#ke wenyu

[rhaenyraqueenred]

It was, in fact, one of the pieces his father had wooed his mother with, before they were married. Jem's father was the romantic, his mother more practical, but the music had moved her nonetheless. His father had insisted Jem learn it - "I played it for my bride, and one day, you will play it for yours."

Jonah Carstairs & Ke Wen Yu from The Shadowhunter Chronicles

Since Jonah hails from England during the Victorian era (1837–1901) and Ke Wenyu comes from China, also in the same period, during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).

[culiehua]

hellooo!! i think tumblr ate my ask so i'll resend it: do you have any headcanons for how jem was raised bilingual? according to jem in clockwork prince, apparently jonah spoke mandarin "badly". so i think jonah probably only/mostly spoke english with jem, while wen yu may have been more fluently bilingual.

oh no I'm so sorry! Idk where your ask went, thanks for sending it in again!! :)

As someone who grew up in a similar situation to Jem and who loves history, linguistics and the Ke Carstairs fam a bit too much, here's my take:

I think you'd be very correct to think that. As I've mentioned before, Chinese spoken language did not have a standard variety as it does now, so which one would one even learn? Plus, I don't think the European Institutes taught it as part of their curriculum, besides Latin and Greek etc. Truthfully I think he learned the Beijing variety for his crush or for his extended travel there. Hence its... level. So yes, he probably did not speak Chinese with his wife.

On the contrary, think that Wenyu spoke English well. It is known, that educated Chinese did speak certain European languages back then, e.g. French, Portugese, etc., learning them for general education, diplomacy or trade (I have personal lore on this as proof). Even Latin was used as a lingua franca between Britain and China at some point, used by Chinese Christian missionaries.

And I think that's what shadowhunters did back then: Rely on latin, as did everyone else.

My point being, it is possible that Jem wasn't just raised to be bilingual but trilingual, with Jonah speaking English, Wenyu and everyone else speaking Chinese, and them occasianally conversing in Latin, which Jem picked up on of course (this is how I learned English btw).

While this is enough to make him fluent in all three, I'd also like to point out that in monoracial populations, mixed children tend to cling to their foreign parent more, as both of them are the only ones to experience the effects of othering. Thus, I'd say Jem hyperfocused on his dad, had the full on British accent, played the violin, and saw the Carstairs side of him as something different, special, that is until he loses the other half and has barely anything to remember his mother by except a language no one else speaks and a jade pendant.

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[linguistlist-blog]

TOC: Pragmatics: Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) Vol. 34, No. 2 (2024)

2024. iii, 158 pp. Table of Contents ARTICLES Delving into suggestion speech acts in Chinese authoritative academic discourse: A cognitive pragmatic perspective Ke Li & Wenyu Liu pp. 161–189 Requests for concrete actions in interaction: How support workers manage client participation in mental health rehabilitation Camilla Lindholm, Jenny Paananen, Melisa Stevanovic, Elina Weiste & Taina Valkeapää pp. 190–214 ‘It seems my enemy is about having malaria’: The sociocultural context of verbal http://dlvr.it/T61Tgq

[rhaenyraqueenred]

Jonah Carstairs & Ke Wen Yu from The Shadowhunter Chronicles

Jonah Carstairs hails from England during the Victorian era (1837–1901) and Ke Wenyu comes from China, also in the same period, during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).

[culiehua]

so i was reading your jem ancestral origins posts (which was awesome btw), and i have a couple of questions

jem often mentions how he was "raised in shanghai". how young do you think jem would have had to be when wenyu and jonah moved for him to not remember anything about beijing?

the ke/carstairs must have interacted with other shadowhunters of the shanghai enclave being the heads of the institute. do you think would wenyu also have known shanghainese or other dialects?

hi!! (that makes me happy lol)

1. Since he remembers not being able to understand Shanghainese I think he would have been at an age where he could speak coherently at least a little bit so atleast 3 years old I'd say? Memories before that are wonky anyways so it checks out (is this because my first crisis in a new linguistic environment was at 3? Maybe)

2. I think it's generally difficult to speak many dialects since they don't have an alternative written form so it all depends on memorization. She can do a good Beijing and Shandong accent and ofc say some singular phrases in others. I think she might have picked up some phrases from the environment and maybe come to understand a bit of shanghainese passively but I don't think she's fluent bc she wasn't actually in shanghai for that long. However, I think it's possible she might have learned nanjingese out of necessity; either way communication was def there. In the worst case, they could communicate by writing lol

thank you for your ask!