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How native is native? | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6443 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 32 28 April 2010 at 1:15am | IP Logged | |||||
The above post has a good deal of insight. The level of proficiency one has in ones' strongest language can be a major internal point of comparison, and internal vs external assessments can definitely differ. That said, there are still plenty of odd edge cases. People with strong commands of several languages who are perceived by others as native in two or more but claim to be native in none are one such case. A couple of other notes: to me, native isn't "the level I perceive as possible". By that metric, only people with incredible command of a language are native, and most people have no native language. Also, "When you try to serialise a web of thoughts into a stream of written symbols or uttered sounds you may have to struggle even when using your native language. You will know that you have no native level skills if you attribute this struggle to the particular language instead of your lack of comprehension of the subject." strikes me as a little misguided. If I blame my lack of ability to serialize thoughts about quantum mechanics on my English rather than the fact that I don't know the field, it doesn't say much about my English. Even in the trickier case of a subject someone can talk about naturally only in a non-native language (due to lacking technical vocabulary in his/her native language), that doesn't really have much impact on whether the first language can/should be considered native, I think. That said, I do fully agree with your point that trying to use an objective criteria quickly leads to confusion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5349 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 10 of 32 28 April 2010 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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For me fluency means being as comfortable in your learnt tongue as in your own.
And the only judge of that can be oneself. This doesn't mean though that specific dimensions of both languages must be a replica of each other, as they will have been shaped by different experiences. Much from one's childhood for instance that one doesn't meet again as an adult when learning a foreign language remains a privileged domain of one's native tongue. So much that my beloved grandmother taught me as a child about plants, animals and nature I would be unable to reproduce today in English. The kind of material one reads in a given language also tends to be distinctive, leading to "niche" vocabulary. Being fluent in a foreign language though should in principle enable one to assimilate any of it should one happen to meet it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| katilica Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5475 days ago 70 posts - 109 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: French, Catalan | Message 11 of 32 28 April 2010 at 4:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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I do not believe that tests would be effective in order to determine if a person should
call 'x' language their native language. Many people here in the US speak only one language (English) yet they do not necessarily have a broad vocabulary. They know less words than some non-natives and some are even illiterate. Does this mean that English is no longer their native language? Of course not. I have seen people on this forum that seem to have a bigger Spanish vocabulary than I do yet I sometimes find their expressions awkward or catch slight grammar mistakes in their writing. These are rules that I have never learned but simply know due to the fact that I have been raised speaking this language. I am not speaking of Spanish beginners but of those who are fluent in the language. I also find that these people may not understand a situation where unfamiliar vocabulary is used where as I can manage well since I am around this language constantly and know it well. Anyway, the term native speaker is a very confusing one since we don't really know where to draw the line. From my experience, I know many Hispanic kids here in the US who have Spanish as a native language yet they know only conversational Spanish and would be lost reading literature and seem to have a slight twang in their accent. Some of these people are not great at English either although they understand conversational English. They stick mostly to slang in either language and are lost in academics. I find this interesting and it reminds me of the girl a previous poster mentioned who said she did not have a native language. Anyway, I think I am more confused at present on this subject than when I set out to write my response. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 12 of 32 28 April 2010 at 5:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think we are beating around the bush here because we are trying to find some universal definition of a native speaker. As many people have pointed out, being born into a language does not mean that one will be a "native" speaker of that language later in life. However the situation is not hopeless, and I think there is a relatively simple solution.
