Posted on 04/02/2005 3:29:18 PM PST by MadIvan
AMBITIOUS New Yorkers are rearing a generation of “little emperors” fluent in Mandarin so they will be equipped for a global economy that may come to be dominated by China.
Chinese nannies who can bring up bilingual babies are sought after in Manhattan, and nursery schools are adding the language to their curriculums.
Jim Rogers and Paige Parker are the parents of Hilton Augusta, a 22-month-old blonde, blue-eyed girl. She already understands as much Mandarin as English after her parents hired a Chinese nanny. Their apartment is decorated with words for objects such as table and chair in English and Chinese script.
“China is going to be the next great country in the world,” said Rogers, a writer and banker. “We thought we should start to prepare her at birth for what will be the most important language in her lifetime.”
Finding the right nanny took weeks. She had to speak the kind of Mandarin heard in government circles in Beijing. Clifford Greenhouse runs the Pavillion nanny agency in New York. “There’s been a tremendous surge in demand. We get dozens of requests a year. It is extremely hard to find the right, well-educated, cultured Mandarin speaker,” he said.
Many of the requests come from families of mixed Chinese and American parentage or from parents who have adopted girls from China.
But a good third are from parents who hope to give their children a leg-up in the globalised world. Rogers and Parker plan to enrol Hilton Augusta in St Hilda’s and St Hugh’s, a private nursery and elementary school in Manhattan, which is adding Mandarin to its curriculum in September.
Virginia Connor, the headmistress, said the classes would begin with toddlers. “We’ve been asking ourselves what will children need, not just five or 10 years ahead, but a long way into the future.”
Hilton Augusta will be more prepared than most. Her parents have booked a holiday in Shanghai this summer to reinforce what she has learnt and to familiarise herself with the culture.
Rogers said: “I’m pleased and proud that one day my daughter will be talking about us with her friends and we won’t know what she is saying.”
Parker admits to misgivings about being excluded from what will be an important part of Hilton Augusta’s life. “I do worry about it a little but the benefits outweigh any uncomfortableness I feel.”
Just kidding about ethnic names. :-) Seriously speaking, Nan Yue people were assimilated into Han Chinese among Guangdong province by Sui dynasty so I suppose I myself could have some Nan Yue blood in myself. It is commonly hypothesized descendents of assimilated Nan Yue Han Chinese live outside Pearl River Delta and in particular in the Western and Southwestern part of Guangdong like Zhaoqing or Zhenjiang.
My ancestor was Confucius and when it came to my Tang dynasty ancestor I think they already belonged to the "Southern" branch (the "Northern" branch belongs to the current direct male in line descendent Kong Decheng who is in Taiwan). I only know for sure that my ancestor (about 8th or 9th generation ancestor - about Qianlong times of Qing dynasty or around 1740) settled in Yunfu county in Guangdong province near Zhaoqing (which remains my ancestral home registration despite having seen not an inch of Yunfu county in my life).
In today's Guangdong the commonly recognized minosities include Zhuang and Yao (both also speak Cantonese and Mandarin).
IMHO, the government takes too darned much money away from those who have earned it......and that goes for the 'rich' people too.
What Kerry does or says is of no import to me at all.
I worked hard to make sure he didn't get elected and that's all that matters.
If someone chooses to have a nanny it's not going to make my kids' life harder or easier.
Perhaps the parents have something they feel is constructive about the time they get to spend outside the home.....it's none of my business.
If they truly had their child's best interests at heart, they would raise them themselves and study languages together, if that is important to them. Then they can talk.
PS- Dear Elitist NY snobs: I hate to burst your bubble, but if you want a child prepared for the likely future, teach them Spanish. I know, it's not nearly as exotic, but that's what your child will need to know.
I've given this a lot of thought, and the only way it seems to have happened (for the most part), is that "the elite" have had their money handed to them, and just manage not to be able to spend it all.
Mark
sounds like little Hilton needs a baby sister or brother.
