ELL: Re: first vs. native language

[Victor Golla]

11/29/2002

 Gerd Jendraschek wrote:

> I am more and more convinced that a "link to the (own) past"
> makes you know who you are and is crucial for cultural
> creativity and that cutting this link entails cultural dis-
> orientation.
>
> I have been thinking about the "emotional factor" in language
> preservation for quite a while, as it seems to be the only
> argument that can convince monolingual laymen who appear to
> see particular languages as a communication device they happen
> to use in the same way as they use telephones and postcards,
> i.e. replaceable if something more efficient shows up. Maybe
> I am exaggerating, at least I hope so.

Unless one is advocating some kind of racist "blood and soil"
theory (I hope not) the only "emotional factor" that should
influence a person's choice of an identity language is his or
her personal linguistic history.  Your "mother language"
is either the one you acquired first, or one that is still
vitally present in your social network.  These social
realities engender valid emotional attachments, and can
enrich a person's life with cross-linguistic understanding.
But impersonal connections with a "past" that comes out of
books or constructed communal history are "emotional factors"
only to the extent that political rhetoric makes them so.
The sad history of Europe in the first half of the 20th century
should be a warning that, with few exceptions, such rhetoric,
and the feelings and actions it engenders, is reactionary,
mean-spirited, and constrictive.

Perhaps I think this way because I am a typical American
mongrel -- my "mother" language could equally well be
Welsh, German, French or Polish -- to whom ethnic identity
is by nature voluntary and avocational.  But the whole
world is slowly turning into an interethnic stew (think of
London; think of Singapore; think of Pico Iyer).  The
emotions toward language differences we should be cultivating
in blinkered monolinguals are curiosity, the excitement of
the exotic, and the love of wisdom.

Julia Sallabank, in her most recent posting, raises the
allied issue of the split that has developed in many
traditional communities between elders, imbued with the
complexity and subtlety of a local tradition, and young
enthusiasts out to revive "their" heritage in a simplified
--dare one say pidginized?--form.  The world, of
course, belongs to the young, and they will eventually
define what the "tradition" is.  But one can wonder (as
I did in a paper I wrote a couple years ago) what unexpected
developments might await us as traditional linguistic
diversity is transmuted into something rather different by
a high-tech, interactive global communications system.

                                           --Victor Golla
                                       Arcata, California

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