Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 October 8

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October 8

What counts as a "native language" or "native speaker" in a bilingual household?

What counts as a "native language" in a bilingual household, where the children may be able to speak in their immigrant parents' mother tongues but completely fail at writing in their parents' language due to lack of formal education in the language? (This is entirely possible, if the script is not phonetic and in no way related to the dominant language!) Are they still bilingual completely or partially? Or maybe they are considered native speakers but their mastery of the language is less proficient than their second language? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 02:01, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Not an answer per se, but perhaps an interesting anecdote. I was raised in both Dutch and the Grunnegs dialect of Dutch Low Saxon (with English thrown in the mix for fun). Grunnegs doesn't actually have a codified spelling, making it quite difficult to write and read in it. This leads me to sometimes describe myself as monolingual (Dutch), bilingual (Dutch/Grunnegs or Dutch/English depending on situation) or trilingual. Your mileage may vary! Note that our article on Dutch Low Saxon calls it a dialect, which is incorrect, it is a seperate language group from Standard Dutch. Fgf10 (talk) 09:39, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Don't have an answer (other than to say that I generally find from my own experiences in Malaysia that talking about a "native language" can be confusing.

But note that it can get more complicated than simply being better with the language they used in school. I think it's resonably common for Malaysian Chinese to be able to speak their families dialect, and if it's different the local Chinese dialect (e.g. Cantonese in Kuala Lumpur). They may or may not be able to speak Mandarin.

If they didn't go to a Chinese primary school, and particularly if they can't speak Mandarin, their ability to read and write Written Chinese can sometimes be quite limited. (Some non Chinese primary schools do have Mandarin, both written and spoken lessons, but many don't or have them as limited weekend lessons. Of course with the rise of China, there is a renewed emphasis on Mandarin.)

They can generally speak and write English and Malay to some degree (as the later is the medium of instruction, currently for all subjects except English at school and the former is also a compulsory subject).

However depending on the school and location, the local Chinese dialect can sometimes be mostly (Manglish) the language they will speak among friends and outside. Malay will be what they used for communicating with teachers and for most school work and is more important at school. (It's problematic if you don't get a credit in your SPM.) But English perhaps with some phoentically written Chinese and some Malay may be what they use for other written stuff (such as on the internet, SMSes, books). It will probably be what they will use at university or other tertiary level education if they attend.

So their written Malay or English will be far better than their Chinese, hopefully at a level which enables resonable communication etc. But which one is better will vary, and the level will not necessarily be at a level you'd normally expect from a native user. And their spoken Chinese (whichever dialect) could potentially be better than their English or Malay.

(OTOH, some are more comfortable with English than with whatever Chinese dialect or equally comfortable with both. It does depend a fair bit on what they speak at home which could be any number of things including Manglish, getting in to the native language bit, but OTOH can also depend on a lot of other things. I think in some areas, some may also be more comfortable with Malay than with English for spoken and written. Meanwhile, some urban, afluent Malays may prefer English. They would often still have attended a normal government Malay langauage school. And may also still primarily speak Malay at home.)

Nil Einne (talk) 13:44, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Bilingualism refers primarily to spoken language. A person's "native language" is the language he or she learned to speak first. This is not necessarily only the language of the person's parents, since children learn language as much, if not more, from their peers than from their parents. If a person learned to speak two or more languages from the start (say the parents' language and the different language spoken by peers), then that person has more than one native language. It is possible to be illiterate in one's native language, and in fact millions of people are illiterate in their native languages. You could say "I am bilingual. My native language is X , but for reading and writing I prefer Y." Or, "I am bilingual. I am a native speaker of X and Y, but for reading and writing I prefer Y." Marco polo (talk) 15:44, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I question the statement that "a person's native language is the language he or she learned to speak first". Of course that is usually the case but I know several cases of people who almost lost the language they'd learned first in the first years of their life and in any case are much more fluent in a language they had learned later in life. I even know personally one case where the speaker almost forgot the two languages he had first learned (one after the other, first from about 0 to 5, then from about 5 to 10) and the language he's most fluent in is his third language which he started speaking only about age 10. Since "native language" often implies "language one is most fluent in" one cannot reasonably say such people's first language is their native language. What should one say then, that such people have no native language? Contact Basemetal here 18:49, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Native language means literally "language of birth", according to this source. Of course no one speaks at birth but in practice it does mean the language one learned to speak as a small child. A person can certainly lose the ability to speak his or her native language. My uncle's native language was Polish, but he can't speak more than a few words of it today because he also learned English as a child and stopped using Polish as an adult. My uncle's first language is English, and it his only fluent language. This blog suggests "dominant language" as a term for a person's most fluent language, especially when it differs from the native language. Marco polo (talk) 21:29, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

