language and cultural identity
“I’ll take the chicken tenders with ranch instead of honey mustard please.”
This was my dad’s way of treating my brother and I for being good: chicken tenders and fries at Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen. I would say, “Thank you, Dad” at the end of the meal, but instead of “Your welcome!” I got in response,
“Nói tiếng Việt.”
“Cảm ơn, Ba,” I corrected.
All sentences were better received when they were uttered in Vietnamese. Even though the words felt clunky and awkward on my tongue, my father was insistent. I wondered why it was so important to my parents that we speak Vietnamese when they prayed that we would not have an accent at school. Out of a first-child desire to please them, I maintained my Vietnamese by speaking the bare minimum — only what I needed to get by.
Fast forward a decade, and I am met with an impressed “Wow’s” when others discvoer my fluency. The aunties prefer me to my brother because I can say my thank you’s and please’s in Vietnamese; I can hold meaningful conversations with my grandmother, and best of all, I feel a sense of pride and belonging when I can say, “Em lấy một tô phở tái” at phở restaurants instead of “I’ll have the bEEf F-O-E, please.”
While I am grateful to my parents for all the times I was forced to repeat sentences, I adamantly fought it. I hated being forced to speak Vietnamese, and I rolled my eyes upon being asked to try. I know that I’m lucky now, that bilingualism is a gift that not all second-generation Americans were so lucky to maintain, but can I blame them?
Think about this: Should we maintain this piece of mom’s culture? Or, should we make their transition in this new country as seamless as possible? Yeah, I want to please mom, but I live here now. No one else speaks Vietnamese, so what’s the use for it at all?
Historian and researcher Marcus Lee Hansen puts it best,
“While the first generation immigrant struggles to adjust, the second generation fights to forget.”
It is highly common for immigrant households to experience first language attrition, the gradual loss of a first language, often due to a preference of a second language. Across the thousands of these households, second-generation kids are locked in a battle of communicating with family or with English speakers at school. One example of this is Daniel’s story, who lost the ability to speak Chinese and found himself on a quest to reconnect with his parents and identity.
With the growing diversity in America, why is it so difficult to embrace multilingualism? America does not necessarily make it easy to be foreign. While I agree it would be impractical to have menus, signs, instructions, and directions in 70 different languages, the problem is not just the accessibility of non-English resources. No, the problem therein lies in how America views non-English speakers. In short, as non-American. This country celebrates lingual uniformity, as seen by Rep. Steve King’s resubmission of the Language Unity Act of 2013, and such an attitude creates an unwelcoming undertone to immigrants. Residence, employment, or even a government issued ID is not enough. If you don’t speak English, you can forget about belonging in America. It isn’t hard to see why second-generation Americans feel the pressure to assimilate and prioritize English first. They were born in America, and even that is not enough.
While my experience only speaks for itself, greater first language retention is witnessed in ethnic enclaves because there is more exposure to first-generation immigrants using the native language amongst each other. However, the same patterns persist due to English being the primary language at school, where kids in their critical language acquisition phase are socialized. The trend is an increase in English use and proficiency in the second generation and extinction of the native language by the third generation. This makes sense because English is a mark of prestige, and we all want that, even at the cost of cultural identity. Ethnic enclave or not, assimilation is inevitable.
Coming out the other side with my Vietnamese dialect intact, I’ll say it again, I’m truly grateful. It has had a profound impact on my cultural identity satisfaction despite the other ways I have assimilated. Yet I also know that in my kids’ generation, Vietnamese fluency will be three generations in the grave. As I’m sure with many second-generation Americans, it feels as though I am failing my cultural identity and history. In the name of being American, how much language and culture can I maintain and how much will I have to let go of in order to earn the prestige and acceptance my family sought after?
