……native speaker?
I m writing a paper for my applied linguistics course on the controversial concept of the ‘native speaker’.
I’m a TCK myself and have lived in Japan, England, Germany and Singapore. I speak German and English.
Most of you will have had similar experiences. All of you should speak English either as a first language or as a second. Do you consider yourselves native speakers of English? Did you use English as a Lingua Franca* in which ever countries you lived in? Did English slowly become your stronger language the more time you spent living abroad? What do you feel to be your native language’s relevance in relation to English as a Lingua Franca? What are your personal experiences on this topic?
Please share your thoughts and your stories! Looking forward! Thanks!!!!!!!!!
*Lingua Franca: A medium of communication between peoples of different languages.
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9 Comments to “……native speaker?”
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:04 pm
To consider myself a native speaker would be to “accept” (in my mind) that I am a US American, which I’m not… so it’s just my second language.
But I pretty much sound like one unfortunately haha.
I haven’t lived where I need more languages than English and Spanish, but once I do, my English’s purpose WILL be as a lingua franca.
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December 3rd, 2008 at 8:42 am
Hmm….very interesting topic JENROCKS! I think as most TCKs (and non-TCKs) go, English is pretty much the lingua franca for communicating. I personally and technically, would have to count English as the third language that I learnt, after German and French. But given that I was 6 when I began learning it, and given that English was the principle language that saw to my formative education, I would consider it my “native language”. The issue seems to be whether the term “native speaker” is adequate, because it would imply that it is language that your are a “native” of and therefore inferring that those who have acquired English either outside of their “native” country, learned it after a certain age etc., do not, or can not speak the language as fluently as someone who has . Perhaps, the root of this term is the main problem because it assumes in some way that those who have learned English as a 2nd or 3rd language would automatically fall in to this latter concept. I would consider confronting the term “native speaker” itself as something may need to be re-visited or substituted with something that would be inclusive for those who speak English as a principle language without necessarily being a native born to an English speaking nation.
Having said that, English is generally the language I express myself in most fluidly but, I definitely have the influences of other languages that shape how I may express myself. I sometimes find myself including nuances and perhaps even expressions from another language that I may end-up including in a conversation in English. Interestingly enough, I find that this can often enrich my communication or a conversation that I may be having with someone. The responses that I get are generally very positive,because it draws not just curiosity but participation from the other person.
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December 3rd, 2008 at 2:32 pm
There’s a old (East) Indian parable about a man who spoke almost every language perfectly and he made a bet about who was able to tell which language was his mother tongue. Each person that came drilled him on pronounciation, voacublary, and grammar but they couldn’t say which language was his native language. However one person figured out a way to tell. One night when the man was alseep he crept up on him and dowsed him with a bucket of cold water. The man jumped up any yelled out and from then everyone knew which languag was his native language.
The “message”…. the language you yell out in when you stub your toe, slam you hand in the door, or when some idiot cuts you off when you are driving is your native language.
( Not very serious, but i thought it fit the mood)
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December 3rd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
In this context, ‘native’ means ‘from birth’. You can be a native speaker of a language without being from the country in which it is spoken if you happen to have spoken that language from day one. ‘Mother tongue’ is also a confusing term for most. Again, it simply means the language you learned first and that continues to be your first language.
…which is where the trouble comes in. Because study on language is biased towards monolingualism, it is assumed that individuals learn one language at a time, mastering each before moving on to the next. We TCKs and anyone from a multilingual background know that this is not necessarily so. We know from our own experience that you can grow up speaking two or three or however many languages side by side, to the extent that you don’t actually know which one you picked up first. And even if you _do_ know which one came first, it isn’t necessarily your first language. This is problematic because it questions the validity of the use of terms like ‘first language’. Some people can indeed order their languages in that manner and for them, these designations are useful. But what tends to happen with simultaneous multilinguals is that the languages exist side by side, and are often in communication. How many times, when you’re with people who speak some or all of your languages, do you happily switch in and out of different languages without a second thought?
Aradhana’s comment did strike a chord, though perhaps not in the way you meant it. My mother, who speaks 5 languages fluently, says that she knows she really knows a language when she starts to dream in it and can lose her temper in it ‘comfortably’.
