Thursday, February 26, 2009

A new accent in Chinatown

Boston Globe:
Mandarin begins displacing Cantonese as dialect of choice


Mandarin speakers now make up a third of the kindergartners and first-graders at the Josiah Quincy Elementary School, up from hardly any five years ago.

At the Asian American Civic Association, across from the Buddha statue on Tyler Street, 23 percent of the clients who enrolled in English classes and other services last year spoke Mandarin, up from 17 percent five years earlier.