Is English your native tongue

[MoLiEG]

^lol No problem, bro!

 

[Michael88]

Enjoy (?)

I'm at work too, but YOLO

That was a-a-a-a-a-ctually pretty a-a-a-a-a-wesome.

Your language is terrible and I can't learn it.
That is all.

Worry not! Next time we invade your country I'll make sure to teach you all proper German.

Ok, that was a bad one.

 

[photonrider]

That was a-a-a-a-a-ctually pretty a-a-a-a-a-wesome.


Worry not! Next time we invade your country I'll make sure to teach you all proper German.

Ok, that was a bad one.

Actually not - it's a point to consider within the discussion; language invades a country with the presence of the invaders, and thereby influences the language of the country. We could very well be speaking Latin in Britain now if history hadn't gone the way it did for the ancient Britons.

The title 'Native Tongue' is also open to broad perception since the terminology is always questionable:

One of the more widely accepted definitions of a native speaker is someone who was born in a particular country and was raised to speak the language of that country during the critical period of development. It is believed that this definition was formed during the colonization of the Americas .[3] The original colonists were considered native speakers of English, but their offspring were considered incompetent, non-native speakers of English simply because they were born in North America.Sometimes the term native language is used to indicate a language that a person is as proficient in as a native individual of that language's "base country", or as proficient as the average person who speaks no other language but that language.[citation needed] The Language Sciences Journal has published an article which states that an individual qualifies as a "native speaker" of a language if they were born and immersed in the language during youth, in a family where the adults shared a similar language experience as the child.[4] Native speakers are considered to be an authority on their given language due to their natural acquisition process regarding the language, versus having learned the language later in life. This is achieved through personal interaction with the language and speakers of the language. Native speakers will not necessarily be knowledgeable of every grammatical rule of the language, but will have "intuition" pertaining to the language. Instead of being directly taught the rules of English grammar, native speakers have unconsciously learned the rules through their experience with the language.[4]

Sometimes the term mother tongue or mother language is used for the language that a person learned as a child at home (usually from their parents). Children growing up in bilingual homes can, according to this definition, have more than one mother tongue or native language.

In the context of population censuses conducted on the Canadian population, Statistics Canada defines mother tongue as "the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood by the individual at the time of the census."[5] It is quite possible that the first language learned is no longer a speaker's dominant language. This includes young immigrant children, whose families have moved to a new linguistic environment, as well as people who learned their mother tongue as a young child at home (rather than the language of the majority of the community), who may have lost, in part or in totality, the language they first acquired.

Mother language
"The origin of the term "mother tongue" harks back to the notion that linguistic skills of a child are honed by the mother and therefore the language spoken by the mother would be the primary language that the child would learn."--this type of culture-specific notion is totally a misnomer. The term was used by Catholic monks to designate a particular language they used, instead of Latin, when they are "speaking from the pulpit".[6] That is, the "holy mother of the Church" introduced this term and colonies inherited it from the Christianity as a part of their colonial legacy, thanks to the effort made by foreign missionaries in the transitional period of switching over from 18th-century Mercantile Capitalism to 19th-century Industrial Capitalism in India.[clarification needed]

In some countries such as Kenya, India, and various East Asian countries, "mother language" or "native language" is used to indicate the language of one's ethnic group, in both common and journalistic parlance (e.g. "I have no apologies for not learning my mother tongue"), rather than one's first language. Also in Singapore, "mother tongue" refers to the language of one's ethnic group regardless of actual proficiency, while the "first language" refers to the English language that was established on the island through British colonisation, which is the lingua franca for most post-independence Singaporeans due to its use as the language of instruction in government schools and as a working language.

A first language (also native language, mother tongue, arterial language, or L1) is the language(s) a person has learned from birth[1] or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity. In some countries, the terms native language or mother tongue refer to the language of one's ethnic group rather than one's first language.[2] Sometimes, there can be more than one native or mother tongue, (for example, when the child's parents speak different languages). Those children are usually called bilingual.

By contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than one's first language. Wiki.

21 February has been set aside as International Mother Language Day.


I should speak Dutch as my mother tongue, but since English was the language spoken at home it is the only one I know. The one I think in.

 

[sems4arsenal]

I speak London very best

 

[Apok]

That was a-a-a-a-a-ctually pretty a-a-a-a-a-wesome.


