Your Native Language

[Left]

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[Grunnen]

What, exactly, is the difference you make between native language and mother tongue? To me those would seem to be the same thing.

[finlay]

Yeah, in normal usage native language and mother tongue mean the same thing, and are usually denoted as L1 in linguistic contexts. I suppose you could get away with "heritage language" or "what did your ancestors speak?"

Just English for me, though, anyway. I suppose I have a few ancestors on my dad's side that spoke Gaelic, but that's about it.

[Left]

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[sirred]

My native tongue is English. I have many ancestral languages, as I am a genetic mutt. One such language is Swedish, however, the last person in my immediate family to speak it was my great-grandmother who reportedly only knew enough English to order a Pepsi.

[Left]

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[Xephyr]

What, exactly, is the difference you make between native language and mother tongue? To me those would seem to be the same thing.

Ummm, read the first post. I'm using my own definitions for "native" language and "mother tongue"

Maybe you'd get fewer confused responses if you used normal definitions of words instead of making up your own.

[Left]

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[Jipí]

I speak German natively, but ancestors of mine also spoke Dutch and French.

[Earthling]

My native language is English. My ancestors spoke Proto-Indo-European.

[Left]

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[Astraios]

Also a language you were brought up with doesn't have to be a native language. I was learning French as well as English from the moment I began learning to talk, but I can't exactly say that I have French as a native language, because that would imply equal fluency in both English and French, which I don't have.

Anyway, fighting over definitions aside:

L1: English.

Ancestral languages: English, Russian, Polish, and frell knows how many others...


Also also, Asahi, stop being rude to people.

[merijn]

My native tongue is Standard Dutch,

Most of my ancestors spoke Zeelandian Dutch, but if you go back far enough at least one of my ancestors ( and his ancestors) spoke French (I have a French last name)

[Grunnen]

Sorry about not getting it, I did read the first post.

My L1 is Dutch, my grandparents (3 out of 4) spoke dialects of Low Saxon as their L1.

[Bristel]

L1: English
Mother tongues: ASL
Ancestral languages: French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan

[Miekko]

What, exactly, is the difference you make between native language and mother tongue? To me those would seem to be the same thing.

Ummm, read the first post. I'm using my own definitions for "native" language and "mother tongue"

Maybe you'd get fewer confused responses if you used normal definitions of words instead of making up your own.

Well, I'm sure I wrote the definitions up there. Maybe people should read carefully first

make sure you write in a manner that also makes sense- what you wrote in your original post looks more like you listing four kinds of languages - it looks like you're asking in a stilted manner what languages are our

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

puzzling this together, it mostly looks as though you either don't know much of this terminology, or aren't very good at writing comprehensible English.

[Mr. Z]

Native language: Hebrew.
Ancestors' languages: Hungarian, Yiddish, Polish? (they lived in Poland), German? (one story has it that my ancestors were German). And maybe some of them spoke Romanian, because they lived in Transilvania under Romanian control and in Bucharest.

[Acid Badger]

I speak German and Italian natively. My father learned standard Italian in school as he was raised with the local Italian dialect, so my ancestor's languages are German and Southern Italian, I guess?

[*Ceresz]

My L1 is Swedish, but if you go back a few hundred years I guess some of my ancestors spoke French, German and some other languages. Not that it really matters. The only other language I was kind of brought up around is English, but that doesn't really count. So it's only Swedish, really.

[Jipí]

Not that it really matters.

Yeah. In my experience, we don't usually do this "My family is three-eighth PEOPLE, two-fifth OTHERPEOPLE etc." thing over here. Or at least, we don't take it too seriously. Recent migrants may take their cultural heritage more seriously than locals, however.

[Nannalu]

Fluency: English & Afrikaans (or at least semi-fluent)
Ancestor tongues: Northern Sámi, Finnish, Swedish.

[treskro]

Native lang:
English, Mandarin

Mother Tongue(s):
Minnan/Hokkien

[AK-92]

• 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.

[Mr. Z]

• 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.

According to Asahi, a native lang is a language we were brought up with (L1), and a mother tongue is a language of our heritage (that is, the native langs of our ancestors).

[MadBrain]

L1: French
Ancestry: Mostly French, some English (which I speak fluently but with an accent)