Multicultural >> Ignorant Bush
Is it possible to forget your native language?
This is bulldoozy!!! I immigrated to America when I was 10 years old, I hardly had any contact with people from my ethnicity since I was living in a suburban neighborhood and only English was spoken in my house because my parents wanted to learn it!! However, I never forgot my native language, which is a difficult language. I still speak Albanian and can even understand the different dialects. In fact, I haven't even forgotten Italian completely! I think it's possible to forget a second language if you move to a different country(as it has unfortunately happened with my Italian, it is not as excellent as it was when I spoke it at 10) but your native language NEVER!
I think very young children (much younger than ten) may forget their language.
I have known several cases of children (five and under) who either were bilingual and suddenly no longer had access to one language or who spoke one language, were adopted, moved to another country and became fluent in the new language only.
I have known several cases of children (five and under) who either were bilingual and suddenly no longer had access to one language or who spoke one language, were adopted, moved to another country and became fluent in the new language only.
In my opinion 'mother tongue' or 'native tongue' is by definition the language which he has learnt first, the one in which he has learnt to think - even though often another language may become stronger or even altogether replace it. I have met people here in Finland who have spoken as child Karelian (in areas that Finland lost to Soviet Union during WWII) but nowadays remember only fossilized phrases and poems. It seems to me that if a person loses contact to the environment where their mother tongue is/was spoken before the age of 20, then there is a great risk to lose the ability to use it as a vehicle to express one´s thoughts. This risk is still bigger, if this language is a minority language and the child has been strongly exposed to another language (usually the majority language of a country) already before school age.
>> "where their mother tongue is/was spoken before the age of 20"
An enthusiastic language learner would say things may be remedied through conscious study with motivation.
But in real terms, it may be easier to lose a native language at a younger age.
One of my friends can speak passable Cantonese, while having been in Australia since her early teens. Of course, she's simply ignorant of today's language. Her younger sisters are even less fortunate. They can't even write and one of them was actually foreign born.
I'd say... I actually learnt to be a native speaker (like everyone) around the time I became an adult. Having spoken a language for 10 years in childhood doesn't guarantee firm knowledge.
An enthusiastic language learner would say things may be remedied through conscious study with motivation.
But in real terms, it may be easier to lose a native language at a younger age.
One of my friends can speak passable Cantonese, while having been in Australia since her early teens. Of course, she's simply ignorant of today's language. Her younger sisters are even less fortunate. They can't even write and one of them was actually foreign born.
I'd say... I actually learnt to be a native speaker (like everyone) around the time I became an adult. Having spoken a language for 10 years in childhood doesn't guarantee firm knowledge.
I am English, and live in the UK. I have a friend who is Cantonese (From Hong Kong), and he lived there for the first 10 years of his life. In Hong Kong, he spoke Cantonese with his father (who is Cantonese) and English with his mother (who is English). At school in Hong Kong, he spoke English, because he went to an English school. Presumably this means that his parents always did plan for them to live in England, as they do now, because otherwise, surely, they would have sent him to a Cantonese school.
He can speak only very limited Cantonese - what he uses with his father. He can only write his name in characters, and he is not aware of certain aspects of the language - for example, he was completely oblivious to the fact that his language has 9 tones! He can speak the Cantonese he knows well, but he doesn't know much.
He can speak only very limited Cantonese - what he uses with his father. He can only write his name in characters, and he is not aware of certain aspects of the language - for example, he was completely oblivious to the fact that his language has 9 tones! He can speak the Cantonese he knows well, but he doesn't know much.
I thought Cantonese only had six tones, but to avoid being a dummy, I went to the sometimes reliable, sometimes not, Wiki site. Wiki states that the OLDER descriptions put Cantonese at 9 or 10 tones. That's older, descriptions.
I don't think I will learn Cantonese (unless I get a mandate to do so), but let's not scare folks off with extra tones. Makes Vietnamese and Mandarin seem dang simple when you add in those extra tones.
Me: Wow, Mandarin is a piece of cake. Only 5,000 more characters, but only FOUR tones, not like that Cantonese.
Me: Vietnamese. Man. That one tone is really creaky. I thought all the Vietnamese newscasters were emotional unless I learned that oh, that's the way it is supposed to sound. Hey! Only six tones!
I don't think I will learn Cantonese (unless I get a mandate to do so), but let's not scare folks off with extra tones. Makes Vietnamese and Mandarin seem dang simple when you add in those extra tones.
Me: Wow, Mandarin is a piece of cake. Only 5,000 more characters, but only FOUR tones, not like that Cantonese.