My late ex-father-in-law finished up with fluency in no language at all. He was born Russian in the Ukrainian part of Imperial Russia, but after his family was wiped out in 1917 he was taken as a 5-year old boy by the Red Cross to Yugoslavia, where his name was changed, he had horrendous experiences that played a large part in his later becoming a paranoid psychotic, and he forgot all about his early years, except that when he picked up Serbian he always spoke it with a Russian accent and many interpolations of Russian words and expressions. It was neither one thing nor the other. After the war he and his wife were stateless, and they spent years in camps in Germany, Belgium and Italy, knowing no German, French, Dutch or Italian. They migrated to Australia in 1950, and he gradually picked up some rudimentary English but he was never comfortable or remotely fluent with it till the day he died in 2001. They had Russian friends here, but his Russian was always infected with Serbian; and they had Serbian friends, but his Serbian was always infected with Russian. He spoke English only when unavoidable. Essentially, he lived his whole life in hostile linguistic environments. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:49, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I can add two cases to this gallery of non-standard linguistic situations. One is a guy that I once read about on the old Indology list back in the days: an Indian Tamil both of whose parents were Tamil but whose father chose to speak almost only English with him while his mother spoke to him only Tamil. Because the father had some sort of job for the central government (do they say federal?) he spent his childhood moving around the country (he was in fact, even though a Tamil, born in Kerala), from Mumbai to Calcutta, from Delhi to Kerala, etc. As a result as long as he lived in India (he now lives in the US) his most fluent language was neither his Vatersprache (English) nor his Muttersprache (Tamil), but Hindi, and with his siblings and friends he used mostly Hindi and English or a mixture of both (Hinglish). Apparently such cases are far from unique in India especially in families that move around a lot. My other case is that of the 17th c. French mathematician, physicist, philosopher, writer, etc. Blaise Pascal. There is a letter of his to another great French mathematician, Fermat, in which he explains a solution he found to the so called "problème des partis" (that letter apparently is one of the first examples of modern probabilistic reasoning but that's an aside). The letter starts in French, then at some point Pascal writes that he'll switch to Latin because he finds it impossible to talk about mathematics in French: "le français n'y vaut rien" if I remember correctly: "the French language is worthless for that" (ie mathematics). Note that was Pascal's opinion not mine and as generations of brilliant French mathematicians writing brilliantly in French can testify it is of course not true today, but it may have been in the 17th c. And indeed he does switch to and continues the letter in Latin. So in the 17th c. a fluent French speaker, a native speaker of French, a master of French prose in fact (if you know anything about Pascal as a writer), couldn't express his mathematical thinking in his mother tongue but had to switch to Latin. So "dominant language" seems to be a relative term. Contact Basemetal here 23:09, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

