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Losing your First Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| mashmusic11235 Groupie United States Joined 5288 days ago 85 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese | Message 1 of 18 29 July 2013 at 3:34am | IP Logged |
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First of all, this is my return from quite a bit of a hiatus, so greetings, my
linguistically inclined friends!!! I've noticed that over the years there's been quite a bit of discussion on this site about losing (or not) the languages you've learned, either through disuse or other means, and the process by which this happens. Recently, the thought occurred to me: is it possible to unlearn or forget one's mother tongue in the same manner? Upon initial examination of this question, it seems unlikely or impossible. One naturally thinks in one's own language, so even if one were to be immersed in a second language for the vast majority of one's lifetime (let's say an English speaker moves to a monolingual Spanish-speaking community at an early age), one would continue to think in the mother tongue despite speaking the L2 all day, every day, indefinitely. On the other side of the argument, however, I offer up pieces of evidence such as the Kennedy twins, who spoke a rudimentary invented language comprised of bits of their grandmother's German and parents' English until the age of eight (cryptophasia). At this point they were taught to speak English, and pressured by their father to forget their unique, invented language, and there is no record of them having used it after this point. In addition, I offer the recurring case of the child being raised by parents in one language, and then going out into society and having to learn another language (an American family raising their child in Vietnamese, for example), and thenceforth ceasing to use their parents' native language, thought whether this is through refusal to use the language or actually losing the ability to do so is ambiguous. Please note that I'm not on either side here: I just wanted to put this topic up for discussion. Is it possible to forget one's native tongue under certain circumstances? If so, what circumstances? If not, why not? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4042 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 18 29 July 2013 at 9:30am | IP Logged |
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I watched a TV show here in Finland about finding relatives long lost. There was a girl who was adopted to Finland at the age of six or something. Before that all she knew was Russian, but twenty years later she only knew Finnish and possibly English, but not a word of Russian. When they found her long lost older sisters they had a Russian-Finnish interpreter at the meeting.
What comes to thinking, it's been theorized that people don't think in any language, but images and concepts, unless you really do your best to think in some language. It seems like thinking in a language because we tend to translate the concepts to the ones that correspond them in our native language. I think it's an interesting theory. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6371 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 18 29 July 2013 at 9:44am | IP Logged |
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Different people use language to different degrees in their thinking. I think there are plenty of examples of people losing their native language, but age makes a huge difference. See Wikipedia article here. It's interesting to read about the Korean children who emigrated to France at 3-10 years of age, and years later showed no sign, even in brain scans, of responding differently to Korean than to Japanese or Polish. It was completely gone from their brains. On the other hand, people who had stopped using their native language after puberty and not used it for decades still compared favorably to advanced L2 speakers.
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| Jake Day Newbie United States Joined 4818 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 18 30 July 2013 at 5:10am | IP Logged |
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I once heard of a case like this in fiction; in Alex Haley's Roots, Kunta Kinte seemed to lose the ability to think
in his native tongue after living as a slave in the Southern US for years. Edited by Jake Day on 30 July 2013 at 5:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ribas Pentaglot Newbie Brazil blogmarceloribas.blo Joined 5649 days ago 37 posts - 48 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French, German Studies: Italian, Mandarin | Message 5 of 18 30 July 2013 at 5:15am | IP Logged |
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My wife only spoke German before going to school. She was then forced to switch to Portuguese, even at
home. Now she can only undertand a little and speaks almost no German. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4233 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 18 30 July 2013 at 6:01am | IP Logged |
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Learning & unlearning languages depends on how much a language is in use and how much effort you
put into using it. Just thinking about your mother tongue when you move to a new country you may eventually forget your first language. You need to be using the language in a social setting interacting with people who speaks the same language. If not you need to get into watching videos, listening to radio broadcasts, reading books of a specific language to keep it active. 1 thing I do find is that there are people in the Chinese community who speaks Cantonese / Mandarin fluently as a mother-tongue but not living in Asia they retain a high fluency of the spoken language but many tend to lose the written characters overtime... simply because Chinese does not go by an alphabet and people used to memorize characters 1 at a time. Nowadays when people get into social media, picking up Chinese characters is much easier with computer dictionaries. Again you have to make the effort of using the language regularly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5197 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 7 of 18 30 July 2013 at 9:55am | IP Logged |
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This thread reminded me of Alexander Selkirk, an Scottish castaway on a island in the Pacific and the alleged inspiration for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
He was rescued after four years alone (and regular reading of the Bible in English) and one of the sailors who rescued him wrote : "At his first coming on board us, he had so much forgot his Language for want of Use, that we could scarce understand him, for he seem'd to speak his words by halves" (Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage round the World). Edited by akkadboy on 30 July 2013 at 9:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4889 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 8 of 18 30 July 2013 at 10:55am | IP Logged |
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It seems like international adoption has long proven that people can and do forget their native languages. Of course in international adoption, the only examples I have ever heard of were of children.
Adults losing their first tongue is a much more interesting subject. I do not know whether or not they can lose their first language entirely, but the idea is tantalizing. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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