Your Native Language

[Pinetree]

an example of the Russian part would be the word for tomatoes: "Bockelzhonn"

Thanks for that - I didn't kow that баклажан could also mean "tomato", but I checked and it seems it does (or did in the 19th century) in several dialects.
From which part of Russia did your ancestors come?

AFAIK, they came from around both of the major Russian Mennonite colonies, Molotschna, and Chortitza, and left either just prior to (Dad's side), or following (Mum's side) WWII.

[Gulliver]

This thread is really interesting, and I'm a bit annoyed that I'm more or less British as far back as counts*. I have documented Scottish and Irish ancestors, one or two of whom may well have spoken Gaelic (surnames like Ní Mháille would suggest so), but we're talking centuries ago. Far enough in the other direction and you get Norman French. My Welsh family don't speak any Welsh beyond numbers, dim ysmygu and "Please can I go to the toilet?" and the I never got any suggestion that my great-grandmother spoke anything other than English.

So, boo!


* Also: Finnish ettins and lesser Norse deities, but I don't think that counts.

[communistplot]

For me, well I grew up with English & Espanish (New York English & Nuyorican Espanish respectively.). My Ancestors would have spoken PIE, Proto-Uralic & Various African tongues.

[johanpeturdam]

I speak Faroese as a native language. However, since I've been learning Danish since the age of 18 months, I probably could add that as a second native language, but in general I count it as my first foreign language.

[Buran]

My native language is English.

I'm half Chinese (although I look like a white guy; people are always surprised to learn I'm part Asian) and part English, Scottish, Belarusian, and Ukrainian. My mother emigrated from Hong Kong with her family when she was 12 in the early 1970s, so she and her family speak Cantonese. However, after they arrived in Canada, my mother spoke English far more often than Cantonese. Her English is native-speaker level; she actually speaks better English than Cantonese (but I wouldn't know, because she never speaks Cantonese at home, so I never learned it). As for the other half of my ancestry, English, Belarusian, Ukrainian, and possibly Russian were spoken.

For some reason, my last name, Carpick, is very rare so far as I know; I think it's a corruption of a Slavic word. Anybody have any idea what that could be?

[Chartophylacium]

My native language is the Upper Saxon Dialect of German. A mother language in the meaning of this thread is of course German. Since the half of my ancestors are from Silesia there is quite a chance Polish is a mother language, too. The other half of my ancestors are from Saxony, so there is quite a chance, too, that Sorabian is another mother language.

[WeepingElf]

My native language is High German, close to the standard, but with some Low Germanisms strewn in. There are several Low German words (such as Schüppe for Schaufel 'shovel'), and a slight northern accent in pronunciation. Much like the accent of former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who grew up in a village about 20 km from my home village, though not quite as thick I think (it is hard to tell with which accent oneself is talking!).

[hwhatting]

For some reason, my last name, Carpick, is very rare so far as I know; I think it's a corruption of a Slavic word. Anybody have any idea what that could be?

Looks like it's a corrupted or variant spelling of Karpik, which exists as a family name in Polish and means "little carp". Derivations of this word are attested as family names also in other Slavic languages, e.g. Russian Karpov (yes, the chess player).

[hwhatting]

There are several Low German words (such as Schüppe for Schaufel 'shovel'),

I have that, too. At least when I'm back in Ostfriesland or talking to friends from there about shovelling. Not a frequent topic, though..

[Jipí]

FWIW, I don't think I stuck out much linguistically during my 2½-years stay in Braunschweig. I grew up basically where the first S of "Kassel" straddles the white line: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... alekte.PNG. I don't speak the local Platt, but looking at the isoglosses in the DTV Atlas Deutsche Sprache, I'm familiar with many of the expressions indicated as typical for my region, even if not all of them are in my active vocabulary. Braunschweig is about halfway on the line between Hannover and Magdeburg.

(And yeah, Schüppe in informal contexts for me, too.)

[Buran]

For some reason, my last name, Carpick, is very rare so far as I know; I think it's a corruption of a Slavic word. Anybody have any idea what that could be?

Looks like it's a corrupted or variant spelling of Karpik, which exists as a family name in Polish and means "little carp". Derivations of this word are attested as family names also in other Slavic languages, e.g. Russian Karpov (yes, the chess player).

That's odd. I don't have any Polish ancestry that I know of (although now that I think about it, my grandpa did once mention that "Carpick" meant "little carp" and was an Anglicization of an Eastern European name).

[hwhatting]

That's odd. I don't have any Polish ancestry that I know of (although now that I think about it, my grandpa did once mention that "Carpick" meant "little carp" and was an Anglicization of an Eastern European name).

It doesn't need to be Polish - as I said, family names derived from karp "carp" exist in other Slavic languages too, and the derivation with -ik is possible in other Slavic languages as well.

[Nortaneous]

My mother's side of the family is partially from Germany (Kaiserslautern, I think) and partially here before the revolution according to legend, which wouldn't surprise me since that side was Adventist. Also she's supposedly a direct descendant of Robert Burns, but my grandmother was 1. an attempted poet and 2. a delusional narcissist so I would not be surprised at all if she just made that up. My father's side at least had a German name, but they changed it from Rheinconsonantsomething during WWI, nobody knows where they're from, the record house apparently burned down, family lore suggests Scotland, and they're all Presbyterian, and they just so happened to change their name to something very, very Scottish. Who knows.