Worry not! Next time we invade your country I'll make sure to teach you all proper German.

Ok, that was a bad one.

Please don't, we already have enough germanisms in our language thanks to you.

 

[kikie]

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I should speak Dutch as my mother tongue, but since English was the language spoken at home it is the only one I know. The one I think in.

Please explain.

I still wonder what my first language is. Dutch or Flemish?

It could well be that German is the main language spoken in Europe in a parallel universe.

 

[photonrider]

@ kikie - Haha - I knew that would interest you. Father is dutch, and so therefore are my children (albeit now mixed with English, Scots, and some others if traced back to the 16th century - our family genealogy can be traced back only so much) but as I outlined in the article above, immigration and emigration plays a part in making us tongue-tied. So I grew up speaking English. Or whatever it's called now.

*shrugs.
Ik vesta het nyet . . .

 

[Sage Ages]

Technically, yes, but I knew a small amount of Spanish before English.

 

[kikie]

Not to sound negative but Flemish (Belgian Dutch) is one to most ugly languages on this planet. Other Belgians on GTP probably concur.

English spoken by Patrick Stewart (e.g. in Star Trek) is one of my favourite variations of the English language.

 

[photonrider]

Not to sound negative but Flemish (Belgian Dutch) is one to most ugly languages on this planet. Other Belgians on GTP probably concur.

English spoken by Patrick Stewart (e.g. in Star Trek) is one of my favourite variations of the English language.

There are a lot of guttural languages around - some sound like a whole bunch of grunts and huffing and puffing and a bit of hissing occasionally. Others make use of more pleasing sounds - Spanish is a language like that; I would bet even the most savage breast could be tamed by a goodly chunk of Spanish poetry.

As for Patrick Stewart - all those days on stage quoting Shakespeare bred him well.

 

[Jimlaad43]

We could very well be speaking Latin in Britain now if history hadn't gone the way it did for the ancient Britons.

Well we kind of are. All but two (Hungarian and Finnish) current European languages have basic stuff from Latin. English is easiest for most to learn because it is an amalgamation of all the languages that invaded us. There's the basic Celtic and Gaelic, with Latin (Romans), Nordic (Vikings), French (Normans), German (Saxons), and some Spanish and Dutch. Basically, it's lots of languages squashed into one.

Read this. It's quite long, but it was a struggle for me, and I only speak proper British English. You guys who have learned it will find this...interesting.

 

[PeterJB]

English is my native language, but it's West-Country English so it's does without most of the consonants.

 

[AOS-]

Although it technically isn't, English may as well be at this point. I don't have a working level of Cantonese, but it's good enough to comprehend and communicate everyday speech. Call it white-washed. I was born in Canada so I'm doing considerably better than most others.

 

[kikie]

Ever wondered how languages came to be? (sounds odd)

 

[Dean]

I still wonder what my first language is. Dutch or Flemish?

I would say it's Flemish, if you live in Flanders.

 

[kikie]

But is Flemish a language or is it a colletion of Dutch dialects?

 

[Apok]

Well we kind of are. All but two (Hungarian and Finnish) current European languages have basic stuff from Latin.

I don't think that's correct. While there surely are latin-derived words in nearly every language, you might be thinking about proto-indo-european which is a reconstructed language using the roots of several languages.

And yes Hungarian and Finnish are not a part of the tree because they're Finno-Ugric. Estonian is also a Finno-Ugric language.

 

[FLIGHT50]

Wow, I am impressed. I have gotten more responses than expected. One thing I can add, is that English in the U.S. has soo much slang to it that everyone can not comprehend what's being said. I think that is why Jordan drives this forum the way he does. They say English is the hardest language to learn with all it synonyms, homonyms, antonyms, verbs tenses or what not but you guys are doing very well. Understanding it and writing it is good enough for me. It's understandable if you can't speak it well. I bet if you all had pen and paper handy when speaking is an issue, you all would have 0 problems communicating to some that uses English only.

I have always wanted to ask this question due to curiosity. I have attempted to learn Spanish (Latin version) on occasions but apparently I need to do what some of you all do here. English dialect does differ from country to country but the base of it is all the same. Pronunciations and some spelling are different but the human mind can pretty much make out what is. There are some words in English, Spanish, French and Italian that can be identified as the same word, just a different spelling.

