Chinook Jargon origins for ethnonyms used in 20th c. Tlingit.

[Jeffrey Kopp]

Well, as I understand it, wives were an important factor in cross-tribal
communication due to their bilinguality (as also were slaves). However,
whether children remained bilingual would depend on how long they continued
(or were permitted) to speak their mother's tongue. I don't know enough
about Native culture myself to guess one way or the other.

I believe children who transition completely to a new language before the
age of 6 may lose their knowledge of their first tongue by adolescence. I
had a high school classmate who came from Austria at 4 or 5 who couldn't
remember any German by the time I met him at 15. (He was actually taking
German I that year, and found it as difficult as his classmates.) My
grandmother spoke only German (in rural Illinois before the turn of the
century) until first taught English at about age 5; although she recalled
"still thinking in German" (to some extent) until her late teens, she could
no longer speak it by then, and could remember only a handful of German
nouns by the time I knew her.

I'd guess if such children continued to speak their mother's tongue until
at least, say, age 10, then they probably retained bilingual ability.

Regards,

Jeff

At 01:51 PM 9/25/2003, David Lewis wrote:

>Also, the way wives were chosen among people of Northwest Indigenous
>Cultures may play a part here as well. Manytimes, wives would come from
>other tribes than your own. Therefore wives would possibly have a different
>first language and be from outside of their husband's cultural context.
>This was a common occurrence, common enough for linguistic theorists to
>place some weight on the the way children would speak the woman's language
>until they came of age, where they would then speak the language of their
>father, or husband, whatever their situation. (I don't have references to
>this theory discussion but I have seen it in paper's from South American
>tribal subjects.)  Therefore, tribal people would grow up naturally bi- or
>multi-lingual.
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