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Are you a TCK? Impact on your languages | ||
Tags: Third Culture Kid (TCK) | Living abroad | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| janababe Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5334 days ago 102 posts - 115 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, German | Message 25 of 32 27 October 2009 at 6:19pm | IP Logged |
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I'm a wannabe TCK too, Iolanthe. Bit old for it now though
*sulks* 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Monitor16807 Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5512 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English, French* Studies: German, Latin | Message 26 of 32 31 October 2009 at 5:55am | IP Logged |
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Well I guess I'm a TCK, I moved to Quebec from France, when I was 6 years old, and then went to a French(from France) school until the age of 11, although I'm only 15, and it's only been 4 years, I feel like the description on the first page fits me very well.
Although I didn't have to learn a new language, I've learnt how to speak English in France, all the social ambiguities behind having the French accent in Quebec really made me insecure, my story may not be as dramatic as others, because I've been and lived in my "Homeland", the description on the first page still identifies me in some respects. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Dainty Newbie United States Joined 5305 days ago 38 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 27 of 32 21 November 2009 at 2:49pm | IP Logged |
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I'm a TCK. At four years old my family moved from the US to Cameroon and lived for the most part in an extremely remote area with a tribe whose language had never been written down or even learned by an outsider. Sadly, I did not end up learning it in the four years we were there, but I did become well versed in Pidgin English and easily spoke it like a native. So while among my family or with other missionary kids I would talk in perfect English, among the Cameroonians I abruptly switched to an extremely thick accent and spoke with the modified grammar structure and additional words not found in English. Since I had zero practice after returning to the States I have lost the ability to speak it, but with a little effort I've discovered that I can still understand it, much to my surprise. I've never counted it as a separate language, though. Should I?
A curious lingering effect of this experience is that to this day whenever I speak with someone who has an accent or a lisp I automatically copy it, even if it's just a brief exchange of a sentence or two. This phenomenon has actually led to some hurtful misunderstandings where someone with a lisp thought I was making fun of their speech impediment by intentionally copying them. :( I don't even realize I'm doing it at first, and then if I want to stop I have to consciously work hard against it. Once I went on a 6 week missions trip where the leader had a thick Dutch accent, and unbeknownst to me I arrived home with one too! (It disappeared within weeks.) Even so, on my own I cannot work up an accent to save my life. It's very strange. I would definitely say that I have a more international perspective as a result of my TCK experience. Not only was I embedded in the Cameroonian culture, but also the other missionaries and westerners we met and knew there brought their cultures with them as well, so conferences became a melting pot of cultures. My childhood best friend was from Switzerland and many others were from Canada. So we would share our cultures with each other, and as a kid I just accepted it all as normal. I learned to sing the Canadian national anthem around the same time that I learned the American national anthem and just in general considered all nationalities to be on equal footing with my own. Since then, however, I've grown to consider the USA home, though Cameroon will always hold a special place in my heart. Put it this way: based on my preferences alone, I would live here, marry here, and raise my kids here, but the place I would ideally want to spend my last days in and die in is Cameroon. I think that's the most accurate way I can illustrate how the TCK phenomenon imprints a person for life. And I don't consider that a bad thing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6588 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 28 of 32 22 November 2009 at 11:40am | IP Logged |
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Very interesting, Dainty. Would that have been Kamtok you learned to speak? It is indeed a creole, a language
in its own right, which has been used in Cameroon for some 500 years. Being fluent in such a language is a rare gift I'd try not to lose, since there is certainly no Assimil or Pimsleur course for it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Dainty Newbie United States Joined 5305 days ago 38 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 29 of 32 22 November 2009 at 3:55pm | IP Logged |
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I hadn't heard it called Kamtok before, but yes, that's what it was. From the link you gave it looks like the variety I learned was either liturgical Kamtok or Bororo Kamtok, mostly likely the former because there were established Catholic Mission schools in a town 10 miles from where we were working, but possibly the latter because the town is extremely isolated from the rest of Cameroon due to the absence of roads and the Fulani people were in the same general area, frequented teh town often and came around our area every once in a while. I wouldn't be surprised if it had Nigerian influence, since we lived very close to the border on what was known as the "smuggler's road" (just a wide path) that was used by people crossing the Cameroonian-Nigerian border undetected, often for convenience' sake.
