Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Losing Language

Here's an article on language loss through social deprivation.  Consider the extreme hostility that immigrants often face when trying to function in a new country.  The overwhelming demand that they give up their native language and culture is hard enough for people who choose  to immigrate.  For refugees, who are not voluntary immigrants, this additional violation of self can be shattering.
Tags: linguistics, networking, reading
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  • 3 comments
kimuro

kimuro

April 9 2016, 20:31:48 UTC 5 years ago

In the grocery store today I had to maneuver around two women having a spirited conversation in ... I assume it was Portuguese. There was a young girl - 10 or so - sitting in one of the carts listening. I stopped to address the girl, asking her if she knew how luck she was - to understand the conversation her mother was having and to understand me as well. I told her that I was envious of her good fortune.

I deeply regret that my mother's generation did not learn her father's Gaelic.
kestrels_nest

kestrels_nest

April 11 2016, 01:43:57 UTC 5 years ago

This made me think of two family stories.

One was of my great-grandfather, who, as my mother put it, spoke 6 languages poorly. (Yiddish, Polish, German, Russian, Spanish, English, in that order) My great-grandmother insisted on speaking English at home once they got to Indiana, as part of being "real Americans". The end result was that great-grandpa lost his fluency in Yiddish. But he never became fluent in anything else, so though he was an intelligent man he had no good way to express himself after the family left Europe. I always found that terribly sad.

And the other was my maternal grandfather at the end of his life. He had grown up speaking both Yiddish and English, the spoken English exclusively after his parents died. When he was in the hospital, very much in his right mind, he switched to Yiddish to have a private conversation with my mom. The nurse attending him at the time almost panicked, thinking he was having a stroke or delirious and babbling. Mom had to explain that no, he was speaking his native language and was no more ill than he had been 10 minutes before.

What I don't understand is how anyone, much less everyone around a person, can fail to recognize something as language, even if they don't understand the specific meaning. Language carries an expectation of communication; that expectation may be disappointed, but it's still there. It has a cadence that conveys intent; it is never just random sounds. Phonemes repeat in recognizable patterns. How can it be mistaken for gibberish? I don't get it
ysabetwordsmith

Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

April 11 2016, 05:54:26 UTC 5 years ago

>> One was of my great-grandfather, who, as my mother put it, spoke 6 languages poorly. (Yiddish, Polish, German, Russian, Spanish, English, in that order) My great-grandmother insisted on speaking English at home once they got to Indiana, as part of being "real Americans". <<

Sadly that's a very common arc. Many immigrants abandon their native languages by choice.

>> The end result was that great-grandpa lost his fluency in Yiddish. But he never became fluent in anything else, so though he was an intelligent man he had no good way to express himself after the family left Europe. I always found that terribly sad. <<

It is sad. It's also common. Most people cannot learn a new language after puberty. They can't even hear sounds properly that aren't in their native language. Weird.

>> And the other was my maternal grandfather at the end of his life. He had grown up speaking both Yiddish and English, the spoken English exclusively after his parents died. When he was in the hospital, very much in his right mind, he switched to Yiddish to have a private conversation with my mom. The nurse attending him at the time almost panicked, thinking he was having a stroke or delirious and babbling. Mom had to explain that no, he was speaking his native language and was no more ill than he had been 10 minutes before. <<

He was very lucky to have someone able and willing to speak up for him. A number of people have been locked up as mentally ill simply because they spoke a foreign language. (Or murdered, but that's police brutality rather than medical abuse.)

>> What I don't understand is how anyone, much less everyone around a person, can fail to recognize something as language, even if they don't understand the specific meaning. Language carries an expectation of communication; that expectation may be disappointed, but it's still there. It has a cadence that conveys intent; it is never just random sounds. Phonemes repeat in recognizable patterns. How can it be mistaken for gibberish? I don't get it <<

Because some people are just that self-centered. Anything other than their own language doesn't process as language, but as noise: literally, it goes through a different part of their brain.

Don't look at me, I process animal sounds as language and can communicate, albeit crudely, in several of them.