General

Well when i was like 5 i had way better understanding of my native language, until i started school which was when i was 5. Years progressed and now, i can't even make sense when i say something in my native lang...

sigh

[quote=Doutei]never met a person in life that speaks chinese.
I only hear cantonese or mandarin.[/quote]

Cantonese and Mandarin are Chinese. Manchu (Tungusic) or Korean (Korean), for example, are not.

@radkai, well I don't know. That's strange.

[quote=Doutei]never met a person in life that speaks chinese.
I only hear cantonese or mandarin.[/quote]

Cantonese and Mandarin are Chinese. Chinese is the set of all the dialects spoken by Chinese people, while Cantonese and Mandarin are specific dialects in the set.

never met a person in life that speaks chinese.
I only hear cantonese or mandarin.

[quote=powerguy121]what you experience is not a big enough sample size to generalize.[/quote]

If New York City isn't a big sample, I don't know where to look.

@Billionz: New York City has a pretty dense Chinese population. O:

I'm not going to lie, but some to most of the Koreans here were actually born in Korea and moved to America. I'm in NYC as well.
they're obviously going to speak Korean because it's their native and first language
Idk about you but all my Chinese friends know how to speak Chinese and I can't speak Korean for crap

Im korean and Im terrible at speaking and writing it. To my parents, its a disgrace to Korea (i also hate kimchi). Koreans are just super strict about their culture but im not sure about chinese people. Korean was my first language though...

what you experience is not a big enough sample size to generalize.

Probably the following:

1. Asian immigration in the 1800s and 1900s.
What do you hear of mostly? Chinese. You don't ever hear about the Koreans or Japanese immigrating as much. These immigrants are comprised of mostly poor working class folk in contrast to the rich, educated Asian immigrants we have in the present day.

2. Chinese discrimination in the Americas.
Children of Chinese descent that are born here could be made fun of and some resort to just dumping their ancestry to fit in. A half-Chinese Canadian poet by the name of Fred Wah has written many poems about his Chinese-Canadian identity and talks about this. A lot less rampant these days.

3. Environment they grew up in.
If you live in a mostly white neighbourhood and you have parents that are not willing to help you maintain your Chinese proficiency, you're not going anywhere unless you're strictly motivated to do so. This doesn't just apply to the Chinese language though, this is the case with any language.

So with the combination of the above, you get a bunch of CBCs/ABCs that fall in between many levels of proficiency in the Chinese language. You don't see this widespread now with Koreans and Japanese folks as much, but they'll be at that stage if their immigration rate to the Americas increase drastically.

[quote=radkai]New York City has one of the biggest Chinese population in America. I certainly can see that Koreans are very proud of their nationality.[/quote]

Was not referring to population size when I said weak, but rather the ties between members in the community and how close they are.

As a Canadian, I have never experienced this. However, Koreans are definitely much more tied to their home country and the traditional customs as supposed to Chinese people, whether it's mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. Refugees or illegal immigrants tend to have less ties with their home country, and are often more culturally ignorant of their background. But their children can still speak a little bit of their mother tongue. That being said, Canada has a lot of illegal immigrants from mainland China.

The problem with mainland China is that they are much less tied to their traditional customs as many traditions were frowned upon by the Communist Party back in the days. China was pretty much like North Korea.

Illegal immigrants or refugees that are culturally ignorant AND are from mainland China is almost like the exact opposite of Koreans, who have close ties to their country as well as having a much stronger traditional cultural background. Even if there are Korean illegal immigrants and refugees in Canada, they are still a scarce minority and they'd still have strong ties with ROK (South Korea) because ROK isn't anything like PRC. In a political sense, ROK is similar to ROC (Taiwan).

I used to live in a Canto area, and almost all of them can speak Cantonese. I've met very few Koreans. The ones I know can all speak some Korean. If a Chinese person can't speak Chinese, chances are this person is a CBC (Canadian born Chinese) with culturally ignorant parents, whitewashed parents, OR had stayed in Canada for more than two generations. A Korean person who can't speak Korean... well I've never met one before.

Another possibility is that you've only met Chinese people that were raised in a non-Chinese community, but you always meet Koreans that were raised from a community with a dense Korean population, and they're possibly mostly immigrants.

Idk anything about USA though. I think it's pretty much the same.

I feel like it has to do with how much more developed Korea is. From my experience, many Koreans want to return to Korea post graduation, and keep Korean citizenship. Chinese people on the other hand, would rather stay in the United States. This is because Korea has a much better standard of living than China.

[quote=Boss]Not always like that. Might just be a weak cluster of Chinese immigrants, perhaps not religious and with low interaction.
Many Koreans are religious, and thus have higher interaction amongst its population thanks to church, and in addition to this Koreans are often very proud of their nationality even overseas.[/quote]

New York City has one of the biggest Chinese population in America. I certainly can see that Koreans are very proud of their nationality.

Not always like that. Might just be a weak cluster of Chinese immigrants, perhaps not religious and with low interaction.
Many Koreans are religious, and thus have higher interaction amongst its population thanks to church, and in addition to this Koreans are often very proud of their nationality even overseas.

[quote=Alwaysbeat]think it has more to do with the household they grew up in. Some parents enforced English as the main language so their kids wouldn't get bullied when they got to school while some didn't know English so they taught them their native language. Also if you don't use the language often there's a chance you might forget how to speak it which some of your friends might have.

@1kevqn that's the dumbest thing i've ever read. Knowing multiple languages helps you when you're applying for a job and helps to communicate on a day to day basis with those that do not know English yet.[/quote]

So all the Korean parents that didn't know English taught their kids Korean? Kind of unintuitive that no Korean parents speak English.

Every other Korean I know speaks Korean at home, while there are many Chinese people who speak english at home.

It would seem to me people know how to speak Chinese but not know how to write it because of the complexity. Maybe the language in itself is harder to learn?