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Smart
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5339 days ago
352 posts - 398 votes 
Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French
Studies: German
| Message 25 of 36 20 April 2010 at 2:11am | IP Logged |
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
It seems logical to me to differenciate between "native language" and "native fluency". I am born in Norway in a Norwegian family, but lived alone for 6 months in a Spanish family in Andalucía when I was 11, and for a year in a French family in Orleans when I was 14.
After my stay in Spain, Spaniards who heard me speak Spanish, would refuse to believe I was not Spanish, in spite of my blonde hair and my blue eyes. I would even speak more grammatically correct then my Spanish friends. That does however not make Spanish my native language, but I speak it "with "native fluency". In France I was also subject to a total immersion in the extreme, and was absolutely fluent in French without any trace of an accent - but it is still not a native language.(Particularly because a lot has been forgotten over the years).
I have worked with English on a daily basis my entire life, and I have read English texts since the age of 10. I do not really care if I read English or Norwegian. That still does nok make it my native language.
Is it however that important to use that particular label? In my book, if you are a native speaker, you have learned the language from a very early age. To be a native speaker doesn't actually really mean that you have studied the language. It must be something that has come to you naturally, without any effort on your side. I can understand that you can have 2-3 native languages if you have grown up in a family where more that one language is spoken, or if you have two languages in your family, and you have learned the third language in the kindergarden.
I find it puzzling how anyone can claim to have a dead language like Latin, or a constructed language like Esperanto as their mother tongue. Shouldn't it really be even more prestigious to have acquired native fluency, without being a native speaker? |
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I grew up from age 1 hearing French, Spanish, Italian.[of course English as well] My first word was French, not English. Yet I do not claim native fluency in that language since I did not learn it when I was young. I learned Spanish over time, like any native speaker would, from about the age of 3 to around the age of 8. I was fluent at 8, though I did not reach what would be called native fluency until 11. Which is the age almost all Spanish natives become fluent at (English - 12, Polish - 16, etc). I grew up with the language, albeit not as much as English however Spanish was a dominant language in my life from the first time i could speak.
I also grew up with only my mother, therefore, it is not fair to say "oh you're parents didn't teach you it" because I do not have parents to do so. I had a mom who I saw maybe 2-3 hours a day.
Therefore, I am bilingual and native in both.
By the way, to address the last thing you wrote, no one claims Latin as their mother tongue (afaik), and Esperanto is the mother tongue of over 2500 people. (according to wiki)
1 person has voted this message useful
| Smart
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5339 days ago
352 posts - 398 votes
Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French
Studies: German
| Message 26 of 36 20 April 2010 at 2:20am | IP Logged |
Aineko wrote:
I do not really see a need for a big fuss about this :). your native language (or languages) is the one that you
have learned from your environment, straight from the state of not knowing any other language fully (or those
languages that you have learned in parallel, in these circumstances) ... language/languages that have formed
those first 'language connections' in your brain (and we know that brain stores L1 and other languages
separately) . However, if we are talking about 'native fluency', that is a different story - that is a
description of a level, anyone can achieve that, regardless of their 'native' status. no matter how good I speak
English one day - it cannot be my native language :). to speak L2,L3...to a native level is great achievement,
but that is exactly what it is: native level, not a native language. I am not a linguist and cannot say what is
the age limit for picking up the second (or third) language as a native - I guess that a 3yo child that gets into
the environment of a new language will be a native speaker, while 10yo child will not, but where exactly is this
border, I have no idea :). It would be interesting to hear about this from some linguist.
I think that designations on this websites are a bit confusing - bilingual is not very precise if we know that
there is primary and secondary bilingualism. probably 'native bilingual' would be a better choice. |
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I agree fully, however I have heard from some Linguists if you learn a language before the age of 10, you can be a native-speaker in that language.
This works in the case of someone who is born in China, moves to Japan at 3 (L1=Mandarin, L2=Japanese) and moves to America at age 7, therefore L3=English)
1 person has voted this message useful
| mrhenrik
Triglot
Moderator
Norway
Joined 6079 days ago
482 posts - 658 votes
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French
Personal Language Map
| Message 27 of 36 20 April 2010 at 2:31am | IP Logged |
Smart wrote:
Therefore, I am bilingual and native in both. |
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Just throwing in my five cents of agreement. I wish I was bilingual!
1 person has voted this message useful
| ellasevia
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2011
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6142 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 28 of 36 20 April 2010 at 3:00am | IP Logged |
Smart wrote:
| I grew up from age 1 hearing French, Spanish, Italian.[of course English as well] My first word was French, not English. Yet I do not claim native fluency in that language since I did not learn it when I was young. I learned Spanish over time, like any native speaker would, from about the age of 3 to around the age of 8. I was fluent at 8, though I did not reach what would be called native fluency until 11. Which is the age almost all Spanish natives become fluent at (English - 12, Polish - 16, etc). I grew up with the language, albeit not as much as English however Spanish was a dominant language in my life from the first time i could speak. |
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I suppose that in that case you could be considered a native speaker of Spanish in my opinion.
As for myself, I'm still conflicted as to whether or not I should mark Spanish and Greek as native languages...
EDIT: I think I'm going to mark these as native languages after all. I have strong connections to both and for a long time Spanish was my dominant language at school when I was young.
