Effects of Parents on Ethnic Language Retention by Children: The Case of Chinese in Urban Canada

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of parents on ethnic language retention by children in five Chinese communities in urban Canada. Parents' direct promotion of ethnic language is found to explain 44 percent of the total variance of children's language retention, indicating that the family is an important language retaining agent. Parents' direct promotion is related positively to their ethnic community involvement and negatively to their knowledge of English/French. Surprisingly, parents' ethnic identification and their length of time in Canada have no significant relationships with the above variables, suggesting that, among Canadian-Chinese parents, ethnic identification is not a determinant of ethnic life, and their levels of assimilation have remained rather stable.

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