LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2004.01.24 (02) [E]

Tue Feb 24 16:52:29 UTC 2004

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From: Ed Alexander <edsells at cogeco.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2004.02.23 (04) [E]

At 04:04 PM 02/23/04 -0800, Jannie Lawn wrote:
>I have been wondering about that.  If I had had children (which I haven't),
>their 'mother tongue' might well have been Dutch, or they might have grown
>up bi-lingually, with both Dutch and English playing an equal role in the
>early years.  However, the 'native language' would definitely have been
>English, as that is the language of the country.  What about being
inventive
>and calling it our 'original language' or 'first language'?

I think you're confusing "native language" with "the language of the
natives".  The word "native", of course, refers to "birth".  My wife, who
teaches ESL, says they usually do use the term "first language", "second
language" and so forth instead of any other terms.  This can be confusing,
of course, when two languages are used in the home.  If your hypothetical
children turned out to be bi-lingual, this would be unusual, since the vast
majority of children of Dutch immigrants to Canada end up being
unilingual.  You'd have much better luck if you were Italian.

Ed Alexander, Canada

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2004.02.23 (04) [E]

Ron wrote:

> Sure, but how about 'maternal language' and 'paternal language' for people
> with two native languages where they learned one from their mother and one
> from their father?  That's how I do it.

So what would you say in the case of my friends where the mother is French,
the father is Dutch, and the children were born and raised in Germany and
speak German like natives, passable French (at least one of them) and very
little Dutch? Their main language is German.

Or take my own children; the first two have a Dutch father, the third an
American father, they have a German mother and lived in the USA for 8 years
from when they were 5 and 7. The first two grew up speaking German and Dutch
(with German as the first language), but then switched to English as their
first language (and now have German and English both as "first language",
with Dutch a close second); the third grew up speaking German at home until
she was three, then switching to English entirely once she went to daycare,
and then back to German when she was five and moved back to Germany; now she
also has two completely "native" languages...

And still, I, for one, think the expression "mother tongue" or "mother
language" is very appropriate. It hints at the physical connection between
mother and child; first through the pregnancy, then through the first years
where a baby is normally breastfed and thus close to its mother around the
clock (when I say normally, I mean that is how nature intended and, sadly,
not what one sees all the time in western "civilization"). So a child is
connected to its culture by its language like it was physically connected to
its mother in its early years; to me, this is a nice symbol which has
nothing to do with from whom it actually learned its grammar and vocabulary.

By the way, when my oldest daughter learned to talk, she noticed that her
father liked to eat only orange and ginger marmalade, while I ate other
kinds of jam and didn't touch those. So she would distinguish between
"mammalade" and "pappalade".

Gabriele Kahn

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From: Steven Hanson <hanayatori at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Lexicon

From: Jannie Lawn <jannie.lawn at ntlworld.com>
Subject:  LL-L "Lexicon" 2004.02.23 (02) [E]

Hallo all

Tom said: Don't know whether this has been mentioned this or not but
isn't it "mother tongue" and "native language" in English?

I have been wondering about that.  If I had had children (which I haven't),
their 'mother tongue' might well have been Dutch, or they might have grown
up bi-lingually, with both Dutch and English playing an equal role in the
early years.  However, the 'native language' would definitely have been
English, as that is the language of the country.  What about being inventive
and calling it our 'original language' or 'first language'?

Groeten, Jannie Lawn-Zijlstra
Cambridge, UK

Hello,

I wonder if I'm the only one who notices a difference between "mother
tongue" and "mother's tongue".  "Mother tongue" to me is just an idiomatic
expression that really doesn't have anything to do with the language spoken
by my mother.  For that I would use "mother's tongue", if I had to use a
phrase.  Here's a kooky thought: our mothers are the origin of us all, so
technically wouldn't that make our mothers' languages the same as our
"original languages", that is to say, the language of our origins?  "Native
language" implies the idea of a language that one is born with, or learns
from birth (from Latin natus, from nasci, "to be born").  In essence it's
the same as a "mother tongue" or an "original language", but I wonder if,
hypothetically speaking, an English baby were adopted to a Japanese couple,
and raised in Japan.  This baby would, by birth, be English, but would its
"native language" be English or Japanese?  Do social perceptions play a role
in determining the ideas of "native language", "original language", or
"mother tongue"?

