My Forgotten Language: the brain can lose and reclaim an abandoned mother tongue
discovermagazine.com
discovermagazine.com
But I think a lot of the reason it is lost is just how it is unnecessary. If everyone understands English and primarily speaks it, there is no real need, or opportunity, to learn/use a second language.
It was the same with my parents but more out of necessity than a deliberate act. I grew up with 4 languages but my parents spoke another 2. It would be difficult to understand those extra 2 languages as they had different scripts and were really different in nature. The result was that my parents used it as an encryption framework to have a private conversation while I was around. I understood zilch.
This hits upon the key motivating driver (or lack thereof) of language acquisition: multiple languages generally act as a force multipler[1], but aren't as "useful" when considered in isolation.
The other problem with language acquisition from a purely utilitarian aspect is the fairly large time commitment which might be better spent elsewhere (e.g. studying core subjects in the resident language). But the paradox of the force multiplier factor is that you ideally want a fairly strong base to amplify in the first case (e.g. Math/Science). Even though people may not break it down this way, this seems to be the intuitive reasoning use by [semi-]multilingual parents, and is often another reason why the "culture/tradition" or "fun" aspects of language learning are emphasized as compensating factors.
Maybe "everyone" understands where the kid lives now, but if they ever decide they want to explore their parents' country or culture, it will likely be much easier if they know the language.
Although you don't need to know anything but English in the US, knowing Spanish is extremely valuable and gives you many opportunities to connect with people different from you. There are other ways to get this too, but I'd argue knowing a foreign language that you can use at least sometimes in your area is a huge benefit.
(I'm learning Spanish - a bit rough but I know enough to carry a conversation. Talking to others in their native language been one of the more culturally-enlightening experiences I've had in a while!)
I learned English easily and fluently at 10 years of age, so at least I'm telling myself that I've got about a decade before she's linguistically crippled as we all are :P
I'm in the same boat, and the kids pick up on our hesitation and lack of confidence in the language. Since so much of language acquisition is being able to speak confidently so that children aren't confused by the implicit context within which phrases and vocabulary are used, our impaired fluency adds more friction (and detracts from the implicit enjoyment) to the process.
Even little stuff like “grab the ketchup from the fridge” is enormous. I can’t do it with my dad’s language, but I can with Spanish and I do things like pointing at the light:
Me: What’s that
Kid: Light
Me: What’s that in Spanish?
Kid: -shrug-
Me: La luz
It doesn’t have to be a dedicated lesson, just sneak it in. I’ve got three kids under five, I know there’s 50 billion things going on, but man I wish my dad would’ve kept it up with us.
Congratulations and condolences - my single one is pushing me to my limit as a parent and a person :P
It's a good suggestion. She knew a few words for common, frequent words - like "give me", and "here, take this". I'm trying to work it back into her vocabulary again; I need to get my wife to start using those terms as well.
Mom/Dad speaking French? Boooring. PJ Masks or Paw Patrol en français? Oui c'est super!
Netflix recently made available lots of voice-over / subtitle options for most of their original content, and even some non-original stuff. It's super exciting time to be a multi-lingual parent.
This was a supplement to their French-langauge preschool (2d/wk,immersion) and the corresponding playdates and such with their French-speaking friends.
I don't get this. I'm trilingual, and I think in English, but I'm fluent in the other 2 languages as well. My parents converse in the mother tongue at home, but with friends they would switch to another language. I think parents are vastly underestimating the cognitive powers of young children.
Some parents are probably just trying to shield their children from what they see as a handicap, or a source of embarrassment. They're wrong, but their motivations are understandable.
(And if they're in a very cloistered community, their parents are probably more focused on the native language instead of the host language anyway.)
I was surprised to hear my son (at the time only four) say "Hiro is the hero Big Hero 6." Pronouncing both Hiro and hero correctly.
I have been wondering if education in a single language is not a inhibitor of development much beyond anything that we can presently suspect. My pathetic reading of history places human development where either languages are daily flux, along trade routes, else in close proximity and contact even as created in wartime alliances. How easily do we attribute to the national character our perception of intellectual capacity and style. The joke about Hungarians being perforce genii the complexity of their language demanding that agility. So should I expose my infant son to as many spoken languages as possible for the longest time?
