New York City English and second generation Chinese Americans
New York City English and second generation Chinese Americans
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DOI：
10.1017/s0266078410000167
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发表时间：
2010-08
期刊：
影响因子：
1
通讯作者：
A. Wong
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Wong
虽然华裔美国人早在1848年就设立了中国传统语言学校，以保护传统语言，并促进他们在美国出生的孩子的种族认同感（Chao，1997年），有强有力的证据表明，在整个美国的华人社区中，语言向英语的转变正在迅速发生。2006年ACS的数据显示，尽管只有34.1%的第一代（即外国出生的）华裔美国人报告说“英语非常好”，而在美国出生的（即第二代及以后）或在海外出生但在16岁之前抵达美国的（即第1.5代），这一比例急剧上升。70.4 1.5%的第一代美国人和93.8%的在美国出生的华裔美国人说英语“非常好”。此外，估计只有大约27.6%的ABC在家里说他们的传统语言。总的来说，这些估计表明，从中文到英文的转换速度正在加快。Jia（2008）发现，即使是第一代华裔美国人，他们的中文语言技能也随着英语沉浸的增加而持续下降。语言向英语的快速转变意味着许多ABC将英语作为他们的母语之一，如果不是唯一的话。这就提出了一些有趣的社会语言学问题，涉及ABC所讲英语的特点，以及ABC如何利用各种英语来构建和协商彼此之间以及与更大的社会结构之间的差异。
Although Chinese Americans set up Chinese heritage language schools as early as 1848 to preserve the heritage language and to promote a sense of ethnic identity among their American-born children (Chao, 1997), there is strong evidence that language shift to English is taking place rather rapidly within the Chinese communities across the U.S. Data from the 2006 ACS show that while only 34.1 percent of first generation (i.e. foreign-born) Chinese Americans reported speaking ‘English very well’, the percentages rise dramatically for those who are American-born (i.e. second generation and beyond) or born overseas but arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 (i.e. the 1.5 generation). 70.4 percent of the 1.5 generation and 93.8 percent of the American-born Chinese Americans reported speaking ‘English very well’. Additionally, only about 27.6 percent of the ABCs were estimated to speak their heritage language at home. Taken together, these estimates suggest that the rate of shift from Chinese to English is accelerating. Jia (2008) finds that even for first generation Chinese Americans, their Chinese language skills continue to decline with increasing English immersion. Rapid language shift to English means that many ABCs speak English as one of their native languages, if not the only one. This raises interesting sociolinguistic questions concerning the characteristics of the English spoken by ABCs and how ABCs utilize varieties of English to construct and negotiate differences with respect to each other and vis-à-vis the larger social structure.