Me: Vietnamese. Man. That one tone is really creaky. I thought all the Vietnamese newscasters were emotional unless I learned that oh, that's the way it is supposed to sound. Hey! Only six tones!
>>he was completely oblivious to the fact that his language has 9 tones! He can speak the Cantonese he knows well, but he doesn't know much.
I think the Brits wouldn't, too, be in general aware of the fact that they've got several types of intonations - which is what I learnt last semester in a linguistics lecture.
I "learnt" these tones formally only when I attended high school, and only when I had to study something as obscure as Chinese literature - people her e don't read, and you are either very sophisticated or really dumb for studying as hard, boring and useless things as literature.
There's a certain whatchamacallit category in your brain area of language that stores countless idiosyncrasies of any language you know. Both English and Cantonese have loads of "weird" (for the average class student who is destined NOT to master the language until s/he frees him/herself from the classroom) intonation patterns, and very often that is not what a dictionary would offer. Since they DO change over time, your job is to live with it and tune your mind with it like your watch with the standard time in your country.
>>Wiki states that the OLDER descriptions put Cantonese at 9 or 10 tones. That's older, descriptions.
They are just different interpretations. The Hong Kong scholars, perhaps influenced by Guangzhou scholars (politically?), are now reducing the figure to just 6. One consequence may be that the figure becomes less daunting.
Whatever it is, an intonation pattern or a tone, it's just music and you must learn to sing the song with and like natives. There's a certain huge difference between classroom textbooks and discussions in lectures/street talk. You might know I'm not really native in Mandarin - for I've never lived alone with it - and so I reviewed learning materials on and off. Then I found it. Very often newscaster-like actors do the audios. They speak EXTREMELY professionally. They could very the world's greatest (Chinese) audiobook actors/newscasters, BUT
in the audios, they cannot speak like normal Chinese (e.g. me). No slang, no colloquialisms, no recent news, no small talks (because they have to speak like newscasters), no Chinese food, no Chinese jokes, no romance.......you name it.
That is to say, it's also my own task to listen more to street talk rather than textbook-speak. You don't master textbook-speak, do you?
I think the Brits wouldn't, too, be in general aware of the fact that they've got several types of intonations - which is what I learnt last semester in a linguistics lecture.
I "learnt" these tones formally only when I attended high school, and only when I had to study something as obscure as Chinese literature - people her e don't read, and you are either very sophisticated or really dumb for studying as hard, boring and useless things as literature.
There's a certain whatchamacallit category in your brain area of language that stores countless idiosyncrasies of any language you know. Both English and Cantonese have loads of "weird" (for the average class student who is destined NOT to master the language until s/he frees him/herself from the classroom) intonation patterns, and very often that is not what a dictionary would offer. Since they DO change over time, your job is to live with it and tune your mind with it like your watch with the standard time in your country.
>>Wiki states that the OLDER descriptions put Cantonese at 9 or 10 tones. That's older, descriptions.
They are just different interpretations. The Hong Kong scholars, perhaps influenced by Guangzhou scholars (politically?), are now reducing the figure to just 6. One consequence may be that the figure becomes less daunting.
Whatever it is, an intonation pattern or a tone, it's just music and you must learn to sing the song with and like natives. There's a certain huge difference between classroom textbooks and discussions in lectures/street talk. You might know I'm not really native in Mandarin - for I've never lived alone with it - and so I reviewed learning materials on and off. Then I found it. Very often newscaster-like actors do the audios. They speak EXTREMELY professionally. They could very the world's greatest (Chinese) audiobook actors/newscasters, BUT
in the audios, they cannot speak like normal Chinese (e.g. me). No slang, no colloquialisms, no recent news, no small talks (because they have to speak like newscasters), no Chinese food, no Chinese jokes, no romance.......you name it.
That is to say, it's also my own task to listen more to street talk rather than textbook-speak. You don't master textbook-speak, do you?
Is it possible to forget your native language?
= Is language metamorphosis possible?
= Is language metamorphosis possible?
Yes!
The second generation hispanics in the US have English as their native language and most of them do not understand even a simple sentences in Spanish.
The second generation hispanics in the US have English as their native language and most of them do not understand even a simple sentences in Spanish.
<< The second generation hispanics in the US have English as their native language and most of them do not understand even a simple sentences in Spanish. >>
I've read that while this is usually the case with second generation Hispanics, some of them retain the Chicano accent, even without knowing Spanish. Can anyone confirm this?
I've read that while this is usually the case with second generation Hispanics, some of them retain the Chicano accent, even without knowing Spanish. Can anyone confirm this?