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December 3rd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
To answer your question, jenrocks, I consider myself a native speaker of English, French and Urdu, with English being my primary language. I’d say that if I was in a situation where I could speak all 3 without hesitation, I would speak English 60% of the time, French 25%, and Urdu 15%, but I can switch into whichever one as necessary.
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December 4th, 2008 at 2:34 am
What Aradhana said is pretty cool, and it can be a good barometer to tell which one is your native language. However…it is a little bit more different for us TCKs.
As I grew up, I learned English, Filipino, French and German. My mom tells me that when I was in my teenage years I used to dream in French, German, Filipino and English. It really depended on the day. I would “swear” in these four languages, and it doesn’t even really depend on the situation, I just which one comes out first. For example, I was biking along in France and a lady was walking on the bike lane, oblivious to my presence. I barked out something in English. However, I got annoyed at someone in the Philippines and ended up speaking in French. Go figure…
As Nadia says, we grew up in multilingual environments. In India, I grew up in a Filipino-English household, went to a French school, and had to deal with Hindi and English outside. In Germany, I still had the same language at home, still went to a French school, but had to deal with German outside the confines of these two places.
Of course, one would end up with one language to use in most situations. Like for now, since I am in an English-speaking environment, my “native” language is English.
My apologies for blabbering about like this, but my point is, mastery of a language to a level that can be considered as native is a combination of things (especially for TCKs): mastery of grammatical and spelling nuances, mastery of different idiomatic expressions, etc…heck I can go on.
I sure hope you see my point =)
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December 7th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Some of us may identify with this lovely paragraph by Raymond Federman. It’s called ‘The Bilingualist and can be found at:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/federman/shoes/bilingualist.html
“To answer the question I’m always asked [voyons réfléchissons] No I do not feel that there is a space between the two tongues that talk in me [oui peut-être un tout petit espace] On the contrary [plus ou moins si on veut] For me the one and the other seem to overlap [et même coucher ensemble] To want to merge [oui se mettre l’une dans l’autre] To want to come together [jouir ensemble] To want to embrace one another [tendrement] To want to mesh one into the other [n’être qu’une] Or if you prefer [ça m’est égal] They want to spoil and corrupt each other [autant que possible] I do not feel as some other bilingualists have affirmed that one tongue is vertical in me the other horizontal [pas du tout] If anything my tongues seem to be standing or lying always in the same direction [toujours penchées l’une vers l’autre] Sometimes vertically [de haut en bas] Other times horizontally [d’un côté à l’autre] Depending on their moods or their desires [elles sont très passionnées vous savez] Though these two tongues in me occasionally compete with one another in some vague region of my brain [normalement dans la partie supérieure de mon cerveau] More often they play with one another [des jeux très étranges] Especially when I am not looking [quand je dors] I believe that my two tongues love each other [cela ne m’étonnerait pas] And I have on occasion caught them having intercourse behind my back [je les ai vues une fois par hasard] but I cannot tell which is feminine and which is masculine [personnellement on s’en fout] Perhaps they are both androgynous [c’est très possible] “
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December 8th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Hummm … great question. Well … it’s pretty hard to same in my case.
Father from USA (english), Mother from Colombian (Spanish) and grew up in Venezuela (spanish) attending an american school.
So on an everyday basis in my world it was english with dad, spanish with mom, english in class, spanish on the streets and SPANGLISH with friends. So what is native to me ? Who knows, but i do think that because i went to an American school and was taught in english .. i would say english would be a bit stronger than my spanish. As for today .. well living in the Miami area … its the same … english & spanish at work and on the streets and Spanglish with friends and family … So … who knows.
Great question !
James
VenezuelaExpats.Net
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December 11th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I am fluent in Mandarin and English but I consider myself an English native-speaker. This is ironic because I was placed in ESL during the first couple years of my schooling. However because I have been in an environment that is encouraged to write my essays and to perform analysis in English that this in itself has risen above my Chinese ability which lacked the above experience.
I will consider my mother-tongue to be Mandarin because I did first learn to speak that language and although I am a native-speaker of both languages I am much better and much more confident speaking in English than in Mandarin.
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