The Hmong Language and Culture: Are we too late?

The Hmong culture and language is slowly dying out. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about the history of our people, as many of us don’t, and it’s a bit sad to see that the end of our diverse culture and its history is slowly but surely dying. No one remembers who we are anymore. We’ve all become modernized and Americanized.

Growing up in the United States as a Hmong American student is one of the hardest things that I have and will continue to experience in my life. I will be part of a generation that will forever bear witness to the end of our culture and most unfortunately, our language. Ten years ago if someone told me that in the future there will be no more Hmong speakers again I would call that person crazy. Ten years later and we’ve already grown face paced towards the other direction. The majority of Hmong American babies that grow up in this country just don’t have enough resources to train them to think and speak in Hmong.

Why is this so hard? Because the United States’ education system fails to recognize the struggles that non-white students whose families first language isn’t English have to go through. The struggle is real. To go to school and learn English and go home to hear your parents speak in their native tongue. I was as confused as kid you can ever find. Why can’t we speak Hmong at school? Why do I have to learn the alphabet? Why do I have to go to school when throughout my ancestor’s history we've known only the life of farming? Why should I care about going to a school doesn't recognize who and what I am?

That is why Hmong kids that grow up in the United States might have one of the most difficult times transitioning from children to teenagehood and into adults. To have to be confused as a child and grow up in a world that doesn’t recognize you of who you are, even some don’t recognize it, is pure misery. At the age of 4 or 5, many Hmong kids go to school to learn English. To learn the way of the American Dream. Start them young and maybe you’ll make them American, right? It is tough to be Hmong.

But now, less and less of us speak Hmong, which means less and less of us are capable of teaching it to the new generations. I dare you to go to a Hmong house and observe children. Do they speak in English or in Hmong? Do they know anything about our culture or do they only care about video games and ipods and watching videos on Youtube? I think people just aren’t trying hard enough anymore. It’s easy to send your kids to school and have them learn English. We’ve all probably gone through this and even before kids go to school been taught English words as well. So it’s easy. It’s hard to teach them Hmong words and have them learn English at the same time. Any good parent would over look this and have their kids learn English so they can do well at school.

One of the problems that come with teaching Hmong to kids is that they never have time to learn. School starts at 7AM or 8AM for most kids. They don’t get out until 2PM or 3PM. As a kid, I never wanted to do anything other than just play outside so when I got out of school at 3 I played until 7 or 8. I would come inside to eat and sleep. I was one of the fortunate ones who got to learn Hmong. How did I do it?

My family didn’t move to the United States until 1991, and I was only a few months old. At this time only my dad knew English so every conversation my family had was in Hmong. I grew up hearing the Hmong language so I easily grasped our language. But for many Hmong kids growing up today,  it’s hard to keep many conversations in  Hmong because it’s so much easier to just express ourselves in English.

My hope is to continue to speak the language on an Everyday basis so that I don’t forget. I hope to have kids and teach them Hmong first before having them learn English, even if it means they might have a hard time learn English.

I also would like to continue learning about our culture and traditions. Not very many Hmong people remember any of it, and quite frankly I too have no idea what many things that we traditionally practiced. But like many, I am continuing to learn and hope that I will never stop learning. But for many, it’s easy to just look the other way and become an American. Have no traditional ties with our culture and just live an easy life. But for the Hmong community, family and gatherings so important that many of us, myself included, have just secluded ourselves from this aspect of our culture. I hope for it to get better but as it looks right now, it’s slowly dying.

Call me crazy, but maybe in 20-30 years I will be able to tell you exactly how many Hmong people can speak Hmong in this whole country. That’s how scary this dilemma might be and I hope I’m wrong. I hope that our people won’t look the other way, continue to learn about our culture and traditions but most importantly, learn how to speak our language.  

For people who don’t know what it’s like to lose a culture or tradition like this, think of it as if no one remembered the game of baseball and how to play it and how different it would be. What if you were one of the last few who know how to play baseball but no one is interested in learning? They rather play another sport because they've grown apart from the tradition of baseball? It is an interesting aspect of life to look at and this is what the Hmong people will face in the near future. Many of us aren't aware of it and it will hit some of us hard when we start to realize that our language is slowly dying and it will probably be too late to learn our language.