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From: Peter Hullah <Peter.Hullah@eurocontrol.fr>
Subject: Re: What is a native language? was Re: Rubbish Speak
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Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 09:41:09 GMT
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Mark Rosenfelder wrote:
> 
> In article <rte-2202961339370001@mac-118.lz.att.com>,
> Ralph T. Edwards <rte@elmo.lz.att.com> wrote:
> >Because it probably is not possible otherwise.  If parents speak language
> >A and the rest of the world speaks language B the child's first language
> >is B not A.  They may be bilingual, but their native language is B.
> 
> Either you don't know anyone in this situation or you're not thinking it
> through.  A child spends several years with its parents before being
> exposed much to society as a whole; as a result, if it's spoken to in
> language B, its first language is B, and its native language ('native'
> = 'from birth') is B.

Speaking as a Brit, with English mother tongue, whose wife is a Brit, with
English mother tongue, living in France, raising our child - born in France -
here and working in an international organisation where about 150 of the 300
staff are in the same situation, I feel that I can safely say that you are
talking rubbish. 

Half of my colleagues are learning French from their children,
whether the children were born here or not! There are plenty of children who,
initially, are bi-lingual or - in cases where the parents and of different
nationalities - even tri-lingual. This lasts until the kids are about 6 years old.
They then refuse to allow their mother to talk to them in anything other than
French outside the home - they don't want to be seen as being different by
their peers.

Whilst they continue to understand their parents' language, and even speak it
at home, they are much more fluent in French and by the time they are 10 or so,
they have very little technical vocabulary other than French and even loose
some of the more elementary words by the time they leave school.

My son, aged 14 months, has a vocabulary of about 9 words, of which 4 are
the names of the pets and his rag doll. He says "mama" and "dada" which are
English-based (French-based would be "mama" and "papa"). He also offers
something to be taken by saying "tiens", requests something by saying "donne"
and most distictly says "attends" when he's doing something and doesn't want 
to be interupted.

> Yes, this is a very common phenomenon, but not universal.  Again, I know
> a number of exceptions personally-- e.g. a German girl who spoke to her
> parents in German (through university age), a Latvian-American co-worker
> whose children speak Latvian at home. 

Most bi-lingual people, of which I now consider myself one, will speak to others
in the language which suits the others - it's called common courtesy and has
nothing to do with native language. 
> 
> Studies of bilingualism suggest that children learn the languages they
> need to get by... and no more. 

This begs, therefore, the question as to why anyone in their right mind
bothers to learn esperanto as, given that a previous poster informed us
that the total number of "native" speakers in the world was equivalent 
the population of my (small) village, it is probably the world's least
spoken language and definitely not needed by anyone "to get by".


> Once a child figures out that his parents
> understand English, he may well speak only English-- if his parents let
> him.  Having to interact with people who speak only the home language
> (e.g. grandparents) is generally enough to ensure that the home language
> is actively spoken.

Exactly, and if his parents speak English, as well as Esperanto, he will
drop Esperanto since no-one else within 500 miles speaks it. The chances
that his grandparents only speak Esperanto are somewhat slim. (I will
accept that they might, if they lived in Poland, speak Esperanto and Polish,
therefore making Esperanto a common language. I can't be bothered to guess
how seldom this is the case)

Pete 

-- 

Peter H.C. Hullah                     Technical Services
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