Steven

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Sociolinguistics

I know several families similar to the ones you described above, Gabriele,
which is not all that uncommon in places with high immigration rates.

> So what would you say in the case of my friends where the mother is
French,
> the father is Dutch, and the children were born and raised in Germany and
> speak German like natives, passable French (at least one of them) and very
> little Dutch? Their main language is German.

French: maternal language
Dutch: paternal language
German: communal language, main language

I hesitate to call any of the mentioned ones "first language" here, because
I do not know anything about the parents' language teaching habits and about
their individual relationships with the children.  A parent may try to teach
a child his or her language but does so inconsistently, usually switching
between it and the other patent's and/or the communal language.  In such
cases the children end up choosing the one they consider "stronger" or more
desirable, which in most cases is the communal language (because of play and
school environments and because they want to be "normal").

I know of three cases in which children refused or stopped to speak one of
the parent's language.  In one case this is because of an uneasy or distant
relationship with that parent.  In the other cases the mothers, whose native
languages are German and Japanese, speak poor French (the communal
language), and apparently the children consider this to be a disincentive
for using the respective maternal languages, even though they can understand
them.  In both cases, the children have expressed discomfort, apparently
embarrassment, about their mothers' use of their native languages and their
poor use of French.  In these cases, French is definitely the main language,
though not the maternal language.

The term "first language" may be a bit vague.  Is it "first" in a
chronological sense or "first" in a ranking sense?  If it is chronological,
the "first" language may be German and Japanese in these cases, and French
may be the "first language" in a ranking sense.

> And still, I, for one, think the expression "mother tongue" or "mother
> language" is very appropriate. It hints at the physical connection between
> mother and child; first through the pregnancy, then through the first
years
> where a baby is normally breastfed and thus close to its mother around the
> clock (when I say normally, I mean that is how nature intended and, sadly,
> not what one sees all the time in western "civilization"). So a child is
> connected to its culture by its language like it was physically connected
to
> its mother in its early years; to me, this is a nice symbol which has
> nothing to do with from whom it actually learned its grammar and
vocabulary.

I don't disagree with that, and I think this is also what Steven said above.
My point is that some people may not have a "mother tongue" (unless you want
to stretch it by saying it was the language they were supposedly exposed to
during pregnancy but never actually learned).  OK, so you could extend this
to any mother figure where an actual mother is absent, such as a
grandmother, aunt, nanny or, for all I know, by a male.  Children may also
be raised by their fathers, and the rate of this is increasing due to
adoption by male couples.  Can you call the child's first language "mother
tongue" then?  "Native language"?  "First language"?  "Paternal language"?

A professor I once had grew up in the sort of household in which children do
not have a very close relationships with their parents, practically visiting
them on a regular basis.  He was born in Manchuria.  His father was a
Tsarist Russian diplomat of German descent, and his mother was Finnish (born
under Russian occupation of Finland).  He always told us that his first
language was Finnish and that he only learned Russian after he and his
mother had been evacuated to St. Petersburg.  Russian then became his first
language, though he continued using Finnish and also learned German from
relatives.  It was only when we were taking turns watching at his deathbed
when he was in his late 90s that we came to the conclusion that his first
language was Mandarin, though he had not known any Chinese as an adult.  In
his dying dilerium he kept speaking Mandarin in a child's manner.  It turned
out that he had been cared for by a Chinese nanny in his toddler years, but
by the time he was about school-entry age he was unable to communicate with
that nanny during a visit to Manchuria ...  So, what would we call Mandarin
and Finnish in this case?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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