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bossel said:Someone who learned English as 1st language.
lexico said:I'm not quoting from a book, so please don't quote me without checking with an authoritative source. In colloquial speech 'mother tongue' and '1st language are often used to mean the same thing. However there seems to be a difference in context if one wants to pick the nits.
mother tongue
Loosely the language of one's country of birth, but this can be midleading at times. One's mother could speak a different language. Also, a country can have more than one language in use. For example, a child born in India to a mother speaking Hindi, Hindi would be his/her mother tongue.
first language
1) first national language
In a country with more than one language, the one which is recognised to be the primary language of communication can be termed 'first language.' The child in the above example would go to school and learn English because English is the nationally recognised language of communication. English would be his/her first language. English could not be a foreign language because it is the official language of all of India.
2) first (foreign) language
If that child also learned French in school, that would be his first foreign language.
3) first (idiosyncratic) language
If one has acquired several languages and prefers one over the others, tha language can be considered the person's first choice as a means of communication. Although not used often, I guess I can push this argument.
In short, mother tongue is what the child learns from the mother, and first language is the primarily accepted language of communication in a bilinagual/multilingual environment. One refers to the person's quality, the other to a linguistic environment. Neither has to be the language of the person's country of birth. If I want to be nit-picking ie.
1st language & mother tongue are interchangeable, AFAIK. 1st language simply means the 1st one you learned as a child, which usually doesn't happen in school but in your family.seasurfer said:Just wondering, is there a different between the terms "first language" and "mother tongue"? Although it is used interchangeably most of the time, I still ponder if there is a significant different. For example, a person's mother tongue can be French, but in his whole life, he uses English as his major language to communicate, so, wouldn't that make his first language English?
Again since you like to be precise, let me try defining native language which can also have several connotations and denotations.seasurfer said:How would you define "native English speaker"? Someone who has been speaking English since the day he was born? Or someone who come from an ethnic group which orginally speaks English?
seasurfer said:The questions are: Is African American considered a native English speaker? Is Asian living in US who can only speak English considered a native English speaker?
seasurfer said:If the answer is yes to the above questions, then what about Singaporean, Malaysian, Indian, etc. who speaks English only?
I think, there are a lot of people who mistakenly identify ethnicity with language. I would still say you're only native speaker of a language when you learned it first, even if your speaking skills are considerably lower in your mother tongue than in another language. Nowhere is it said that native speakers should have a better command of their language than others.seasurfer said:I once read in a newspaper that western people do not consider Singaporean as a native English speaker. However, many Singaporean can only speak one fluent language which is English, if they are not considered a native English speaker, then what is their native language?
Glenn said:Now this I find interesting. It seems to me that if people are taught a language only because it is the national language by people who don't have a command over it and it is the only language spoken by those people, then there would be native speakers of a language who don't sound like native speakers. I'm not sure what the case actually is in these countries -- i.e. who's teaching them -- so I can't say that that is the case. I wonder what the English of these countries sounds like, though.
bossel said:Maybe in China there is a certain nationalist attitude which leans in that direction. Someone from Guangdong learns as 1st language (mother tongue) Cantonese, 1st national language (the one learned at school) is Mandarin, though. I've noticed a certain tendency to even call Mandarin their mother tongue, although it actually is not.
The problem here is that there are several varying definitions for this. I tend to stick to the factor "mutual intelligibility." Since Mandarin & Cantonese are not mutually intelligible they are distinct languages. But I know that this is a problematic topic (esp. in China, for political reasons).seasurfer said:The reason why so many Chinese will tend to say that their mother tongue is Mandarin rather than Cantonese is because Cantonese is not considered as a "proper language" in the Chinese community. Cantonese is considered a dialect in the Chinese community.
Of course, I knew this is very controversial. But before we get into this debate, one should define what is a "proper language" and what is a "dialect"?
I can't see why a "proper" (what would that be, BTW?) writing system should be necessary for a language to be recognised as such. That would mean that hundreds of languages (eg. of Amazonian Indians or Papuas) wouldn't be recognised for lack of a written standard.only Mandarin and Cantonese have a proper writting system. The rest of the dialects, such as Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew, Taiwanese, Hainanese and etc, does not have a proper or complete writting system, they can only be taught verbally from generation to generation.
Now you would have to define what a "full-fledged language" is.If dialect is not a full-fledged language, the only full-fledged language that a Chinese will know is Mandarin
That is again dependent on the definition you use. But human language as such is before all speech. Whether you are able to read or write doesn't matter for defining a communication system as language.Under of all these circumstances, if you are a Chinese, and being asked by a foreigner what is your mother tongue?
As I said, to me the language skills are largely irrelevant to the question whether something is your mother tongue, or not. More important is which language you learned first. Race is absolutely irrelevant.if an American white man was born in China, and was educated there in their local Chinese school, I wonder if he will be considered a native speaker of Mandarin? Let?fs assume that he can speak mandarin far better than the average Chinese living in China.