Is that really a thing? My father is japanese and I grew up in Brazil. I don't think my lack of fluency in japanese was due to any fear from my parents - my parents spoke japanese at home and even had me attend nihongakkou (japanese classes). But it's very hard to develop real fluency without a community. My cousins had always been more fluent due to being involved in a karaoke community - something my family wasn't. My mother was born in Brazil too, and spoke japanese fluently as a child because she was raised in a isolated japanese farming community where many people couldn't speak portuguese.
Even now, with my kids, it's been far easier for them to pick up mandarin (my wife's mother tongue), since until a few months ago, their grandparents lived with us and spoke mandarin exclusively, and since the community where we lived was predominantly chinese (read: there are chinese supermarkets, there are chinese books in the library, and most classmates in their school are 1st/2nd-gen chinese). Compared to that, it's been a lot harder to get them to learn portuguese, since I'm literally the only person around them who speaks it.
I thought about this a little more, and yes, community did help me develop my mother tongue a lot. There were the parents who exclusively spoke the language, but I would frequently visit my grandparents, who would also speak it. And they would take me to visit other members of the clan, who would also speak that. Perhaps it is a diversity of people speaking the language that gives one a certain amount of fluency?
I learned Hindi because it is the national language and my peers in school usually conversed in it. English was what most books were written in and it was the language of instruction. So it seemed very natural to be fluent in multiple languages.
Something that worked well for me was making it a game when the kid wasn't expecting it. The first time was over breakfast. I brought a boogie board and told him we were gonna learn some portuguese. I drew a happy chubby boy and asked him who it was. He shrugged. I told it was him. Now I had his attention, so I drew a strawberry and asked him what that was. Once he answered, I told him "yes, morango". Then, I drew him eating it and said "Calvin come morango" (pointing to him and the strawberry as I said the respective words). Then, I said "Calvin come..." and picked up a real strawberry. Now, the exercise was kind of a guessing/memory game for him. I only covered a few words and it involved a lot of repetition and high fives, but he became a lot more open to the idea of learning portuguese after that.
When my kid was learning to read, making some flash cards also worked really well - drawing on one side, word on the other. The trick is in making a few verb ones, and nouns that can complement, plus one with a drawing of the kid, then do permutations, e.g. "Calvin come bolo" (cake), "Bolo de morango", "Calvin come bolo de chocolate", etc. "Eat" is a good starting verb, "go" is also very versatile in combination with types of vehicles and places, then you can try expanding to other daily things.
Would love to hear how that works for others
As we're in Finland I assume that he'll have a Finnish accent when he gets a bit more proficient, but so far things seem to be working out. I expect he'll learn English pretty well, partly via me, but also via random conversations, TV, etc.
One of the pleasant surprises were that his first two words were "Daddy" and "Äiti", respectively.
When we came back my brother pretty much only spoke Arabic and I would flip between English and Arabic depending on who I was speaking to and what I was trying to say. Certainly my more advanced language skills were in Arabic.
Problem is, when we got back to the states all my family wanted us to speak in Arabic like a pet monkey doing tricks so we just flat refused to speak to anyone but my mom and dad in Arabic. The only time my dad ever spoke to us in Arabic was when he was super pissed and we were in trouble or grandma was on the phone from Libya, in which case it was past our bed time, the line sounded like static through a tin can, and we wanted nothing to do with the strained conversation. Have you tried putting your three year old on an audio only call? My kids don’t want to take part either.
My Arabic is at about the level of a four year old now (I’m 35) and my brother has no Arabic at all. Sadly, I’m conversant in Spanish to a degree I never got to in my father’s native tongue.
I don’t have the skills to teach my kids Arabic and use it around the house, but since I can for Spanish, my oldest that is entering Kindergarten in the fall has been enrolled in half-day Spanish immersion to go along with the other half in English.
I think my multi-language origin helped me excel in Spanish in school, I’ve read it could’ve been a help when I was learning to read and play music– and even if it is all placebo, I cannot fathom a harm in learning other cultures and languages.
It’s easily one of the bigger laments of my childhood that I lost the ability to converse in dad’s native language. Facebook and Google translate have helped me keep in touch, and a lot of my cousins know English better than I do Arabic- but still.
My Spanish has even helped me be able to guess at Italian and Portuguese during travels, where I otherwise would’ve been somewhat lost. Obviously there’s massive differences, but the ability to pick out a word or two on a sign goes a LONG way when you’re otherwise unable to communicate with those around you.