Again, you all are impressive. I know it sounds corny but considering its hard for me to learn another language, you all have done very very well doing what I can't.

For the comment about me not being in the GT5/6 forums, no I haven't really. I just came back on here within the past month with the talks of GT6 arriving. I pretty much abandoned this forum do to my disappointment with GT5. So in turn, I took a leave of absence from the site and stopped playing GT5. However, I am optimistic with GT6. Hopefully it is what I expect out of a GT title and then I can remain active on here and not ditch the newest installment.

That said, although I don't play games online really (I am oldschool, lol), I would be more than happy to race on occasions with some of you clean racers around the world after I get bored with A-spec. So perhaps, I will see some of you all in the lobbies.

 

[Dean]

But is Flemish a language or is it a colletion of Dutch dialects?

Hm... Apparently it's just a dialect, but whether or not it's thought as a language in Flanders, I don't know.

 

[Apok]

I don't think English is a hard language to learn at all. I'm told Slovenian is though.

On the subject of dialects though we have a saying here: ''Each village has it's own dialect'' and there's a lot of truth to that. The dialects also differ a lot. I imagine it's kind of like Irish, Scottish, Welsh and erm... English english ( ). Someone with a strong accent can be very difficult to understand. Now imagine that in a tiny country, except the dialects are so varied that I cannot understand someone who comes from the 'prekmurje' region for example. Even if it's technically the same language. It's not an exaggeration I simply don't understand what they mean. We all learn how to speak properly in school though, so that helps communication.

 

[AOS-]

I don't think English is a hard language to learn at all.

I believe it might be one of the easiest languages to learn.

 

[Jimlaad43]

When it comes to learning languages, if the language uses the same characters, you can have a guess at how to pronounce it if you have to read a word. When it comes to other alphabets (Greek, Russian, Mandarin), I just look at it and think "I have no idea what the hell that sounds like". That and I'm just a lazy native english speaker because everyone else seems to learn our language.

The problem with visiting other countries as an English speaker, is that most of the people you will interact with in the day will try to speak English back at you. If you enter a shop and start trying to speak the language, instead of helping you, they'll switch to English, so the motivation to learn another language drops.

 

[PeterJB]

I've been told it's one of the hardest languages to learn, due the lack of rules found in other European languages and the amount of words which are spelled the same but sound different, and sound the same but are spelled different.

 

[Apok]

I've been told it's one of the hardest languages to learn, due the lack of rules found in other European languages and the amount of words which are spelled the same but sound different, and sound the same but are spelled different.

Perhaps. I feel like it's an easy language to start talking quickly. The basics aren't that hard, but perhaps perfecting that to get it to a higher standard is more challenging.

 

[Wiegert]

And yes Hungarian and Finnish are not a part of the tree because they're Finno-Ugric. Estonian is also a Finno-Ugric language.

In relation to European languages not on that tree, Maltese in its standard form uses Latin script. But the language itself is Semitic, like Arabic, Hebrew and Ethiopian.

I believe it might be one of the easiest languages to learn.

I've heard plenty of people say it's either very easy, but technically it's more of a challenge to master the various pronunciations and word meanings.

I was impressed that many of my non-native English speaking friends learned the language almost entirely through watching movies, anime or video games. But since they've been communicating more with English speakers online since then, I've noticed a clear improvement in grammar and pronunciation. Even when they had a decent grasp of English beforehand.

 

[QuattroDelta]

Viva EjPAÑA.

Franco, Franco que tiene el culo blanco porque su mujer, lo lava con Ariel...

Ok no.

Spain.

 

[Jimlaad43]

Welcome to English.

 

[Apok]

Other languages have that too.
For example in Slovenian ''Gori na gori gori'' means ''There's a fire up on the mountain.'' Pronunciation is great.

 

[HKS racer]

The thing with english is the speaking is a different world, every time I hear someone from London I'm scared LOL. They speak way too fast to remotely understand the meaning of the phrase. American english is a lot easier for me.

 

[Jimlaad43]

The thing with english is the speaking is a different world, every time I hear someone from London I'm scared LOL. They speak way too fast to remotely understand the meaning of the phrase. American english is a lot easier for me.

Oh yeah, accents in the UK vary so much. I seem to come from the area with the default accent.
Here is a scouser (someone from the Liverpool area) showing off just how painful the accent is.