I am really grateful that my friend Yvonne and her family have agreed to be our interviewees for this project. It is interesting to know my high school friend again from a different perspective, which has also enriched my understanding towards the influence of language within a family.
Yvonne (right) and I
I share the same hometown Chiu Chow as the Wu family do, but in my family the passing on of Chiu Chownese has ended in the third generation, where my cousins and I could not understand much Chiu Chownese. Therefore I am quite curious about the reason why Chiu Chownese has remained in the Wu family. I did get the answer through this project, where I understand that family is an essential element to language preservation as home is everyone’s first ‘teacher’.
It might be difficult for me to learn Chiu Chownese at this age, given that it is not widely applicable in my daily life, but the project have encouraged me to learn more about my hometown culture. I would like to spend more time with my family members, especially the older generation, as I found that through conversation I could get to know more about my family history and hometown culture from their past experience. The stories are always amusing and more importantly it could bring the family closer!
