First-language attrition

[Aurolyn Luykx]

Too many comments to respond to today!
Re Stan's comparisons of Africa and Brazil, it's worth
remembering that Africa has many times the population
of Brazil! And certainly Africa is not uniformly "a
rural place" -- while much of the population is rural,
the continent boasts many cities of millions of
people.  The interesting thing about many African
countries is that they have SEVERAL languages of wider
communication, rather than just one clearly dominant
one. So, you certainly don't need to be a child of
"cross-tribal marriage" to grow up multilingual in
Africa.
While the majority of Brazilians probably do live in
cities, my impression is NOT that it's a "huge
majority." More importantly, in Brazil, only 1-2% of
the population are indigenous language speakers
(leaving aside for the moment that Brazil is also home
to the largest Japanese speech community outside of
Japan). Certainly Brazil represents a lg. ecology that
is more hostile to minority languages than most --
where I differ with Stan is on his (apparent)
impression that Brazil is typical. I see it as
decidedly atypical.
Aurolyn

> >From what little I understand of Africa, it seems
> like a rural place. The percentage of people living
> in cities is low compared to the rest of the world.
> I'm sure there are some cross tribal marriages
> occuring in cities, and some of the children of
> these cross tribal marriages likely grow up speaking
> only the L2 of the city. However, since Africa is so
> multilingual, this is probably still rare.
>
> In most of the world, the language ecology is very
> different. In Brazil, for instance, the huge
> majority of people live in cities and speak only
> Portuguese. When indigenous people who speak their
> own language move to the city, their children almost
> always lose their L1. Could say the language ecology
> is much more hostile in Brazil?
>
> Stan Anonby
>
> On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:13:21 -0400
>  David Balosa <balosa at lasalle.edu> wrote:
> > Dear 
>
Hamo:                   
> When Does L2 Endanger
> L1?      My answer to your
> concern is based on my personal experience.First, I
> believe that L2 endangers L1 in a situation where L2
> is of a high prestige language and that L1 is
> of a low prestige one. Second, L2 endangers L1 in a
> situation of personal attitude and identity
> choice.Bilingual or multilingual people like myself
> will endanger our L1 not because of how much a
> given L2 is sold to us, but because of our choice of
> the language we want to identify ouselves with and
> the social class that each of these languages
> can offer.    I actually speak
> various languages ( Portuguese, French, English,
> Spanish, Lingala, Kiswahili, Kikongo ---). I started
> learning French when I was 12 years old. At that
> age, I spoke Portuguese, as my L1 at home with
> my parents and spoke F!
>  rench as
> > my L2 at school and when playing with peers.
> Besides Portuguese and French was  Lingala, a
>  lingua franca and a language of wide
> communication in the DR Congo.To make the language
> business more complicated for me at that
> younger age, my parents spoke their
> "indigenous" L1, Kikongo at home and with their
> peers. Kikongo languagesneighboringis one of Angolan
> national languages. Many of its dialects are also
> used as national languages in the neighboring
> countries such as Congo Kinshasa and Congo
> Brazzaville.    
>     How did I keep my Portuguese in
> spite of a substantial French and Lingala
> invasion? My parents did draw a line, which i call
> "parent's voice", saying "Portuguese at home because
> we will go back to Angola one day, OK!"I was
> receptive to their message, but said to myself
> 'French is more beautiful than Portuguese and French
> people are more developed than Portuguese people.' I
> decided to learn and de!
>  velop both
> > French and Portuguese because of social demands,
> my parent and my personal attitude.The rest of the
> languages came along little by little because of
> their consistent exposure. instruction was not
> needed or supplied. With what outcome?Today I
> still speak Portuguese with a native intuition,
> French with a native like intuition, English, my
> everyday,  professional and
> research language for 12 years now, as my
> L2.  As you can see,  my English
> performance has not invaded my L1a, L1b, and L1c ...
> because i have drawn a line between these languages
> and have given them specific role in my cognitive
> universe. ImplicationI believe that the only
> way we can help language learners not to let L2
> endangers L1 is to address each language role and
> personal attitude toward these languages.Our
> memories are very dependent. It belongs to us as
> languages users to direct it. David Balosa
>
>



		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail