Your Native Language

[Ser]

Native language:
(Salvadoran) Spanish

Ancestors probably spoke some sort of Uto-Aztecan, Mayan and Italic (<PIE) and who knows what else, but the closest ancestors I know have all been Spanish monolinguals.

[Izambri]

Native Catalan speaker with native Catalanophone ancestors. Possible remote Occitanophone ancestors.

[Izambri]

• native lang
• languages we were brought up with
• mother tongues
• languages of our heritage

Let's suppose that I am slow witted. What is the difference between the above four? I don't quite get it from Asahi's post.

To me, native language and mother tongue mean the same. By languages we were brought up with I understand it's about languages spoken in my family environment when I was a child (the languages my dad and mum spoke to me), while I interpret languages of our heritage as the tongues I learned during my life (and I know well or I still use often).

But the title of the thread doesn't help.

[Wattmann]

I'm giving away as little of myself as possible
Anyways, mods and admins can judge by IP, I guess.

[tubragg]

My L1 is Swedish, and the same is true for most of my ancestors. A few hundred years ago some of them spoke Dutch or German.

[----]

The only language I've ever been exposed to in public for any long period of time is English. I hear a lot of Spanish though, but not *that* much.

[Grimalkin]

L1: English
Also been exposed to: Welsh
Ancestral languages: English, Welsh, probably Irish.

[Left]

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[Astraios]

Influence. Not like I'm trying to be rude, I'm just learning from people.

You can't put the responsibility for how you are on people on the Internet. If they were your parents, maybe you could say "I'm like this because of their influence", but not Internet people in a forum.

Anyway, It's probably the way I phrase my sentences, I usually try to distance myself from rude people (who are terribly common here).
It's just that I dislike derailment however common it may be.
So people, don't be upset when I try obsessively to correct your grammar and don't derail my threads (though they may be boring and uncreative).

Or maybe you could learn instead to be more tolerant, instead of learning to be rude.

[Left]

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[Astraios]

Good person. *pats*

[----]

You might say you are righteous, but the LORD knows you are wicked within your heart! Repent, heretic!

[Astraios]

Or you could donate funds (chocolate) to the Church (me).

[Left]

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[ol bofosh]

Native: English, which makes me feel so boring. lol

Mother tongues: well, English for a start. I know my great-grandmother and her daughters spoke Scottish Gaelic, it's a shame my grandad didn't learn it though. His paternal grandparents came from Ireland (Donegal and Dublin) before moving to Glasgow, so I guess they probably spoke Irish. I also have traced my family tree back to Germany in one instance, from Lower Saxony, so German is another.
That's what I know.

I'm seeing my nephew grow up with four languages! At school he learns Catalan, Spanish with his family, plus a little French (his mum, my girlfriend's sister, is Swiss French) and a bit of English from me too. I wish I'd paid attention in my French and German classes at school now...

[Wattmann]

Native: English, which makes me feel so boring. lol

Mother tongues: well, English for a start. I know my great-grandmother and her daughters spoke Scottish Gaelic, it's a shame my grandad didn't learn it though. His paternal grandparents came from Ireland (Donegal and Dublin) before moving to Glasgow, so I guess they probably spoke Irish. I also have traced my family tree back to Germany in one instance, from Lower Saxony, so German is another.
That's what I know.

Not just German, Low Saxon!

[ol bofosh]

Native: English, which makes me feel so boring. lol

Mother tongues: well, English for a start. I know my great-grandmother and her daughters spoke Scottish Gaelic, it's a shame my grandad didn't learn it though. His paternal grandparents came from Ireland (Donegal and Dublin) before moving to Glasgow, so I guess they probably spoke Irish. I also have traced my family tree back to Germany in one instance, from Lower Saxony, so German is another.
That's what I know.

Not just German, Low Saxon!

Wow! Well then, I can add that to my list (of things to research).

I can probably add Welsh, since one of my great-grandparents had a Welsh surname and she came from near Bristol (although she actually hated the Welsh; irony).

[Left]

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[Astraios]

I hope you don't mean written Welsh, because that is ugly as butts.

[ol bofosh]

I like Welsh, both spoken and written, but don't think it compares with Scottish Gaelic.

[Acid Badger]

It's different, but I like it, kind of. Better than written Cornish.

[Aurora Rossa]

Native: English
Ancestral: English, German, Polish, and maybe some others like Russian and Gaelic

[Lyktorna]

Native: English
Ancestral: Cantonese, Tagalog, Hokkien, German, (English)

All of the above except German are/were natively spoken by my grandparents, but their kids were apparently under intense pressure to be "white." Shame.

[Travis B.]

Native: English
Ancestral: German (possibly specifically Alsatian and also East Low German?), father's side, and Polish, mother's side

My parents, on both sides, were members of the first generations of both their families which were truly fully English-monolingual, though English-monolingual-ness was clearly a given by that point, as my dad's parents did not use German at home amongst themselves even though his family was very consciously ethnic German*, and the environment in my mom's immediate family was very "generic American" even though I know my maternal grandmother was basically raised as a Pole and I remember my mom commenting on people of her parents' generation having to act as translators at family gatherings.

* to the effect that relatives, particularly one that seemingly acted practically as their mother, actually tried to get my dad and his brothers to actually learn German, even though my dad at least resisted this

[Dewrad]

Native language: English/Welsh
Ancestral: Welsh, English. Definitely some French. Maybe some Breton and probably some Romani. Some variety of Scandinavian isn't out of the question either, if stories on my father's side of the family are to be trusted.