Delhi Hindi(s)

[Gail Coelho]

VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
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          John Peterson, University of Munich, Germany
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Oh I see the problem -- it's with the meaning of the term mother tongue.
There's all this confusion with the linguistic and non-linguistic usages of
this term and others involving one's linguistic repertoire. Personally,
I've decided to use various terms in the following way:

mother tongue = community language . Used basically the way lay people use
'm.t.' in India -- that is, one isn't necessarily fluent in it (may not
even know it) but its the language that one claims as a marker of identity
in a community.

native language = first language that was learned in childhood before age 3
-- if many were learned simultaneously, then the person has many native
languages.

first language = the dominant language in a person's repertoire. A person
could have many first languages, perhaps -- like someone who used English
most of the time outside the home and Hindi most of the time at home and
had native fluency in both (irrespective of the dialect s/he uses, for
example Indian English rather than British).

In describing myself, I tend to say that I learned Tamil and English as my
native languages, but my first language is English. Because from what I
hear, I spoke both well upto about age 5, but then lost a lot of my Tamil
fluency. I'm 'relearning' Tamil right now!

This is how I use these terms -- I realize that it's not common usage in
linguistics. This division doesn't solve all the problems with categorizing
one's languages but it does seem a little better than using all 3
interchangeably.

Gail

At 01:29 PM 7/19/99 +1200, you wrote:
>VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
>Editors:  Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York
>          John Peterson, University of Munich, Germany
>Details:  Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say: INFO VYAKARAN
>Subscribe:Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say:
>          SUBSCRIBE VYAKARAN FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME
>          (Substitute your real name for first_name last_name)
>Archives: http://listserv.syr.edu
>
>>
>>At 03:26 PM 7/16/99 +1200, you wrote:
>>>other suitable term. My informant group consisted of 22 people half of whom
>>>came from families which did not speak Hindi as their 'native' tongue
>>>previously. That is, they were either the first or the second generation to
>>>use Hindi as their first language, and did not speak their
>>>parents/grandparents mother/native tongue or first language. I would not
>>>like to classify them as people who have "lost their mother tongue". The
>>
>>Hi Kalika,
>>
>>I wonder why you wouldn't want to treat them as people who've lost their
>>mother tongue -- is it because they still have some knowledge of it? They
>>do sound to me like cases of language shift and therefore at least partial
>>language loss.
>>
>>Gail Coelho
>
>Hi,
>Yes, it is a case of language loss, and in some cases total. I think my
>labelling is because of their own attitude towards Hindi. They themselves
>regard Hindi as their mother tongue and have native like competence in it.
>It would be wrong to say " they have no mother tongue" because they do have
>a language they identify with (Hindi). In a questionairre about language
>attitude, all of them said " My parents( or grandparents) mother tongue is
>Punjabi/Bengali/Malyalam... but mine is Hindi." or something similar. I
>guess, its how we choose to define mother tongue. I am not saying that they
>are not cases of language shift or loss. They most definitely are.
>
>Kalika Bali
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>***********************************************************************
>Kalika Bali
>lecturer in linguistics
>dept. of literature and language
>school of humanities
>the university of the south pacific
>post box no. 1168
>suva, fiji
>phone : +679-212263                      fax : +679-305053
>e-mail : bali_k at usp.ac.fj
>***********************************************************************