As the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V may or may not have said, "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse." AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:05, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I'll also use small letters for what is only a footnote and a bit of a correction to what I wrote above. While trying to find the text of Pascal's letter on the net I stumbled on Google Books into this: Dominique Descotes, "Blaise Pascal: Littérature et Géométrie". It seems Pascal's attitude to the use of French in mathematics was more nuanced than what he was telling Fermat in that letter and that he even wrote some of his mathematical works in French. Chapter II ("Des lettres et des chiffres) which can be read entirely in the Google Books preview (pp. 55-109), and especially the first section "Pascal et la langue des géomètres", contains a discussion of Pascal's contradictory attitude regarding the use of French for mathematics. As an aside it seems Italian and Dutch/Flemish mathematicians (Simon Stevin, "Wiskonstighe Ghedachtenissen") had started to use their vernaculars for mathematics much earlier on. Ironically it seems the Fleming Simon Stevin also wrote in French ("La pratique d'arithmétique", 1585) which would mean that the Flemings had started using French for mathematics before the French themselves! Almost hard to believe but the works of the French mathematician Viète for example, are all in Latin, and that as late as 1600. However please don't rely blindly on this data but double check it if it is essential that it be accurate as it all comes from Wikipedia :) As to English and German mathematicians they seem to have been even more late at the party. Newton I think wrote his works in Latin. Leibnitz wrote some of his philosophical works in French but as far as I know used Latin for mathematics. I wonder when the English started using English for mathematics. As to Keizer Karel and his linguistic division of labor (if he is indeed the author of "I speak Spanish to God etc."), not only did he forget to mention Dutch/Flemish (he was born in Ghent) and even though French is usually mentioned as his mother tongue (actually his mother was Spanish: and what was she doing in Belgium at the time? visiting with her sister-in-law? maybe you've heard the that "Charles V was born at his aunt's because his mother couldn't be there at the time") he was completely fluent in Dutch. More surprising even from that defender of Catholicism: Spanish to God? I thought at that time you could get in serious trouble in Catholic countries if you presumed to talk to God and to read God's word in anything other than Latin. Contact Basemetal here 19:27, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

The Mass said in such language that people understandet is repugnant to God. Regarding Pascal chances are that like every-one he had his French much too distorted by vernacular and local usages to like the idea of learning how to write it ( an arduous re-educational process. ) Learning foreigners by contrast could brush through the matter without losing through second thoughs, Latin references and learning procedures between. --77.128.14.105 (talk) 16:27, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Numbering of English kings

Why is it that Edward Longshanks is called Edward I, when there had been three previous kings of England named Edward? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 17:29, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

See Regnal number. The English monarchy officially re-started at the Norman Conquest, and everything is numbered since 1066. Mogism (talk) 17:42, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I also believe English kings before 1066 styled themselves "Kings of the English". WP doesn't do that (see Edward the Confessor). That could be because I am wrong (I'm almost sure for Alfred the Great though) or because WP is wrong. Contact Basemetal here 18:35, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I asked the same question of my college professor many years ago, and she gave me the same answer Mogism gives above. I didn't buy it, but I didn't know where to look for a more plausible answer. Fortunately, Marc Morris in his recent bio of Longshanks gets to the bottom of it. Some chroniclers in Edward I's day actually called him Edward III (they miscounted, forgetting the forgettable Edward the Martyr), but most just called him "King Edward, son of King Henry". But after three King Edwards in a row, people felt the need to distinguish them, so they started calling the current king Edward III, and his father and grandfather Edward I & II. The numbers stuck. The idea that the numbering "started over" after the Conquest was a later attempt by historians to make sense of the oddity. —Kevin Myers 07:25, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for this interesting explanation and for questioning the established answer. However all of this is still rather too vague to decisively settle the question. If as you say most chroniclers did not give him a regnal number and only some of them called him Edward III, then that shows that for most chroniclers the Anglo-Saxon Edwards did not have to be taken into account. It is not necessary that those chroniclers had explicitly called him Edward I: by not giving him a regnal number it is obvious that to those chroniclers (and you say that's most of them) he was the first Edward. And to say that the real reason the first three Edwards (after 1066) are Edward I, II and III and not Edward III, IV and V (or IV, V and VI) is that "after three King Edwards in a row people felt the need to distinguish them" is an entirely incomprehensible statement to me. By that logic "after three King Henry (IV, V and VI) in a row" people would have felt the need to distinguish them and would have started all over, Henry Bolingbroke being thereafter called Henry I, etc. I guess this question warrants a longer discussion and will not be settled here at the RD. But what you have shown of Marc Morris's arguments does not convince me he's overturned the established wisdom, only that he's usefully questioned it, and that is always fruitful I'd say. Contact Basemetal here 18:02, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

