Plan B Forum

People who have difficulties with the generally accepted meanings of the relevant terms should take the matter up with lexicographers. Instead of warping definitions and cobbling them together piecemeal, they should consider the definitions of entire terms.

A dead language is one that is no longer learned as a native language:

dead language
n.
A language, such as Latin, that is no longer learned as a native language by a speech community.

(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009.)

A native language is one's first language:

your native language or native tongue is the first language that you learn

(MacMillian Dictionary and Thesaurus.)

The only language which was dead and is now being learned as a native language is Hebrew.

QED

Is it possible for someone to have more than one native language? For example, I have spoken both English and Italian since infancy. Does that mean I have two native languages, or that neither can be considered my native language, or something else?

Deja Moo...

My native tongue was gibberish, I revert to it often...

My native tongue was gibberish, I revert to it often...

I've become quite fluent in asshole...

(Mainly by hanging around here; everyone knows that the best way to learn any language is to immerse oneself amongst native speakers... )

Scooter wrote:Is it possible for someone to have more than one native language? For example, I have spoken both English and Italian since infancy. Does that mean I have two native languages, or that neither can be considered my native language, or something else?

Certainly possible...I suspect most natives of Quebec would have as native languages English and Quebequois French. Several people I worked with grew up speaking more or less equal parts English & Spanish.

For that matter, didn't Gob learn English & Welsh as a child?

There are many immigrant families in many countries where the children grow up speaking one language in the home and another language outside the home.

Jarlaxle wrote:For that matter, didn't Gob learn English & Welsh as a child?

He's still working on English...

So then if there are children who grow up speaking both English and Cornish at home, that would make Cornish a native language for them. Which would make Cornish a resurrected language.

is there not a difference between "your" native language and "a" native language of an ethnic, cultural or minority group? I do believe there is.

Cornish is a resurrected language.

Gob wrote:is there not a difference between "your" native language and "a" native language of an ethnic, cultural or minority group? I do believe there is.

Cornish is a resurrected language.

But in order to be "a" native language it has to be the native language of some individual human beings. I still haven't seen any stats on just how many (if any) people learn Cornish in childhood from their parents, the way all people learn their native language(s). If there are any (even if there are far far fewer than those who learn Hebrew that way), Cornish could then, arguably, be considered "resurrected" language. If not, not.

Is* there any data on this?...and if not, why not?


*yes, Andrew, I know, I know...but I first wrote "are there any data" and it just didn't sound right. "Data" is (has become) a strange sort of word.


(edited for spelling)

Deja Moo...

More like Deja Doo-Doo...

I for one am really glad to see this discussion coming back again...

So many things that could be said about it were left unsaid in the previous 100 plus posts on the subject...

They don't provide data, but according to the BBC:

a small number of children in Cornwall have been brought up to be bilingual native speakers, and the language is taught in many schools

"a small number of children"--well, that's pretty authoritative now, isn't it? (Hell, it's the BBC, everything they say sounds authoritative to me, because of that British accent. )

Latin is also "taught in many schools." (I went to one of them, but I don't consider myself--or anyone else, not even the Pope--a "native" speaker of Latin.)

Then why in the world are certain folk referred to as Latin Americans?

Yannow, I've often wondered that myself.

keld feldspar wrote:Then why in the world are certain folk referred to as Latin Americans?

Yer jes not right in the hed, boy.

Econoline wrote:"a small number of children"--well, that's pretty authoritative now, isn't it?

You know, when someone has already acknowledged that what they are providing is not exactly what you asked for, there's no need to be a shit head about it.

Latin is also "taught in many schools." (I went to one of them, but I don't consider myself--or anyone else, not even the Pope--a "native" speaker of Latin.)

It doesn't say that they are learning it only in school.

Sue U wrote:

keld feldspar wrote:Then why in the world are certain folk referred to as Latin Americans?

Yer jes not right in the hed, boy.

"One of these days, I'm gonna have to have a loooong talk with that boy"

TooFunny!