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Illiterate in your native language | ||
Tags: Heritage Language | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 7 14 November 2013 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is common in many immigrant communities for children to speak a heritage lanaguge in the home environment but be educated in the official language of the host country.
So unless the parents make the effort to teach the children how to read and write in their native tongue, there must be people who grow up functionally illiterate in their first language because they are schooled only in their second. If the two languages use the same alphabet then I guess it's not a major obstacle to overcome in later life, you just have to fit the letters to the words. But what if the heritage language is, say, Mandarin? You grow up in a Chinese-speaking neighbourhood but speak English at school with your peers. The massive differences between the writing systems must pose a major challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 2 of 7 14 November 2013 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've known plenty of people who speak Chinese at home and in their home community and
can't read or write it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4636 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 3 of 7 14 November 2013 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are classes at my local university designed specifically for Russian heritage speakers to learn how to read and write.
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5391 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 4 of 7 14 November 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've known Spanish speakers who grew up this way who were mostly illiterate. Without
access to heritage speaker classes in high school, they'd be put in beginning Spanish which was way too easy then bumped up to 4th year Spanish which was way too hard. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4301 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 5 of 7 15 November 2013 at 2:12am | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine since I'm one of those 2nd generation kids ( I use 2nd generation in the context as children of immigrants) but the thread title sounds horribly presumptions or at the least, misinformed since you're talking about immigrants. I'd prefer the term heritage language. Someone who is illiterate in their native language is ALREADY A NATIVE SPEAKER of that language but doesn't have the ability to read or write in that language. HERITAGE LANGUAGE SPEAKERS ARE NOT NATIVE SPEAKERS, although it is possible for them to have native-like pronunciation. In my opinion, a person's first language/ home language (if defined by the definition that it is the first language that came out of their mouths) can be a person's native language. Think monolingual speakers. However, a person's native language is not necessarily their first language or heritage language. However, if first language means the first language that someone is fluent in, well then that's not their second language (foreign language) isn't it? It's their native language. In this age and era, it'd be rare but not impossible for someone to be illiterate in their native language unless they have some sort of learning disability. To answer your question, yes it can be difficult using the same alphabet and sometimes a even more so because for all purposes and intents, you are learning a foreign language. Vietnamese is my heritage language so I'll give some examples: House- Nhà Line- Hàng Restaurant- Nhà Hàng - As you see, you have to combine two different words to get a specific but different meaning Of course, this is not always the case. Sometimes a word is actually two syllables and when you separate them, they have no meaning at all. - Poets are unmercifully cruel, they like to do this thing where they reverse the syllables of the same damn word to give it a more subtle meaning ex) cây đáng vs đáng cây = they both mean at the core something emotionally painful. One slightly more so than the other. Which one? I have no idea. - The same word can take on different grammatical features, so very context heavy. Ex) Từ (conjugation)= from, Từ(n)- word, Từ( verb)- to renounce, forget about, reject, give up.. The only upside is that you don't have to worry about pronunciation, you'd sound like a native. Of course, upside is relative. If you've only been exposed to the ahem, "wrong" regional variant, well, good luck. Also, if you are a heritage language speaker of certain languages, true natives will not always be so nice to you as they are to obvious foreigners. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4444 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 7 15 November 2013 at 8:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Growing up in the 1970s in the country I'm living in there was an expectation to eventually become part of the
mainstream society. The next generation would probably marry a Caucasian (considered the majority) at the time. Since then the attitude changed to promoting multiculturalism. First we have CHIN radio station with programming in different languages throughout the day and then came Omni1 & Omni2-TV catering to different communities such as Italian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Korean, Somali, etc. Any language that is also taught in school as an elective would reinforce the learning that children receive at home. In my younger days several languages were taught in high school as electives besides English including Latin, French, Italian and German. I know some Italians who are fluent in the official language English but would speak to each other outside class in Italian. And a few people who would be speaking French outside the classroom. And in the group was a Croatian who spoke the mother-tongue fluently in his family. Since the language also uses some form of Latin alphabet so reading wouldn't be a problem. Being in the Chinese community my relatives have get-togethers as extended family a few times a year. Most of the family members are Cantonese-speaking. Occasionally a Mandarin-speaking person would be at the dinner table and some of us who are not fluent in Mandarin would switch to English. And the people from my generation would be talking mainly in English except for 1 or 2 who lived in Hong Kong longer. There are languages classes you can enrol your children in on weekends but many don't necessarily like to do extra homework. When it comes to learning Chinese it takes a tremendous effort to be able to recognize a few characters. A lot of people can speak at a conversational level. A lot of times you can read a newspaper but some of the characters you don't use everyday you may not be able to write on paper off your head. This is where the computer & the Internet comes in handy. I have a friend whom I met on a tour to Taiwan. He insisted that I write to him in Chinese so that he can keep up. For many years we did just that until I decided to use Chinese input software 10 years ago. It was only last year he stopped sending handwritten letters. The problem is that in the old days looking up a character in a dictionary you have to look up the Radical on the table of contents to see which page it is listed and then locate the character by counting # strokes. This approach gets very annoying. In my younger days my mother was a teacher. She had dozens of children books in Chinese but nobody in the family seemed interested. Right now I'm basically cutting down the time I would spend listening to English news broadcast in half and fill the other half with Chinese radio & TV programming. It was a conscious decision to re- engage in the mother-tongue. Chinese TV programs are not too difficult to follow since many have character subtitles for people speaking different dialects. It is like having Close Caption for the hearing impaired in English. You just need to pay more attention to what is being said and matching with the characters on the screen. Reading any kind of text online if I come across an unfamiliar character I just need to do a Copy & Paste into my computer dictionary which is much less tedious than counting # strokes and looking it up in a conventional dictionary. I kept a list of over 200 words and phrases for a year. Sometimes I like to refer to myself using the Chinese expression: 無師自通 wúshīzìtōng which I picked up from the Internet. This means somebody who is basically self-taught. In the Chinese community people tend to respect and look up to teachers like they know everything. I had a hard time with my mother being a teacher who is bossy. I tend to treat everybody as equals. The people who knows more are your mentors. Being someone who kept up both speaking and writing Chinese outside a classroom is rare. In the Internet age people are always upgrading their computers, portable devices, software on their own. But when it comes to languages there is still a traditional mindset you need a private tutor or to go to class. Edited by shk00design on 15 November 2013 at 8:30am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 7 15 November 2013 at 10:54am | IP Logged | |||||
As for the "dangers" of a native-like pronunciation, one can also be considered stupid and/or get (language-wise) complicated replies due to the assumption that flawless pronunciation=flawless comprehension. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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