<p>I’d rather leave it out if I am not proficient in that.</p>
<p>see if you can find a way to let them know that you’re cantonese and while it helps some you were in no way fluent in chinese previously.
the way i see this is that when adcoms see that you’re chinese (of any kind, they can’t differentiate) and taking chinese, they assume that you’re already relatively fluent and therefore taking chinese as the easy way out. At our school, most of the many chinese people take chinese and for them it’s really easy. However, I imagine that adcoms would look for people who look to challenge them and would assume that you weren’t by taking chinese as a chinese-american. So I would definitely try to explain it without making it look like an excuse.</p>
<p>I agree with some of the suggestions of the other posters, but maybe another idea could be to ask someone from an office of admissions of a college you’re interested in?</p>
<p>They would probably know how to best express this distinction, especially considering that they’ll be the ones reading your application, not us :)</p>
<p>IMO, Americans think all Chinese people speak Chinese. Whatever the heck that is, and that is an error. From what I have gathered, Mandarin is the language that is usually taught in the U.S. I do not know how different Cantonese is although I have heard it is quite different. </p>
<p>If I were a young person of Chinese ancestry, I would use the clearer terms of Cantonese and Mandarin rather than a generic Chinese. If you were from Kenya, you wouldn’t say you speak African, you would say you speak Swahili, right? Just clarify what you write.</p>
<p>It would really be a challenge to me, as I’m not just taking Chinese for ‘an easy A’ type of thing. If I was, then I wouldn’t be trying to take IB Chinese my Jr. and Sr. year.</p>
<p>Which I am trying to do, I’m applying for IB.</p>
<p>Would my best bet be to put down English as my native language? Because I was born here and such?</p>
<p>I mean, my first words were ‘Dad’ and ‘Mama’. In English.</p>
<p>To clarify more, I was mostly worried about what Colleges – what really matters in my future, because my friend says it’s sad that I didn’t know sufficient Chinese. And she’s like, but we all went to Chinese school. I went for half a year, and didn’t learn a thing. It was all poems, and the teacher didn’t even speak sufficient English. So when I found out I had the chance to take Chinese at my school, as well as the chance to take IB Chinese SL/HL in my Junior and Senior years in the future, I went for it.</p>
<p>I basically have this poster’s situation, found from a similar thread:</p>
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<p>English is your first language.</p>
<p>Also, if I take Spanish too, from a Community College class(es) or from a Spanish tutor, how would I go about including that in my app? Or would I just not altogether?</p>
<p>And on the common college app, is there a blank to fill in ethnicity and first language? Otherwise, how could they assume/not assume?</p>
<p>There should be a space for additional information, Superbest. You could also include it on a supplemental resume.</p>
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<p>What do you mean by “head-start”? If you can read Cantonese, you can read Mandarin. </p>
<p>As for the original question, I feel Spanish and French are just as commonplace as Mandarin, so you might as well take what you want. I can’t imagine why colleges would penalize you for it.</p>
<p>You should take the course because after all, you live in Amercia and they expect all Chinese to know Mandarin. Moreover, Mandarin is going to be useful someday in the future, depending on what career you choose. Don’t worry about what colleges think. Even if you take AP French or Spanish, it doesn’t gurantee you can go to your desired college, so just take what you want. </p>
<p>Since you have no exposure to Mandarin at home, I suggests you to watch some mandarin-speaking drama or youtube chinese songs with lyrics.</p>
<p>should this be explained in additional info?</p>