly and while only speaking Canto? Regular family gatherings in Canto only? Are there good language associations/schools in your region in Europe? Chinese churches? Cultural activities, church worship, singing, reading, etc, all in Canto. The stronger speakers here tend to have the highest association with these.
You don’t. The second you immigrated is when the language and the culture goes away. No matter how hard you try, the local language and culture will dominate. You being to barely able to speak it yourself guarantees your kids will not be able to speak any of it. You will end up using German to fill in words and concepts you can’t describe and will just end up defaulting to German eventually as they get older.
Parents who barely speak English in America and only communicate with their children in Cantonese still can’t get Cantonese to stick in their kids. Forget reading and writing. Many of them just mumble back some barely incoherent lines call it a day. So many of them can understand but can’t speak. Those lucky enough to be around other Cantonese speaking kids can manage much better but that’s only if they are surrounded by them.
Give it up. You’ve already decided to live in a place that doesn’t speak it and you don’t even speak it much yourself. Just embrace that.
No, it’s not worth it because you don’t know enough Canto vocabulary to say everything. You’ll eventually switch to saying almost everything in German (or English, whichever one comes the most naturally to you).
By the way, if you’re growing up in a French speaking country, that’ll be your children’s most fluent language. So if they find out that you understand it, they’ll speak French to you, not German, and certainly not Cantonese.
I work with a lot of immigrant families, and I think parents can do what they can in terms of exposure. In children into adolescence, it really depens if the child has the heart to value/practice their heritage language.
So the way I see it, is I can set up the possibility of some language transmission, I can’t guarantee it’s success in a non-Chinese-speaking-land, but I can help open the door for the possibility.
Got to let them watch tvb cartoons early in life
yes english is our language now. I’m so used it by now.