The parents are correct, learning Mandarin will be helpful to her later in life, but they sound so totally neurotic, she may not develop the other qualities that are going to be needed to deal in the world. There's nothing like siblings to let you know your place!
Patriotism seems to have vanished from his lexicon (which not surprising for a George Soros protege).
Too self-infatuated with his economics prognostications...to ever question whether being fiscally prescient is in any measure the be-all and end-all of existence.
He never seems to wonder whether perhaps China should NOT BE ALLOWED to have the destiny he (and of course its Communist Party) wish for it. It never occurs to him to ask whether they are morally FIT to be a super-power.
Let's just hope that the Chinese nanny is more pro-American than Dad is...
Anybody know if he is RINO or waffly like Lindsey Graham up in South Carolina?
Can you tell me anything about the origins of Taiwanese?
Some of the dialects came from the mainland....others of the more indigenous types are a bit different.
Honestly though I would have to brush up on the Taiwan linguistic thing...pose some questions and I will try to look up some answers if need be. I have not lived on Taiwan ever so I honestly have limited exposure to the minute differences in linguistics.
Some people say the real native language came from a Melanesian background (island people)...I have also heard people make connections with sea faring peoples named in ancient Chinese texts who were used as servants.
For a real solid answer as in yes or no its hard to say...there is no difinitive answer as far as I know unless something recent has been uncovered.
Much of the "Taiwanese" you're probably talking about though came due to migration.
Somewhere later in the thread, I posted a Nevada paper's editorial which talked about Rogers' DNC contribution, but I didn't look for anything else.
I was just curious about its history. I spent a year in south Taiwan. Nearly everyone speaks Taiwanse. My wife is a native Mandarin speaker and couldn't understand much of it at all. Natives down there also speak something called Hakka, which is different from Taiwanese. It's interesting because the government can't quite decide which language they want children learning in school--Mandarin, English, Taiwanese, or Hakka (for the natives).
Hakka is everywhere in Southern China and in "older" overseas Chinese establishments like Malaysia and Singapore. The most famous Hakka Chinese are in Guangdong province and even Hong Kong's countryside there were many. Most Hakkas on the mainland were very patriotic Chinese (and many were anti-Communist) while support for Taiwanese independence is minute for Hakka in Taiwan.
In general, current Taiwanese definition divides people into minorities (indigenous Taiwanese), Holos (like Hokkiens - those who moved from Southern Fujian/Hokkien like Xiamen/Amoy area and Guangdong's Chaozhou/Teochew areas many moons ago), Hakkas (Hakka Chinese, who likewise had long been in Taiwan since before Japan came), and Mainlanders (who had no ties with Taiwan before 1945, and this includes minorities on the mainland side of China like Manchus, Hmong/Miao).
So, are Hakka and Taiwanese "dialects" or languages in their own right?
Hakka, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Shanghaiese (Wu), and Mandarin are all different dialects of Chinese. They are different at branch level which means that are as different to each other as French to Spanish. But in written form they are all identical to each other (written and spoken Chinese could be very different except Mandarin).
What we call Taiwanese is identical to Hokkien spoken by most Chinese living in Malaysia and Singapore. (It is called such because Holos Chinese constitute a majority of in Taiwan) In theory it should be called Minnan language (Southern Fujian/Hokkien) but Taiwanese seems to have more cutting-edge words as it is the most developed part of China. The difference between "Hokkien" spoken in Singapore, Taiwanese spoken in Tainan, and Minnan spoken in Xiamen is like difference between American and New Zealand and British English.
Hakka is another Chinese dialect that is also spoken in Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Guangxi - provinces also with lots of Hakka Chinese. It has no relation to Taiwanese/Hokkien/Minnan.
Chien bee Nao Zi dwah. Roughly translated it means m"ore money than sense".
Shanghainese is called Wu? I did not know that. I was born in Shanghai and speak it fluently. I like to call it the Chinese version of New Yorkese because it is a fast paced and very hard tonal language. I happen to be living in New York City right now btw.
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