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Disliking your native tongue? | ||
Tags: Native Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4431 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 94 13 January 2013 at 1:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I have occasionally heard people say that they tried to speak a language like, say, Swedish, only to be told by
Swedes themselves not to bother with this "useless" language because everyone there can speak English. Or the Dutchman who rebuffed an attempt to converse with him in Dutch with the comment "I'd rather speak English than listen to your shit Dutch". Things like that. That got me thinking, are there actually people out there who dislike their mother tongue and wish they could replace it with another language? I'm not talking about children of immigrants who grow to resent or reject the heritage language, but rather adults who have spent most or all of their lives living and working in their home country? Or is it all a craftily-constructed ploy by native English speakers to justify their lack of progress in an anglo-friendly country.....well, you know, the locals prefer to speak English in any case. They are desperate to practise, they even speak English among themselves, etc. Outside of language practise situations and teenagers wishing to sound cool, do people ever use English (or another major language) when talking solely with other speakers of their mother tongue, within the country where it is spoken, rather than their native language? Ok, maybe some companies have English as the official corporate language but that is a special business case. I spoke only English until the age of 32. I can't ever remember asking myself if I actually liked English, it just happened to be the language I lived my life through. I can only think of one person who spoke negatively about his native language to me. A young German lad of around 20 said Deutsch ist scheisse, we should all be speaking English. I kind of dismissed his notion as a youthful flight of fancy. He then spoke to me in English that clearly needed a lot of care and attention before he could satisfy his own argument. Don't give up the day job mate! 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4774 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 2 of 94 13 January 2013 at 2:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I recently read on a forum that the young Indonesian generation prefer to speak English rather than Indonesian to the point of being unable to communicate with their grand-parents. Can anyone confirm this?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5065 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 3 of 94 13 January 2013 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||
My wife is a 28 year old Indonesian expat. She says that that was certainly not true when she lived there. But she left Indonesia in 2002, so the younger generation may be different. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ivan1989 Triglot Newbie Ukraine Joined 4334 days ago 10 posts - 30 votes Speaks: Ukrainian*, English, Russian Studies: Polish, Spanish | Message 4 of 94 13 January 2013 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes , I noticed i tend to dislike and neglect my 2 native languages - Ukrainian and
Russian. It's not that i find them abhorrent or unpleasant to hear. They just do not interest me for I feel that I know everything about them and there's nothing for me to learn about them. I reckon this attitude stems from the fact that I've got this 2 languages for free while it took me long hours of work and big effort to learn foreign languages. It even got to the point when i find myself thinking that it's a shame that Poles lost their control over this land or that Napoleon couldn't impose his rule back in 1812 because in that case their respective languages would have been imposed on Ukraine and i could have had extra language under my belt :). Of course it's very naive and childish way of thinking, and it's likely that i underestimate and sometimes disregard my native languages which helped me a lot throughout my life, but yes, Beano, sometimes i think it would be cool to replace them with let's say, English and Spanish ;). And yes, it's likely that i'd try to speak English (or some other language we share in common which is not our native) with you if we were to meet in real life ( unless you'd ask me to switch to Russian or Ukrainian ). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| palfrey Senior Member Canada Joined 5082 days ago 81 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 5 of 94 13 January 2013 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, from time to time on this very forum, you will see a native English speaker who dislikes English, with varying levels of intensity. Possibly this is because they find English too ordinary and mainstream, and wish they knew a more "exotic" tongue. Or perhaps they dislike the history of English-speaking peoples, involving as it does colonization and imperial expansion, and project this dislike onto the language itself. (Though of course, many other peoples, both European and non-European, are hardly innocent of such actions, either.) Or maybe there are other reasons. But you certainly should include some native English speakers in your original question.
(Though I am not one of them. I would like to know other languages, but I feel very fortunate to have gotten English for free.) 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5541 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 6 of 94 13 January 2013 at 4:42am | IP Logged | ||
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" I would like to know other languages, but I feel very fortunate to have gotten English for free."
Yes, this! English is so useful, and compulsory in many places, I'm definitely glad I've gotten it for free - not to mention all the great literature, and the vast amount of material available only in English...I'm a bit sad I wasn't raised in a multilingual environment like people in some other countries, but if I had to pick only ONE language to learn in childhood, I think it would be English! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5934 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 7 of 94 13 January 2013 at 9:40am | IP Logged | ||
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It's telling that generally Japanese and Finnish people often say 'We say XXX' -- and for me in English that feels weird. English is useful, but the difference is that English language isn't really a source of identity for me. It's my native language, but I don't really feel like there's a 'we' for English speakers. I think this is the difference.
10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4395 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 8 of 94 13 January 2013 at 10:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I like English, but there are aspects of it I don't like. Some languages have much more
concise and elegant ways of expressing certain things than English does. Examples: "with respect to X", "when it comes to X" and "as for X". Very clunky. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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