ELL: RE: Language Shift and Gender

[Inge Genee]

Just a short reply to some of what Cem Bosdag said. When I said I thought that
the children of my parents' Turkish neighbours speak Turkish fluently, I was
thinking of the fact that when they play in the backyard (which is very close to
my parents' yard) they seem to mix Dutch and Turkish without any trouble,
switching back and forth at will. Of course, this says nothing about their
ability in later life to discuss chemical engineering in Turkish. I have lived
in Canada long enough to recognize this effect: I can talk in Dutch about
anything, except linguistics.
-Inge Genee

cem bozdag wrote:

> Hello everyone !
>
> First of all I think this current discussion is very interesting, because my
> parents native-tongue ( Zaza ) is dying out and I live in Germany and my own
> mother-tongue is Turkish and not German.
>
> I think women keep more to their native language than men. So I was
> surprised, when I´ve read about the Scadinavian situation. For example my
> father never speaks Zaza at home. His opinion on this language is, that Zaza
> is nothing more than the language of uneducated women. Turkish is for him
> the language of education and knowledge. When he went to school, Zaza was
> forbidden and the Turkish-only policy was present. Sometimes, when I start
> to speak Zaza heloughs and answers: What language are you talking. He denies
> his own native-tongue. Vice versa my mother nevers refuses her
> native-language. Even among Turks she starts speaking Zaza, about what my
> father feels embarassed.
>
> My native-tongue is Turkish. I can speak Turkish to some degree, but if I
> want to explain something technical in Turkish, I can´t do it. My Turkish is
> too poor for it. Sometimes I listen to Turkish news on TV and sometimes I
> can´t understand it. This is that, what Ina Genee didn´t recognize. It is
> difficult for foreigners to distinguish, if a child is a fluent speaker or
> not, if someone can´t understand the spoken language. Speaking a few
> sentences in a language means nothing. My Turkish grammar is very bad and
> because of that a lot of Turks recognize in Turkey, that I´m not living in
> Turkey or that I´m a foreigner. I myself I won´t be able to pass on
> languages like Turkish or Zaza to my children. But I´m sure it´ll be German.
>
> Regards,
>
> Cem
>
> ----
> Endangered-Languages-L Forum: endangered-languages-l at cleo.murdoch.edu.au
> Web pages http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/lists/endangered-languages-l/
> Subscribe/unsubscribe and other commands: majordomo at cleo.murdoch.edu.au
> ----

----
Endangered-Languages-L Forum: endangered-languages-l at cleo.murdoch.edu.au
Web pages http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/lists/endangered-languages-l/
Subscribe/unsubscribe and other commands: majordomo at cleo.murdoch.edu.au
----