I can trace my mother's side back to the guy who left Germany when he was 17 (hell, we still have the prayer book he took with him), but that side is almost all dead: there's just me, my mother, and my uncle, and apparently very distant cousins in Germany who my grandmother might have talked to once. And the German side of the family... er, a lot of them died in WW2.

[Viktor77]

I speak Faroese as a native language. However, since I've been learning Danish since the age of 18 months, I probably could add that as a second native language, but in general I count it as my first foreign language.

That's pretty sweet. I always wondered how Danish worked in the Danish territories.

Also, waaaaaaay back there I think I meant /ai/. I have a tendancy to mix up /ai/ and /ei/ since I've learned to many different languages which transcribe them differently. Sometimes /ai/ as <ei>, /ai/ as <ay>, etc.

Anyway, my native language is Great Lakes American English.
My ancestral languages are German (three generations ago, mainly from Hamburg on my mother's side and Aachen on my father's side) and Quebec French (five generations ago).

[Thry]

For the record, my native language and also heritage language is Spanish; and that is true of my 2 parents and 4 grandparents.

[Zaarin]

This thread is really interesting, and I'm a bit annoyed that I'm more or less British as far back as counts*. I have documented Scottish and Irish ancestors, one or two of whom may well have spoken Gaelic (surnames like Ní Mháille would suggest so), but we're talking centuries ago. Far enough in the other direction and you get Norman French. My Welsh family don't speak any Welsh beyond numbers, dim ysmygu and "Please can I go to the toilet?" and the I never got any suggestion that my great-grandmother spoke anything other than English.

So, boo!


* Also: Finnish ettins and lesser Norse deities, but I don't think that counts.

This feels a little necromantic considering how long ago this post was, but you wouldn't happen to be related to Gráinne Ní Mháille, would you? I did some interesting research on her in a comparative study with Cleopatra VII--the project didn't end up going anywhere, but it was very interesting.

[Izambri]

Native: Catalan
Heritage: Catalan, and I could count French too, since one of my grandmas and her sisters and brothers also spoke French, but not as a native language.

[TaylorS]

Native Language: American English

Heritage Languages: Western Norwegian and East Prussian Low German (Niederpreußisch).

Go back far enough on my mom's side and I'm sure there are Old Prussian speakers.

[Gulliver]

This feels a little necromantic considering how long ago this post was, but you wouldn't happen to be related to Gráinne Ní Mháille, would you? I did some interesting research on her in a comparative study with Cleopatra VII--the project didn't end up going anywhere, but it was very interesting.

So I've been told (and though I haven't really done any research myself, I have no reason to disbelieve it my ancestors were in the right place at the right time to make marrying her descendent not improbable).

[Ghostfishe]

Native: Technically I was "brought up" speaking American English, though I've been playing European computer games and talking to English folks since I was six or seven, so a lot of "English-English" terms, spellings etc. have slipped in.

Heritage: German and Cherokee, both fairly recent. Other than that... I don't know. My mother's family isn't the sort that's very keen on family history, and my father's family's history is a gray area. Swedish or Norse, possibly? I can probably cover all the bases by just listing Cherokee and PIE.

[Shrdlu]

Native language is Standard Swedish with a big dose of Northern Swedish words that nobody else in my general area understands.

Heritage: Well, I have mixed Slavic/Scottish features in my face but the rest is anyones guess. However, I posted a bit about my body hair awhile ago and I think that should say at least something.

I have, in order:

Dark eyes but light skin.
Almost blond hair.
Rather dark eyebrows, eye-lashes
Ash-blond beard, moustache.
Hair on on my arms that turned from blond to almost black when i entered puberty and until a few months ago, when it suddenly turned blond again.
Black hair on my legs.
... and Auburn-brown pubic hair for no fucking reason at all.

Yay for mixed ancestry!

edit: I think I have touch of Scottish Ginger Beard Syndrome in my beard, though it is like one or two hair.

[johanpeturdam]

I speak Faroese as a native language. However, since I've been learning Danish since the age of 18 months, I probably could add that as a second native language, but in general I count it as my first foreign language.

That's pretty sweet. I always wondered how Danish worked in the Danish territories.

Actually, my parents and I moved to Denmark proper at that time, so I can't really say, how it works for other Faroese people.

[Rekettye]

I speak Faroese as a native language. However, since I've been learning Danish since the age of 18 months, I probably could add that as a second native language, but in general I count it as my first foreign language.

Mær dámar føroyskt, eg royndi at læra eitt sindur. Eg hevði vitjað Havnina og onnur støð, tey vóru sera vøkur.

My native language is BrE.

[Thry]

I have, in order:

Dark eyes but light skin.
Almost blond hair.
Rather dark eyebrows, eye-lashes
Ash-blond beard, moustache.
Hair on on my arms that turned from blond to almost black when i entered puberty and until a few months ago, when it suddenly turned blond again.
Black hair on my legs.
... and Auburn-brown pubic hair for no fucking reason at all.

Yay for mixed ancestry!

edit: I think I have touch of Scottish Ginger Beard Syndrome in my beard, though it is like one or two hair.

polychromeeee

[Shrdlu]

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup

Apparently body hair colour can fuck up pretty badly sometimes, because just look at Alistair Darling, which supposedly got this the natural way.