Edited by ellasevia on 20 April 2010 at 3:02am
1 person has voted this message useful
| Smart
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5339 days ago
352 posts - 398 votes
Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French
Studies: German
| Message 29 of 36 20 April 2010 at 7:00am | IP Logged |
ellasevia wrote:
Smart wrote:
| I grew up from age 1 hearing French, Spanish, Italian.[of course English as well] My first word was French, not English. Yet I do not claim native fluency in that language since I did not learn it when I was young. I learned Spanish over time, like any native speaker would, from about the age of 3 to around the age of 8. I was fluent at 8, though I did not reach what would be called native fluency until 11. Which is the age almost all Spanish natives become fluent at (English - 12, Polish - 16, etc). I grew up with the language, albeit not as much as English however Spanish was a dominant language in my life from the first time i could speak. |
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I suppose that in that case you could be considered a native speaker of Spanish in my opinion.
As for myself, I'm still conflicted as to whether or not I should mark Spanish and Greek as native languages...
EDIT: I think I'm going to mark these as native languages after all. I have strong connections to both and for a long time Spanish was my dominant language at school when I was young. |
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Interesting, I agree you should mark both as native.
1 person has voted this message useful
| 
Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6703 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 30 of 36 20 April 2010 at 7:44am | IP Logged |
Some time ago I made a reference to an experiment conducted by an Italian researcher. Her test persons were Italians who worked as English-Italian interpreters at EU in Brussels, so their knowledge of their L2 language must have been excellent. But even for this select group of people the brain gave more extended and stronger responses to Italian words than to English words. She suggested that the limit for attaining this kind of response was around 5 years of age. After that there is period up to around the onset of puberty where it seems that attaining a native-like pronunciation is easier than it is afterwards, but this stage is less well-defined on a neurological level and apparently peters off over a longer period.
So if you learnt a language before 5 you should definitely be seen as a native speaker, and those that learnt it before say 12 years are also called native speakers. However you could in principle be removed from your home as a child and forced to live in a place where your first language wasn't spoken. In that case your actual skill level might be less than that of a person who learned the language later, but through immersion, practice and study over a long time had acquired near native competence. In spite of this you would still be the native one, and the latter just a very advanced learner.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5334 days ago
4143 posts - 8864 votes
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian
| Message 31 of 36 20 April 2010 at 10:41am | IP Logged |
Smart wrote:
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
It seems logical to me to differenciate between "native language" and "native fluency". I am born in Norway in a Norwegian family, but lived alone for 6 months in a Spanish family in Andalucía when I was 11, and for a year in a French family in Orleans when I was 14.
After my stay in Spain, Spaniards who heard me speak Spanish, would refuse to believe I was not Spanish, in spite of my blonde hair and my blue eyes. I would even speak more grammatically correct then my Spanish friends. That does however not make Spanish my native language, but I speak it "with "native fluency". In France I was also subject to a total immersion in the extreme, and was absolutely fluent in French without any trace of an accent - but it is still not a native language.(Particularly because a lot has been forgotten over the years).
I have worked with English on a daily basis my entire life, and I have read English texts since the age of 10. I do not really care if I read English or Norwegian. That still does nok make it my native language.
Is it however that important to use that particular label? In my book, if you are a native speaker, you have learned the language from a very early age. To be a native speaker doesn't actually really mean that you have studied the language. It must be something that has come to you naturally, without any effort on your side. I can understand that you can have 2-3 native languages if you have grown up in a family where more that one language is spoken, or if you have two languages in your family, and you have learned the third language in the kindergarden.
I find it puzzling how anyone can claim to have a dead language like Latin, or a constructed language like Esperanto as their mother tongue. Shouldn't it really be even more prestigious to have acquired native fluency, without being a native speaker? |
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I grew up from age 1 hearing French, Spanish, Italian.[of course English as well] My first word was French, not English. Yet I do not claim native fluency in that language since I did not learn it when I was young. I learned Spanish over time, like any native speaker would, from about the age of 3 to around the age of 8. I was fluent at 8, though I did not reach what would be called native fluency until 11. Which is the age almost all Spanish natives become fluent at (English - 12, Polish - 16, etc). I grew up with the language, albeit not as much as English however Spanish was a dominant language in my life from the first time i could speak.
I also grew up with only my mother, therefore, it is not fair to say "oh you're parents didn't teach you it" because I do not have parents to do so. I had a mom who I saw maybe 2-3 hours a day.
Therefore, I am bilingual and native in both.
By the way, to address the last thing you wrote, no one claims Latin as their mother tongue (afaik), and Esperanto is the mother tongue of over 2500 people. (according to wiki) |
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You are right, there is noone here who claims to have Latin as their native language, I used a different dead language in order not to risk offending anyone, particularly since I am new to the forum, and have been so excited at finding it that I've been hyper active the last couple of days. I found someone on the list who claims 6 native languages, which are geographically very dispersed, one of them being ancient Greek. That makes me think that we must have very different definitions of "native language" unless you are a 2000 years old vampire, and was raised in ancient Greece. Now I have no problem believing that with studies you can be absolutely fluent in anywhere between 6 to 25 languages. It is very rare, but possible. Having 6 native languages, that makes me curious. I do not say it is impossible, because I actually do know of a similar case, but I would be very interested in hearing how such conditions came to be. That must be one hell of a family history.
1 person has voted this message useful
| ellasevia
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2011
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6142 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 32 of 36 20 April 2010 at 11:46pm | IP Logged |
Honestly, I'm not sure those people are telling the truth. There are a lot of members who register one day and are active for a few days and never come back. These people a lot of times have never posted messages and their profiles are completely made up...
2 persons have voted this message useful
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