EDIT: I assume there might be a reply to the tune of “why not go try to learn it now”. I’d like to, but I’ve got higher priorities with three kids under 5 and things I’d rather do with my free time. I’ve almost enrolled in a class or two at the communality college and then bailed. I think its fair to say that I lament it more than I really want it back, else I would’ve done it, so I should quit whining about it.
Learning the languages that I had opportunities to learn throughout my childhood (but squandered) is on my bucket list. We can all hope to find the time when the kids are older and we're hopefully able to retire while our mental faculties are still intact.
I've witnessed my friend's grandmothers, one who only speaks Italian and the other only Spanish, have full on conversations in their native tongues. I wonder if having conversations in different languages is common in other language families (e.g. indu-aryan languages)?
I grew up with 4 languages. It only helped me seamlessly "understand" most other foreign languages I listen to.
Kids still pick up some vocabulary from speaking to their parents/grandparents. And even if they spoke it toddler-fluently before getting into preschooler, they won't be able to read a newspaper by the time they're teenagers. Without constant immersion, kids just don't have the discipline to keep going at it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Children don't need that special mindset to learn. They learn all the time and pick up the language on the way...
That's not the way kids learn at all. They are learning everything all the time, in small amounts. That's why immersion is so important.
Having said that, you do need to use all languages enough to get proficient at each of them.
We've been teaching ASL (and thus English) since she was 6 months old. This is not our native tongue. But even at 2 now, it's very difficult to understand a lot of what she's saying. Having her sign along makes it somewhat easier, but it's still a guessing game. At this age, her speech and signs aren't always very clear.
Having an even larger vocabulary in another language would make it even harder to guess what she wants! We'll start teaching her our native tongue as she gets a little bit older.
This squares with my experience. I learned Kannada from age 4 to 7, living in Bangalore. My sister, 4 years older than me, also learned it, and can still read and understand the language. I, on the other hand, had forgotten Kannada within 8 months of leaving Bangalore for Mumbai, where it's not commonly spoken.
Anyway, I was astounded that this aspect of acquisition wasn't well-studied, and I'm glad to see it has been since.
Edit: I never meant to contend that computer languages are human languages in the sense that the former can function in every way the later can -- so I wasn't suggesting that anyone should say "C is a language just as Spanish is a language." But I did argue that programming languages come by their name honestly, are meant to communicate between humans, and most importantly find their way into language colloquially, and as such deserve attention from linguists. My prof seemed to have engaged with the paper as if I were making the "C is like Spanish!" argument, whether that's because (a) I wasn't clear enough in my writing (b) he wasn't paying close attention or (c) there's something else that eluded me is left as an exercise for... well, me, and apparently hacker news participants who want to take it up as a matter of discussion. :)
It's not like he was wrong about this?
- how the brain "reads" an Ikea instruction?
- is it similar to non-verbal communication?
- do you vocalize an interpretation of the instructions?
- 3D projection in your head?
- What are the differences between seeing an object, hearing a word that represent it, reading the word? (Now thinking about sign-language, braille...)
I just picked an Instruction set to see, but realised I was already biased with the expectation I had of how I would decipher it.
I.e. your argument isn't really that Javascript or C are human languages as defined by the linguistics professor but that he or she ought to augment or alter his or her definition of "human language" to include them.
A fully visual programming environment would have more in common with standard programming languages than a spoken language.
I'd have argued exactly the same thing, because it's basically true, but given you a C++.
"... the last decades have shown a sharp decline of people's mastery of their own language."
I have immediately to mind, despite it's not by far the most eloquent of EWDs letters on language. A moment of your search engine of choice, reading the results of his letters found by the qualification of "+ poetry" I enthusiastically propose to you despite I vaguely recall losing my argument with my English language tutor for my assertion that the"interactive reference" to a broad body is valid argument if proposed by requirement prior to reading my essay.
The man first to be described as computer programmer or scientist of computer languages challenges me not to pursue the subject of his renown, but to learn Dutch so to learn instead of computing the tremendous subtlety of humanity which I have found overwhelming whenever I come across his expositions.
