“A certain kind of sorrow lingers because a part of us wants it and wills it to persist, and Chow artfully and intelligently maps which kind of grief this is.“
Beyond thrilled to wake up on pub day to this thoughtful review of SEEING GHOSTS, out now ✨
https://t.co/3XTeNDTTe2
I've been interested in how people are reversing language attrition — the forgetting of a language by a once-fluent speaker. It happens *fast* when a family moves to a new country, within three generations.
I wrote a little about it in @TheAtlantic: https://t.co/ADgY0SXj1y
Hi all—back on X for a minute to ask:
Are you trying to learn/re-learn your heritage language? If so, I'd love to hear from you! https://t.co/m4s6ngm4bA
We're throwing a Lunar New Year celebration with @HachetteUS. Come along to this reading & party featuring @curtischin, @katchow, @ninejoseph, Subhashini Kaligotla, @SaharMuradi, & @salesses, & hosted by @ymmayer. 🧧
Thursday, February 15th, 6–9 PM ET.
https://t.co/TjGXAlN3Hq
This @katchow piece stabbed me in the heart.
As a fading Cantonese speaker, I'm planning for my cousins in Hong Kong (or my husband's in Japan) to take my son for summers when he's older. I just don't know any other way to do this than how we did it.
https://t.co/HKQyDmH7I1
@ihatejoelkim Joel ... you NEED to get these tongs. They're weighted, so they have this amazing mechanism so you can open/close them one-handed. I use them all the time, more often than a spatula. https://t.co/rUbcgzq2j6
I realized while reporting this story, that really my questions weren't just about language acquisition — but the *labor* required to teach a culture and heritage.
The key to teaching kids their heritage language is simple: Expose them to it often. The challenge is how to do that when the parents themselves don’t speak it well, @katchow writes: https://t.co/aCryQ0LZDy
so fascinating to talk with parents and linguists to try to understand if it's possible to reverse language attrition — which happens fast:
in many cases, a heritage language becomes all but extinct by the time a family’s third generation is living in a new country.
"Efforts to suppress languages other than English were present even in the country’s earliest days....In the U.S., bringing a heritage language back into a family usually comes down to the efforts of individuals." Thank you for sharing our story @TheAtlantic@katchow.
this incredible piece by @katchow hit me right in the heart, as someone on a journey to learn an endangered language so i can hopefully pass it down one day. 🩵
https://t.co/uBDOXdF3tw