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Losing an accent and native language | ||
Tags: Native Language | Accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5310 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 11 04 January 2014 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
There's an interesting Wikipedia article on language attrition that you might find interesting. It mentions that people who use their native languages up through puberty tend to keep them, but if you stop before that, it's possible to lose almost everything:
I feel a bit of sympathy: French is my L2, but until a couple of years ago, nearly all of my input came from listening to my wife speak to our kids. And so I developed passive "home French": I could understand my wife quite well, and my vocabulary for parenting was quite solid. But I could barely understand my in-laws, and the radio news was almost incomprehensible. I could also tell that some of my wife's French had "gone into hibernation", because every time she spent a weekend around her sister, her French sped up and got more complicated, and I spent the next week saying, "Pardon?" Almost two years ago, I made a conscious decision to speak French with my wife. And I started spending quite a bit more money on Amazon.fr, for books and TV series. 10,000+ pages and 10 or 20 seasons of TV later, my French is a lot better. So that's my personal suggestion: If I can become semi-competent in French starting in my 30s, simply by finding people to talk to, reading a lot, and watching TV, surely doing all that can help keep your French in good shape. The one place I have no suggestions, unfortunately, is maintaining those pesky "educated native speaker" skills. I've struggled a lot with developing those, and I'm getting better, but it's hard to give those skills a proper workout in the United States. My wife knows me too well, and we can get by with quite a bit of "marital telepathy", so I don't get to push my conversational ability as much as I'd like. I don't know whether you have a book budget and access to a credit card, but I'd be happy to point you towards some good ways to buy French media. It's even possible to buy Kindle books from Amazon France using a VPN, if you're careful to avoid letter Amazon know you're in the US. This is much cheaper than getting books shipped from Montreal. If you're good with computers, I'd be happy to walk you through it. You might also want to speak to your family, if you haven't already, and let them know that your French is getting rusty and that half your English is too simplified, and it's making you a bit nervous. If they're sympathetic, you could set aside some more time for French, or even see if you can talk them into a small French media budget for the household. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sushi13 Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 4466 days ago 49 posts - 64 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 11 04 January 2014 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for all your answers. I will try to read an listen to more French. I have a
collection of books that are in French, well it is a translation, but it should be fine. I have to save up money for a trip so I can't really buy anything new. But I've been wanting to read them for a while.
That is very interesting. Because when we moved here. I would try to imitate the accent and was the only one in my family that could do one well. Now, people say that I'm the one that has the biggest accent.
My family knows, my father is preoccupied by it a lot. Mostly for my younger brothers. We try to use French more often between all of us. We have French books, French TV, etc. But I read most of the books already and I don't really watch a lot of TV. Also, I'm not worried about my English. It's actually getting better and I read a lot in that language so I learn more vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4222 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 11 of 11 04 January 2014 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Keeping up with a native language isn't as hard as it sounds. Referring to Moses McCormick who is from Akron
Ohio and speaks half-dozen languages. The bottom-line is that he doesn't have to be in France to learn French or Spain to learn Spanish. He goes around looking for native-speakers in his city and exchange language learning. He would teach them English and they would teach him to be fluent in their languages. Nowadays there is a lot of more resources online that we no longer have to rely on books in a local library as if the only source we have is the World Book or Britannica encyclopedia to do a school project. My sister keeps up with her Chinese by watching videos posted on www.tudou.com. Everybody have some access to the Internet even without a high-speed connection at home you can surf in local coffee shops, libraries, etc. I watch all sorts of Chinese videos from Taiwan, Singapore, Mainland China even on YouTube. From my area I have access to Fairchild radio. They broadcast Chinese programs a few times a day including news, discussions on various topics and listener phone-ins. When I'm out of town, I usually carry 1 portable device that have access to the Internet. I can access AM1430 online. It is like someone having access to TV5 online from Saint John, Vancouver or Calgary. To keep up I made a conscious decision to watch TV programs online in Chinese and cut all the American primetime shows until my Chinese is up to the same level as my English. In 6 months I watched 5 movies in Chinese but only 2 in English. Living in NB you do have 1 advantage that Quebec is next door. it is just a short distance away any time you want to look for a job in Quebec to practice your French. When it comes to writing in a language like Chinese you need to practice constantly or you'd start losing your characters. Someone like Moses would be online all the time going into blogs and chatting with people in their native languages. I do the same but probably not to the same extent. Many of us assume a "native" language is the language of 1 or both of your parents. A lot of non-Chinese people learned to be fluent in Chinese at the "native-level". You talk to them on the phone you wouldn't pick out any foreign accent. Someone like Mark Rowswell who studied in Ottawa and became an actor in China with the nickname "Dashan" is considered a native- speaker of Chinese. Being Caucasian doesn't make a difference. And JERO the singer is considered a native- speaker of Japanese although born an Afro-American. We assume that a native language is something you acquire from your parents but languages in general is something we can acquire by going to class, listening to audio and video resources even at an older age. Edited by shk00design on 04 January 2014 at 7:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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