The Victorian era I believe saw this distinction between man and nature which found exegesis and celebration in formal gardens and arguably even though the assiduous endeavour of naturalists and explorers in this age of classification, of delineation: Human Above Cruel Raw Nature. Nature seen as the result of forces and devoid of innate intelligence or even intrinsic logic possessed by itself and not discoverable by the obsessions of man's inquisition. Nature was about to give up its its all. Then Man would stand supreme, as if asked to defend the thesis by a passing hurricane.
Are we not learning glyphic or visual narrative speech at considerable pace of adoption, right now in the west?
Was the SMS messaging apotheosis the acceptance of conducting transactions in practical life circumstances entirely via emotional expression in a exceptionally complicated indirect tense and at times by suggestion and inferences avoiding noun and verb entirely?
I'm not a linguist nor even familiar enough with the formalities so very helpful if not essential to discuss this subject which I find increasingly fascinating, if you can forgive me my inclination to attempt my expression in certain expectation of some technical error. But I hope my impression conveyed, at least, that I am sure that as a species the result of the communication explosion since the internet, must be a renaissance in language development and expression. I am unsure if I can articulate what's been a nagging feeling I'm yet to have attempted expressing to any audience, but if you take the extinction of historical languages to be accelerated by the isolation from urbanisation and other factors, if isolation from other speakers or potential new speakers is the past language killer, then talking to grandchildren over Skype might enable at least colloquialisms and dialects still extant or somehow developing to persist in the future?
My parents put me in English medium school with Hindi as second language (Several years of Sanskrit as well) to survive outside south India (they suffered outside South India, for not knowing Hindi; they trained themselves in it and gave easier way to me learn other languages).
But since I didn't have formal education in Tamil, a highly sophisticated language evolved over (2000-3000 years); I can't write or read genuine version of it (can do some guess work based on familiar characters from common media). But I can speak in Tamil fluently since my family speaks in Tamil, also at several times my friends who are into Tamil literature have been amazed by my choice of vocabulary when speaking in Tamil.
I think,
1. I compensate for my lack of knowledge in reading/writing Tamil by listening keenly to the language.
2. I can say from first hand experience that, the OP is also benefitted by living in an environment where he gets to listen to Tamil quite regularly; enough to give him understanding of the language.
Moved back from China to the UK with our 3 & 5 year olds whose mother language was Chinese. I’d assumed there would be some kind of struggle getting them adjusted to English - exactly the opposite.
Now both kids have 95% lost their Chinese, and I’m having to ‘forcibly’ reintroduce it. Kind of amazed me.
Not sure what level you're at - the hand writing is hard, takes Chinese people years and years of repetition and constant exposure. I always thought learning reading/typing Chinese is an essential part of learning Chinese, but hand-writing it is an optional (or something you can allow to progress much much slower). I read and write at an HSK6 level, but I doubt I could hand-write more than 1000 characters from memory. Meh.
Have you ever seen those copy books of Tang Poetry? Not sure where you'd buy them, but they're collections of poems on cheap paper where you can trace the characters on a grid and then space for you to write them yourself. They're fun.
While learning English as a 2nd language, we noticed that when in a group of nonnative speaker, the who does the talking had a harder time understanding the native speakers than the others from the group. This never failed, whoever spoke had more problem to understand than he listeners.
Maybe an explanation is that the extra cognitive energy uses to speak prevented as good comprehension as when fully spending the energy/focus on listening.
But I have never found any satisfying reason for this phenomenon of mutual understanding at the apparent peak of drunkenness.*
I think the extreme effect of alcohol in this case is actually fairly well known, despite the thought occurred to a friend who managed to turn his own experience into a undergraduate study, that the evidence is infrequent due to the required amount of alcohol exceeding most physical tolerances.
I have been convinced without any evidence, since university days, that the mind can become exceptionally plastic under extreme effect of alcohol., [Edited, I left in a section that added nothing so withdrew it] Obviously little formal study is probably done, but since I have one nagging fear of failing to discover something so vital in plain sight but missed for sake of my narrowness in vision, and in my fear of the damage done that stays with me despite hangover all forgotten, I dearly should love to hear of science in answer to the phonomenon. Did the unknown language overflow and get routed to the disused section of my brain that once awaited regional programming and can utter or at least gurgle every human sound? That might trigger a familiar and comfortable and safe feeling, the exciting of brain disused since infancy.