PS: Are you talking of Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain, 2008 or something even more recent? Contact Basemetal here 18:42, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Yep, that's the book. This is an interesting discussion. Your assertion that those chroniclers in Edward I's reign who didn't assign him a regnal number failed to do so because they regarded him as the first Edward seems like an anachronistic leap to me. My guess is that the simple explanation is probably correct: they didn't need a number because the previous Edwards had nicknames (Edward the Elder, Edward the Martyr, Edward the Confessor). Calling him "Edward, son of King Henry" was all they needed to distinguish him. That approach wouldn't work after the second "Edward, son of King Edward", so numbers became an easier way to distinguish the three recent Edwards. Almost certainly, restarting the Edwards' regnal numbers was a convenience, not a design. I imagine Henry III, who was devoted to Edward the Confessor and named his son after him, would have never dreamed that his son would be called Edward I. —Kevin Myers 08:27, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Regnal numbers outside Europe

Regnal number says before 1400 regnal numbers are anachronistic. But that article only deals with European monarchs. What's the situation elsewhere? For example in Ancient Egypt? Did the Egyptians themselves use regnal numbers or are they only applied retrospectively by modern historians? Contact Basemetal here 18:35, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian regnal numbers were only applied by modern historians. In the dynastic era, each pharaoh had five names, one of which (the nomen or "son of Ra" name) was his birth name and four of which were composed for him upon accession, sort of like personalized royal titles. The most important of the five names were the praenomen, or throne name, and the son of Ra name. The former was actually the most important to the Egyptians; if they referred to a king by one name only, it would be the throne name. I suppose modern Egyptologists find it more convenient to refer to kings by the names they held throughout their lives and then tell them apart by numbering them, especially because some kings reused predecessors' throne names.

The Ptolemaic kings of Egypt were a bit different. They were all named Ptolemy, and they used titles in Greek to distinguish themselves. Unfortunately, some of those titles were reused as well, and their subjects often told them apart by using unflattering nicknames. (Each Ptolemy had a traditional five-name titulary, but, except maybe the throne name, I would guess it showed up only in temple inscriptions.) When modern scholars give the Ptolemies numbers, you get messy names like Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II or Ptolemy VIII Physcon. Scholars also number the women of the Ptolemaic family. Most of these women did not reign in their own right, but I suppose giving them numbers is the only way to tell them apart, given that they were practically all named either Arsinoe, Berenice, or Cleopatra. A. Parrot (talk) 19:45, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you A. Parrot for this useful summary. Contact Basemetal here 00:26, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

A question regarding hypothetical "Gogo" Emperors

Japanese emperors had no regnal numbers but if an emperor had the same posthumous name as a previous one the prefix "Go" (後) meaning "later" was added. For example Emperors Ichijou (986-1011) and Go-Ichijou (1016-1036) (the first example, I could find in List of Emperors of Japan), Emperors Shirakawa (1073–1086) and Go-Shirakawa (1155–1158), etc. The last such ones were Emperors Momozono (1747–1762) and Go-Momozono (1771–1779). Incidentally, if you want to watch the Machiavellian emperor Go-Shirakawa in action, I recommend "Yoshitsune" the NHK Taiga Dorama of 2005 whose 50 or so episodes are all on YouTube with English subtitles, but then you should hurry because you know how things go over there. But to proceed: it so happens that there's never been a third emperor with the same name as two previous ones. Is this a coincidence or were three emperors with the same name explicitly avoided for some reason? If it is just a coincidence what prefix could (hypothetically) be used to indicate a third emperor of a given name. Certainly not "Gogo" as above. That was meant as a bit of a joke. I hope no Japanese will take offense with a stupid joke. Nevertheless this is a real question. Talking of baka gaijin jokes here's another: you may or may not know that there are times where the particle (postposition) "no" (の) is pronounced but not written. For examples there are surnames such as 木下 (Ki(no)shita) or 井上 (I(no)ue) and I would almost be tempted to guess this is in fact the case for all Japanese surnames containing の (as I have never seen hiraganas used in writing a Japanese surname) but the truth is I'm not sure. In any case I was working at a place with both Japanese and Gaijin. A temp was hired whose name was Kinoshita. So the Japanese explained to the Gaijin that in writing the name of that lady you pronounce the "no" but you don't write it. So an Indian fellow quipped: "To write a の in her name is a no no! But to write no の in her name is also a no no!". Ha ha ha. Well, the cleverest people do not get sent to Japan. Contact Basemetal here 00:26, 9 October 2014 (UTC)