This is interesting, because it didn't occur to me that modern (recent) child rearing is becoming more evenly divided between BOTH the mother and the father. Another factor that I failed to notice is whether the parents from the two different languages choose to speak in either language without individual preference.bossel said:If I & my girlfriend will ever have kids, they will grow up bilingually: German & Cantonese. They would be native Cantonese & German speakers, not Mandarin & German. Whether they would learn Mandarin at all is an open question.
There're numerous dialects in China, from north to south, east to west,totally different,even a small place may have sevral dialects. In most time people speak their own dialect. In the place where I live many people can speak two dialects, what's their monther tongue? Sometimes I prefer to use Mandarin cause some words sounds wired if I use dialect to express them, what's my monther tongue then? I have no idea now. :?seasurfer said:The reason why so many Chinese will tend to say that their mother tongue is Mandarin rather than Cantonese is because Cantonese is not considered as a "proper language" in the Chinese community. Cantonese is considered a dialect in the Chinese community.
Republic of China? I don't agree with that.seasurfer said:Some facts about the Chinese dialects:
1. The national language of People's Republic of China (Mainland China) and Republic of China (Taiwan) is based on the Beijing's dialect.
Do Cantonese have a writting system? I don't think so.seasurfer said:2. Of all dialects in the Chinese community, only Mandarin and Cantonese have a proper writting system.
We can read book in dialect. In fact, magistrates usually use dialect on a conference or when they make a speech.seasurfer said:Imagine you can only read book in Mandarin, you can?ft read it in dialect.
I'm actually extrapolating from the perceived American usage. When I was teaching English at a language institue in Korea, the headmaster once pointed out that to call "English instruction in Korea" TESOL or the teaching of English as a Secondary Language is incorreact, his reasoning being that English is not a recognized language of the country.bossel said:1st language & mother tongue are interchangeable, AFAIK. 1st language simply means the 1st one you learned as a child, which usually doesn't happen in school but in your family.
It's obviously dependent on the definition, but for what I know, Lexico's interpretation of 1st language as "first national language" is not very popular.
lexico said:This is interesting, because it didn't occur to me that modern (recent) child rearing is becoming more evenly divided between BOTH the mother and the father. Another factor that I failed to notice is whether the parents from the two different languages choose to speak in either language without individual preference.
But if the common language should be a third language, then the linguistic environment for the child becomes quite different. For example, if a German speaking father and a Cantonese speaking mother prefers to speak English without much trying to use either of their languages, the child may lose the opportunity to develop much language ability in either German or Cantonese, but speak only in English. What will be his native language then?
Returning to your example, your (future) child would be one of the rare instances of a true bilingualist, of which some people deny the existence or posssibility. Of course I am assuming that you (plural) will use both German AND Cantonese indiscriminately (without favoring one over the other) when your child is around.
In your example, if the Japanese-American parents' English carried a heavy accent initially, it may hurt the child's English pronunciation especially in the early years. As time goes by, the child would mingle with the neighbors and eventually overcome much of his/her inherited accent, so to speak. Then in the long run, more damaging for the child's language development seems to be the psychological damage rather than pronunciation. A sense of insecurity or inferiority, if that was indeed the parent's attitude regarding native speakers' English, might be copied by the child although it wasn't necessary.Glenn said:I have read that Japanese parents living in Hawaii who try to speak English to their children ultimately end up hurting their children's English pronunciation. It's better for parents to speak to their children in their own languages, and the child will be bilingual. If a German speaking father and a Cantonese speaking mother raise their child in an English speaking environment, I believe the child would be tri-lingual.
bossel said:The problem here is that there are several varying definitions for this. I tend to stick to the factor "mutual intelligibility." Since Mandarin & Cantonese are not mutually intelligible they are distinct languages. But I know that this is a problematic topic (esp. in China, for political reasons).
When I say full-fledged language, I mean a language that has a well recorded rules of grammar, well recorded rules of pronounciation and a well recorded way of writing. This is an open topic for everyone to discuss. It is too difficult to give a definition.bossel said:I can't see why a "proper" (what would that be, BTW?) writing system should be necessary for a language to be recognised as such. That would mean that hundreds of languages (eg. of Amazonian Indians or Papuas) wouldn't be recognised for lack of a written standard.
Now you would have to define what a "full-fledged language" is.
bossel said:As I said, to me the language skills are largely irrelevant to the question whether something is your mother tongue, or not. More important is which language you learned first. Race is absolutely irrelevant.
If I & my girlfriend will ever have kids, they will grow up bilingually: German & Cantonese. They would be native Cantonese & German speakers, not Mandarin & German. Whether they would learn Mandarin at all is an open question.
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