First of all, let's recognize that in the context of this forum, what we usually mean by native speaker is a level of proficiency of a person who was born and bred in a language that remains their primary language. For most people here, speaking like a native is not about being born in a language, it's all about performance. The background of a person is irrelevant if they sound like a native. I emphasize the word sound and I have suggested accent as the sole criteria because in practice that is exactly what we use. As I and others have pointed out, a native speaker can be uneducated, have a limited vocabulary, speak with a regional dialect and still be considered native. The accent is really what counts. A foreigner can have better grammar and vocabulary but a foreign pronunciation marks one as foreign. The governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has an accent that marks him as non-native. Can a non-native speak like a native? Of course, it happens all the time with people who learn a language at a relatively young age. When we speak to these people, we don't ask to see their passport or their birth certificate. They sound like everybody else. So for all intents and purposes, they are native speakers. A lot of people here have used audio materials for learning purposes and most recordings use so-called native speakers. Do we actually see their credentials? And does it matter? For our purposes, if the person sounds like a native speaker, then he or she is a native speaker for us, regardless of where they were born or grew up. This is why I suggested the idea of native-like proficiency in order to avoid some of the complications of the word "native". Since so many of us are obsessed with trying to sound like a native, it's interesting to look at the case of Michel Thomas, the so-called language teacher to the stars. I'm sure many people here have heard or used his audio courses for German, French, Italian and Spanish. Thomas has a rather thick foreign accent in English. I haven't heard him in conversation in all the other languages, but I assume he doesn't sound like a native except in German. This didn't prevent him from building this incredible reputation of being able to teach these languages in days and from developing this clientele of big name Hollywood stars and other celebrities. Edited by s_allard on 28 April 2010 at 12:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6146 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 13 of 32 28 April 2010 at 6:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, I agree that this is native proficiency in a language, but this does not make this language native for them, even if it is the one they use the most in daily life.
I feel there must be some sort of cut-off age for learning the language and being able to be counted as a native speaker. Some have suggested around 2, but someone has suggested even as late as 7. In addition, there must be certain circumstances. I don't think it should count if someone just starts taking language classes at a young age where they say "Hello in French is 'bonjour'" and then eventually reach native proficiency. Instead, it should be assimilated from one's environment. I know this is sounding really confusing, but I think there is some sense behind it. For my own classification of "native languages", English is what I would say if I had to choose just one language as native for me, but Spanish and Greek are also native for me in a way. My family is Greek and grew up often hearing it all around me, so I gained great passive listening skills and native pronunciation and grammatical intuition, but never really actively used it until I had to start formalizing my knowledge when I was 7. For Spanish, I didn't start learning until I was 5, but most of my elementary education was in Spanish, so I gained a native command of the language from about age 6. Edited by ellasevia on 30 April 2010 at 7:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachjunge Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 7169 days ago 368 posts - 548 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 14 of 32 29 April 2010 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I really like the points made by Olaf and S Allard. For Olaf's, I think there really can be a sliding bar of what constitutes "being native." If, like the Hispanic kids mentioned in Katilica's post, you're genuinely comfortable in and able to produce about as well in Spanish as you do in English, then maybe you have 2 (not very proficient) native tongues.
But S Allard tells a hard truth: accent counts. My thesis advisor at my American university is Romanian, but she revises my chapters (and I listen!). Reading her comments on paper, I would say that she qualifies as a (highly educated) native speaker. But when we talk, I could never in good faith say that because of her accent. Arbitrary? Well, sometimes life is hard. That said, I wonder about the idea of a "default language," the language that comes forth during times of duress or excitement. There might be a case there. Many years ago, I read "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents," concerning a Dominican family's integration in the States in the 1960s-present. Basically, one of the Garcia sisters is discussing this very issue with a minor character, who responds: "Well, what language do you love in?" Well? Edited by Sprachjunge on 29 April 2010 at 6:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5338 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 32 30 April 2010 at 10:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Then how about people who has grown up in the US, they are fluent when it comes to writing and speaking English, but when they write their family's language, they make errors that a native 8 year old would not make. Can they still claim it as their native languge?
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 32 21 November 2011 at 11:09am | IP Logged | |||||
I go for this answer. A perfect pronunciation is normally said to be the last thing you can learn when you are beyond your childhood years (although most learners can become better), so it can be used as an easy criterion for separating natives and advanced learners (read impostors). But actually having the background from spending a whole lifetime in a certain linguistic and cultural environment must be equally difficult to acquire later. I often watch quizzes from other countries and sometimes it is clear that you can't possibly know the answers unless you have watched certain TV programs, seen certain slogans on the walls and been subject to certain political developments, and collecting all this information afterhand would be impossible even for a truly native speaker who had been abroad for some years. Sometimes you arrive late at the station just to see that the train has left..
The train has left and they didn't enter it Edited by Iversen on 21 November 2011 at 11:13am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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