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Languages of your family | ||
Tags: Heritage Language | Family | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 17 of 27 15 October 2013 at 10:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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The only language in my family is English. I am always baffled by people who are lucky enough to have parents who speak other languages but don't them themselves.
Perhaps I should mention that one of my siblings is nearly fluent in ASL, but I don't feel any obligation to learn that. Edited by Darklight1216 on 15 October 2013 at 10:43am 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 18 of 27 15 October 2013 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
My family is monolingually Finnish and has been for generations so that's pretty boring. Actually no one in my family has ever shown any aptitude or interest towards learning multiple languages.
Reading this made me kind of sad. This sort of attitudes towards languages sicken me. Edited by Henkkles on 15 October 2013 at 5:03pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4277 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 19 of 27 15 October 2013 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My family speaks English. We can all also speak Tagalog. My mother and the people from her side of the
family can also speak Bisaya/Cebuano. My father and those on his side of the family can also speak Fookien and Mandarin. Once my Mandarin becomes fluent, I'll start working on my Bisaya and Fookien. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4023 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 20 of 27 16 October 2013 at 12:34am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I'm not at all proud of this way of thinking. But this is what I feel, I find it useless and dishonest to lie about my feelings. And even if I was thinking in other way - I don't see where I can really use it. I'm not going to visit Ukraine, especially those parts, where Russian language (and, sometimes, Russians themselves) is underrated. Edited by Via Diva on 16 October 2013 at 12:59am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4042 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 21 of 27 16 October 2013 at 8:55am | IP Logged | |||||
I didn't say that with animosity in mind. A lot of Finnish people feel that way about Estonian and so on. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6761 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 22 of 27 16 October 2013 at 11:52am | IP Logged | |||||
My parents are both bilingual Khmer/Cantonese. Khmer is their stronger/dominant language, but they consider themselves Chinese, so even though they spoke to us children mostly in Khmer, they didn't actually try to teach us the language. They never required or encouraged us to speak Khmer with them, never taught us new vocabulary, never explained or repeated words, and never corrected any mistakes we made. If we didn't know how to say something in Khmer, we just said it in English. We didn't have any access to television or music in Khmer, and we didn't know how to read the language. We also didn't have any extended relatives or friends who spoke with us in Khmer, and we almost never heard the language used outside the house, so we never learned proper, polite speech. As result, we picked up some heritage-level Khmer but not enough to be fluent or to use it with non-family members. I would like to learn Khmer one day, but it's not high on my list of priorities. I don't see myself having much use for the language, especially since I'm already studying my other family heritage language, Cantonese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alamo Joe Newbie United States Joined 3849 days ago 17 posts - 31 votes | Message 23 of 27 22 October 2013 at 6:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have many family members whose native language is French. When I used to visit them while growing up I would speak to them in broken French. As a kid that was probably cute but I'd be embarrassed to speak like that to them now. I'm sure their English has improved now and they would probably have to "rescue" me and switch to English if I was struggling to speak French. That's enough of an incentive for me to strive to become a fluent French speaker.
I also have Spanish-speaking cousins that I'd like to be able to communicate with. I remember when my aunt and her daughter visited us many years ago. I couldn't speak a word of Spanish and she couldn't speak a word of English. My aunt had to translate everything. That was frustrating because I could see how isolated my cousin was since she couldn't speak with any of us during her stay. In a way I felt more responsible than anyone else because she was closest to my age and I really wanted to make her feel welcome. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3888 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 24 of 27 22 October 2013 at 7:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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My family has moved all of a couple of miles in the past 300 years, so we are as monolingual as they come.
The idea that languages are important has always been present, though, even aside from the English that is present all day every day in Swedish media. I was probably around four by the time I started answering the phone, and since my father worked for this huge multinational German corporation, and worked a lot in Germany as a result, monolingual Germans often called him at the house. One of my parents' favourite stories is the one where I'm about four or five years old and a native Swede from Gothenburg calls the house asking for my father, in Gothenburg dialect, but I don't understand a word of what he says so I tell him "Ein minuten, bitte." and run to tell my father that there are Germans on the phone again. 25 years later they still won't let me live that down. My best friend from age 2 to 10 or so was Spanish, and when I started school every one of my close friends were half-something, German, Iranian, etc. Playmates taught me Dutch phrases, Romani phrases etc. So, I definitely don't have a single language I'm passionate about as a result of my family (unless you count the fact that I live in the French countryside and took French in school because we started spending every summer in the wine country). But, I'd say that my family and the kind of environment they let me grow up in definitely fostered a respect for languages in general. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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