That's really neat to know it's a separate language; I'll have to see what I can do to reinforce my knowledge of it. This sounds silly now, but I had always thought of it as really sloppy English so I didn't think it was a worthwhile study, even though the story telling quality of Pidgin English is second to none, in my opinion. But this information is exciting to me because I was so fluent that I would often think in Pidgin English, and continued to do so occasionally for several years after arriving back in the States so with the right environment and a little work I should be able to rediscover fluency someday. Color me happy. :) Edit: Added more text. Edited by Dainty on 22 November 2009 at 4:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ppfarj Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 5 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English | Message 30 of 32 20 September 2011 at 3:23pm | IP Logged |
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Hello there!
guys I've got a question about the language acquisition process abroad. Like, a cousin of mine spent about 4 years living in Kenya, where he studied at an international school. English was the medium of instruction for all the subjects and by the time he graduated, he had mastered academic English. His father is American, so even though he'd spent all his life in Brazil speaking Portuguese, he also had at least very good passive knowledge of the language.And I am quite sure that it had a huge positive impact on his performance. He currently lives in the US with his family, and after 13 year abroad, he's certainly achieved a native-like command of English in every way. Now I wonder, how long did it take you to fully master a second/third language to a native-like level while living abroad?? I mean, understanding 100% of music lyrics, 100% films and tv shows, etc and speaking at ease as if it were a mother tongue to you?? He said he can't remember when it all actually happened, he didn't worry much about it.. so he can't say precisely how long it took him to reach that level. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tecktight Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States Joined 4796 days ago 227 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, Serbian Studies: German, Russian, Estonian | Message 31 of 32 09 October 2011 at 2:15am | IP Logged |
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I guess I'd call myself a TCK, though I've held official residence in my country of birth (America) all my life, since
my mother is Russian and my father Serbian, and I'm the first born in America in my family. However, as a child, I spoke only Serbian until I entered school, and every one of my summers has been spent in Europe. My parents divorced at about this time, too, a fact which I mention only because it provided two different cultural houses for me to reside in. That is, the people frequenting my mom's house were all Russians, almost always, and the ones at my dad's house were all mixed Europeans--German business partners, etc. So I've grown up around non-Americans, and I, too, get the "different" feeling when I'm in America. I can't quite connect with my fellows 100%, since our cultural experiences have been totally different. For example, I ate my first PB&J sandwich at 15, and didn't get to really explore American culture until my later teen years. Many of my friends haven't even ever left the U.S., and, when I talk about Serbia to people here, they ask me, thinking I mean Siberia, if it's really cold over there. The general worldly ignorance I've encountered here really bothers me. Conversely, I also feel out-of-place in Europe, because I've lived in America too long. As for my own personal inclinations, I have an odd inner desire to keep moving East. I was born in Los Angeles, but I went east to Washington, D.C. for university. In terms of languages, I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm sort of just bored with English. I've just been surrounded by books, music, people, signs, etc. in English for too long--a feeling which, I guess, contributes to my desire to learn other, more exciting, languages, and which is why, next school year, I'll be hopping continents to either Germany or Austria. I imagine I'll feel the oddball there, too, though. I think it's my fate to be an ever-migrating expat. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Rutabaga Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie Romania Joined 4747 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, Slovenian*, French, German, Russian Studies: Portuguese, Uzbek | Message 32 of 32 11 October 2011 at 6:04pm | IP Logged |
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I'm another TCK. I grew up in Austria, to Slovenian and American parents. I attended international schools growing up. It definitely had an effect on me - I now teach at international schools as well. The issue of not belonging anywhere has always been there for me and I find that others don't understand it, unless they are TCKs as well. A large number of my classmates still live overseas. I think we just don't fit in anywhere else.
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