| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Could I define english as my mother tongue? Thread poster: giulipalla
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Kay Denney 
France
Local time: 11:40
French to English
| Is the OP fit to translate into English? | Apr 21, 2013 |
Jane Proctor wrote:
Giulipalla, we shouldn't come down too hard on your English, since your question concerns a genuine dilemma for people brought up in a multi-lingual environment.
Take my children for example, who moved with me from London to France eight years ago. My youngest has now spent more time here than in the UK and I suspect her French is better than her English.. French constantly interferes with her spoken English, faux amis abound and she is forever muddling up her syntax... funnily enough sentences starting with "since..." being a classic one!
And yet, technically, English is and will always be her first language/mother tongue or whatever you want to call it.
[Edited at 2013-04-21 19:09 GMT]
[Edited at 2013-04-21 19:24 GMT]
My children could fit in the same category as yours, Jane, with an English mother but living in France. They have a perfect accent but get simple things wrong in English. Having been schooled in France they speak French as well as anyone. They could perhaps have produced text along the lines of the original post. Rather than pointing to this as proof that the mistakes made can be made by native speakers, I would posit that "native speaker" is more a matter of where you grow up than the language your mother speaks. Talking about your "mother tongue" is simply misleading in multi-cultural environments.
Whatever, the question here is whether Giulipalla's English is good enough to claim native English status, and I am categorically in with Charlie, Samuel and Ty on that. The writing in the original post is not what I would expect from a native speaker (and even less from a translator claiming to be a native speaker). Mistakes have been highlighted and they're pretty basic errors. As a teacher of English as a foreign language I would have marked that piece of writing pretty severely.
And quite frankly, it's hard to even understand because of the syntax errors. As in the epic Charlie dusted off, my personal litmus test is quite simply readability. I was fascinated by that thread, yet found myself not bothering to read certain posts quite simply because they were hard to follow, and when I looked a bit closer I realised that it was the non-natives I was skipping, simply because the prose didn't flow as well, even if they made very few actual mark-costing mistakes.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:40
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| True, true... | Apr 22, 2013 |
Texte Style wrote: Jane Proctor wrote:
My youngest has now spent more time here than in the UK and I suspect her French is better than her English.. French constantly interferes with her spoken English, faux amis abound and she is forever muddling up her syntax... And yet, technically, English is and will always be her first language/mother tongue or whatever you want to call it. My children could fit in the same category as yours, Jane, with an English mother but living in France. They have a perfect accent but get simple things wrong in English. ... They could perhaps have produced text along the lines of the original post.
What you're saying is true also of my 11-year old son, who lived in South Africa until he was about six years old. His Afrikaans accent is perfect, and he can comfortably switch between Dutch and Afrikaans vocabulary, but he uses Dutchisms in his Afrikaans that would have triggered any non-nativeness test for Afrikaans.
Whatever, the question here is whether Giulipalla's English is good enough to claim native English status, and I am categorically in with Charlie, Samuel and Ty on that. The writing in the original post is not what I would expect from a native speaker ... As a teacher of English as a foreign language I would have marked that piece of writing pretty severely.
Yes, in this thread the OP clearly stated that English was not her "first" language or the language that she grew up with before she went to school, so this is not a case of a child losing his ability to speak perfectly, like a native speaker, but rather a case of a good foreign-language speaker who is no longer in an environment that fosters that language or protects it.
I was fascinated by that thread, yet found myself not bothering to read certain posts quite simply because they were hard to follow, and when I looked a bit closer I realised that it was the non-natives I was skipping, simply because the prose didn't flow as well...
Well I hope you read this post at least, since it quotes you.
| | | | XXXphxxx (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:40
Portuguese to English
+ ...
| Being bilingual | Apr 22, 2013 |
Being bilingual does not necessarily mean that you have two mother tongues. Fluency in a language does not automatically make one bilingual either.
I'd say Spanish is probably your mother tongue (unless you think otherwise) and English is your second language.
| | | | Yvonne Gallagher
Ireland
Local time: 10:40
Member (2010)
French to English
+ ...
| agree with Samuel, Tom, Charlie and Jane, Ty that a native speaker would not make these mistakes | Apr 22, 2013 |
too many errors in this paragraph to claim you are a native speaker.
Ty Kendall wrote: Samuel Murray wrote: Tom in London wrote:
From the awkward syntax in the text above, a general lack of fluency, and numerous spelling mistakes, I'd say that English is not even close to being your mother tongue. I agree. Even if we don't look at spelling mistakes, and we don't look at punctuation and capitalisation tidiness, the fact is that the word order of your sentences is un-English. For English to qualify as your first or your second language, the correct word order must come natural to you. Samuel Agree with Samuel, Tom, Charlie and Jane. There are times when you have to eschew all political correctness and sensitivity and just call a spade a spade (or a non-native speaker a non-native speaker - whilst remembering that there's nothing wrong with being a non-native speaker - I think non-native speakers should have more pride, they learnt the language the hard way - through study, not from lazily sitting on their butts for 3/4 years listening to their parents jabber away). The trouble with self-definition/identification is that it tends to drift quite far from reality (humans have a great capacity for self-delusion).
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wonita (X)
China
Local time: 05:40
| Listen between the lines | Apr 22, 2013 |
Some people tend to tell you "Your English is perfect" if you are fluent in this language. For me it just means the opposite. Do you ever tell a Brit/Scot his or her English is perfect?
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