Time to decide what a native speaker is.

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Anuradha Chepur
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Post by Anuradha Chepur » Wed Nov 15, 2006 8:18 am

If the parents speak two different L1s, can you call the child a native speaker of two languages?

JuanTwoThree
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Post by JuanTwoThree » Wed Nov 15, 2006 8:45 am

Here's a difficult idea, which will probably get me into trouble:

I grew up in a very Welsh speaking part of Wales. There were older people who, although they didn't know any Welsh at all, seemed to not have a NS vocabulary in English either. There was a lot of "Give me that whatsit" or "thingy".

I'm not talking about Welsh word order or L1 grammar like a universal q. tag. Lots of non-Welsh speakers in Wales are heavily influenced by that. Apparently Dylan Thomas is easily translated into Welsh because it can be done word for word and he didn't speak a word of Welsh.

I mean an impoverished L1. If for some reason a whole generation of parents, neighbours and teachers etc decide that it's "best" to bring up a whole generation speaking a language that is to some extent the L2 for that previous generation, what is it for the generation that learns it?

Obviously one can't only speak a second language. But I've noticed this in other people as well. What they have in common is a decision made by parents to bring up the children in a language that the parents don't speak too well themselves.

Anuradha Chepur
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Post by Anuradha Chepur » Wed Nov 15, 2006 9:45 am

I mean an impoverished L1. If for some reason a whole generation of parents, neighbours and teachers etc decide that it's "best" to bring up a whole generation speaking a language that is to some extent the L2 for that previous generation, what is it for the generation that learns it?
In that case, I think, the L1 of a person is one that is also the natural (not adopted) L1 of his parents or whoever (even a nanny) brought him up.

JuanTwoThree
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Post by JuanTwoThree » Wed Nov 15, 2006 10:01 am

Yes but I'm describing the situation of, say, a Latino couple in the States that consciously decides not to speak Spanish in the home (We're in America now!). So their children have had a very reduced input from their pre-school first language providers. They grow up speaking only English. But how much?

Anuradha Chepur
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Post by Anuradha Chepur » Wed Nov 15, 2006 10:23 am

I have observed that one effectively picks up the language spoken as L1 in the surroundings by native speakers of that L1, with all its nuances, and ends up in a native-like ease in that language. On a psychological and cultural plane too, they identify themselves better with the "foreign" rather than their "native" language and culture.
So the Child of this Latino couple would have learnt good English in an American environment, if not from the parents*. I have seen this happen to my cousin's kids.


*Indeed, the parents would have become more competent themselves, after interacting with native speakers in America.

Anuradha Chepur
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Post by Anuradha Chepur » Wed Nov 15, 2006 10:38 am

Is it just belonging to a family of native speakers enough to be called a native speaker, or one has to be competent as well?
For instance, I was raised in different places in India, exposed to, learnt and forgot many languages. I now find that actually some non-native speakers speak my language better than I do.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:49 am

I'm not talking about Welsh word order or L1 grammar like a universal q. tag. Lots of non-Welsh speakers in Wales are heavily influenced by that. Apparently Dylan Thomas is easily translated into Welsh because it can be done word for word and he didn't speak a word of Welsh.
Could it that Thomas spoke Welsh-English?

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:52 am

JuanTwoThree wrote: They grow up speaking only English. But how much?
Don't they learn good English when they begin school?

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:57 am

Anuradha Chepur wrote:Is it just belonging to a family of native speakers enough to be called a native speaker, or one has to be competent as well?
For instance, I was raised in different places in India, exposed to, learnt and forgot many languages. I now find that actually some non-native speakers speak my language better than I do.
I'm not sure if competency can be a good guide when it comes to, for example, British people whose families have been living in Britain for centuries. If we refer to competency, many standard English speakers might say that many English dialect speakers are not competent in "proper" English and therefore are not NS.

JuanTwoThree
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Post by JuanTwoThree » Wed Nov 15, 2006 2:30 pm

"Could it that Thomas spoke Welsh-English?" Yes, obviously.
But he wasn't a Welsh speaker. His English rhythms and grammar were not influenced by Welsh as L1.


"Don't they learn good English when they begin school?" Yes but their early family pre-school contacts were with English spoken as L2 if their parents had decided to speak English to them from then on


The Latino family was a bad example. And not very likely.

In the case of older Welsh people who "don't have the Welsh" I'm suggesting that they "don't have the English" either. The generation above them decided that Welsh wasn't modern, necessary, civilized and so on. But they weren't themselves all that fluent in English. Everybody from the parents to the teachers were happier in Welsh but they brought up their children to speak English and forget Welsh. So these children, now quite old men and women, learnt their L1 from people for whom it was an L2.

lolwhites
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Post by lolwhites » Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:49 pm

When working in Spain I once had an Australian colleague of Spanish descent, whose family had emigrated down under when he was 7. His earliest memories were of not understanding his teachers at school, yet his father was quite strict about them speaking English as much as possible, even in the home.

By the time he was in his 30s, he could hardly speak Spanish, though he could understand it well enough. He made all the classic mistakes English speakers make in Spanish. So he was no longer a Spanish native speaker.

Anuradha Chepur's question about children of mixed parentage reminds me of the bilingual students I have here in France. Their spoken English is pretty much fluent, though they have odd, but not French accents (in that there's nothing in them that points to a certain social or geographical background); if you listened to them you'd know that they grew up speaking, or at least hearing, English but you'd think there was something not quite right. Their writing can be all over the place, but then we all had to learn to write and we are talking about speakers. I'm not sure whether or not to describe them as "native English speakers" though.

Stephen Jones
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Post by Stephen Jones » Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:45 am

My mother was English speaking and my father was perfectly bilingual in Welsh and English. He always spoke to my grandmother in Welsh, and although we understood her English perfectly it did have Welsh influences "it's pouring raining" for example.

My father founded the English Congregational Church in the town, but continued to also preach in Welsh churches until a few years ago, when increasing age affected his mobility.

I don't believe my father was that much of an exception. I knew plenty of his friends and they were highly cultivated and competent in both languages. So I think this is another case where individual circumstances trump any general theory.

I will attempt to answer the wider implications later this weekend (Thursday and Friday).

JuanTwoThree
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Post by JuanTwoThree » Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:50 am

Certainly for every older person with an apparently poor command of English there was another whose English seemed to have been enriched by a bilingual community. So it's highly anecdotal. Though I maintain that these two language speaking communities seem to me to have produced speakers of one of them, English, with an ability that could hardly be described as native like though it was the only language they spoke.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:17 am

"Could it that Thomas spoke Welsh-English?" Yes, obviously.
But he wasn't a Welsh speaker. His English rhythms and grammar were not influenced by Welsh as L1.
But the rythms and grammar of Welsh-English are influenced by Welsh. I imagine Thomas merely picked up such rythms and grammar from those Welsh-English speakers around him.
Everybody from the parents to the teachers were happier in Welsh but they brought up their children to speak English and forget Welsh. So these children, now quite old men and women, learnt their L1 from people for whom it was an L2.
I see. So their English was below par.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Thu Nov 16, 2006 8:02 am

Their spoken English is pretty much fluent, though they have odd, but not French accents (in that there's nothing in them that points to a certain social or geographical background); if you listened to them you'd know that they grew up speaking, or at least hearing, English but you'd think there was something not quite right. Their writing can be all over the place, but then we all had to learn to write and we are talking about speakers. I'm not sure whether or not to describe them as "native English speakers" though.
Your description could also fit many native-born British people.

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