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Languages of your family | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4634 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 1 of 27 14 October 2013 at 12:20am | IP Logged |
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Have you ever felt obligated to learn the language of your grandparents, parents, or in some cases, even siblings? Did having someone close to you speaking a different language ever influence the languages you want to learn/would have time to learn because of it?
If you haven't yet, do you have plans to learn it? Does it bother you having a parent speaking a language that they didn't speak to you with? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5373 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 27 14 October 2013 at 2:45am | IP Logged |
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Yes. My wife's family is French, but did not pass it on to her. It would be cool if she spoke French. I felt like I should learn the language and have thought about it a lot so I could speak to her older relatives. I'd like my kids to be in touch with the heritage of that side of the family. Interestingly enough I am more interested in passing on my wife's heritage to our kids than she is. I won't learn French anytime soon because I simply don't have the time... but we did end up giving our son a French name.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6123 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 3 of 27 14 October 2013 at 3:00am | IP Logged |
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For me, it didn't bother me until relatives started dying. And, then, there's this kind of sad, sinking feeling --
ooh, I'm loosing touch with something. I start to miss the connection to these places after it's lost. I don't feel obligated to learn anything, really, but it has become 'something that I do', now out of habit, and maybe some nostalgia too. With the Japanese parent and not passing down the language, I'm half-Japanese and I'm on Facebook and I'm in contact with literally hundreds of other half-Japanese people all with exactly the same story. There's also a Japanese language half-Japanese Facebook group, and on there, everyone's complaining in Japanese about parents not passing down the non-Japanese language -- so it goes both ways. There are people in Japan, totally white looking as Beaver Cleaver, and completely monolingual in Japanese. They have a complicated life, it turns out. Edited by cathrynm on 14 October 2013 at 7:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aspiringplyglot Triglot Groupie United Kingdom aspiringpolyglot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4575 days ago 40 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Esperanto, Polish, Scottish Gaelic, French | Message 4 of 27 14 October 2013 at 3:17am | IP Logged |
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Oh, definitely! I'm from Scotland so speak English as my native language, however my uncle moved to Germany
about 30 years ago, met a German woman, married, had kids... So now I have a German aunt and German cousins. I mean, they speak English (almost) perfectly but I've been trying for the past two years to be able to speak with them only in German.... Definitely a difficult thing to do.... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4249 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 27 14 October 2013 at 6:42am | IP Logged |
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Yes. Right now I'm trying to relearn the languages that I've formally studied before, but since my aunt is Russian, I chose to relearn and improve that before I worked on German or Italian. Also high up on my choices of languages to learn is French, which my husband is learning.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4337 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 6 of 27 14 October 2013 at 6:54am | IP Logged |
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French and Ukrainian here. Now that I'm taking French seriously I speak only French with my father and
grandparents, even if my grandfather can't talk back to me at this point. :'( I can't say I'm angry with my father for not having taught me French when I was younger, especially considering how wonderful it's been to not only learn a foreign language but also more about French Canadian culture. I plan on going to univeristy in Quebec later next year, which probably wouldn't be happening if I had already a mastery of the French language. I guess the only downside is that my accent might never be perfect, but it won't stop me from trying. As for Ukrainian, I do have plans to learn it to a conversational level, even though my grandmother on my mother's side has already passed away and my grandfather, at 91, isn't in the best shape he's ever been. My mother and her sisters haven't really spoken Ukrainian over the past 17 years, either, but I think it would be fun for me to learn Ukrainian while my mother tries to get back in touch with her Ukrainian side. If I go much further back on my father's mother's side, there was more than likely some Gaeilge, Gàidhlig or Scots. All of which I have a great interest in, but none of which I plan to learn any time soon. I always tell my parents, however, that I'm saving Gaeilge for my retirement. I think a lot of people sometimes curse their luck: "Why couldn't I have been born a trilingual?" If my parents had decided to speak their languages with me when I was younger, I surely would have been a trilingual, but probably not the kind of trilingual I would want to be. Looking at how I am now, I take my own Western Canadian culture for granted. I'd even go so far as saying it's boring here. I know that's not completely true, but I can't help feeling that other cultures are more interesting than my own. I think that if I had spoken French as a child, yes I would have had a better level in it and also a native accent, but especially considering I wasn't born in Quebec, I probably might not have ever developed an interest in Quebecois culture. Out of all of my friends who speak a second language from childhood, I only know one who is genuinely interested in his family's origines, someone who actually reads and watches TV in his parents' language, has friends from his parents' country and goes back to said country every year. But I guess I'd be the same if my parents spoke Hungarian. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 7 of 27 14 October 2013 at 9:15am | IP Logged |
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I have never heard of a single case of an English-speaking parent refusing to pass on their native language
to their children while living in a country where another language is spoken. But it seems as if some folks of other nationalities are prepared to do this. Edited by beano on 14 October 2013 at 9:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jarel Diglot Groupie Turkey Joined 4324 days ago 57 posts - 77 votes Speaks: Turkish*, English Studies: Italian, German | Message 8 of 27 14 October 2013 at 10:09am | IP Logged |
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My father's and his familys native tongue is Syrian Arabic, but since they can speak Turkish fluently i never actually "had to" learn it. But i always wanted to learn Arabic. Shame i never had the time.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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