Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

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allf100
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Re: Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

Postby allf100 » Sun Mar 26, 2023 10:55 am

rdearman wrote:I suspect that there are many people in Singapore in the same boat. Hokkien makes up almost half of the ethnic Chinese group in Singapore, and I know many people speak Hokkien, but education is in Mandarin (and English, Malay, and Tamil)

May I humbly say that you don't have to suspect, because that is true? :)

Hokkien is widely spoken in South East Asian countries and regions among ethnic Chinese people in Singapore Malaysia, Indonesia, Myarma, the Philiphine etc. Their forefather were generally originally from Fujian province, and had to leave their hometown, to make a living there.

My mother was born in Burma which was a former British colony, so she could speak a little English too, except for Hokkien, Mandarin, and Burmese.

Most of Taiwanese people's forefathers originated from Fujian because of the end of Civil War in 1949.

Hokkien refers to Fujian in the language per se, but Hokkien, which is dominant in the south of Fujian, is just one of dialects in Fujian.
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allf100
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Languages: Hokkien(mother tongue, yet less fluent than my Mandarin)
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Persian (A little, completely forgot it.)
Sankrit (Just for alphabet, and forgot them all)
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Re: Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

Postby allf100 » Sun Mar 26, 2023 11:18 am

I am very ignorant of my mother tongue Hokkien, because generally Hokkien is never ever taught in schools.

This afternoon I just learnt that the pronunciation of Hokkien can be denoted with Roman alphabet by Hokkien linguists after watching a video about it.

You folks here can always take my words about Hokkien with a pinch of salt. I am a native Hokkien speaker, but not a Hokkien linguist. My command of Hokkien is below the average.

I hope we will have more Hokkien speakers and linguists on our forum, and I'd like to humbly stand corrected if I am wrong.
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Re: Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

Postby Cainntear » Thu Apr 06, 2023 8:37 am

TSS42 wrote:Of all the possible languages someone speaks, the native language is the one in which they are the most comfortable narrating to someone for 30 minutes, without any preparation or pause, their entire life story:

- without any grammatical mistakes, but possibly with colloquialism, slangs or misplaced register;
- without any mispronuciation;
- with no more than a faint accent, the definition of which being: the listener may realise the speaker has a light accent, but should only conclude it's a regional accent that they can't quite place.

TSS42 wrote:According to my definition it is entirely possible for someone to have no native language.

You are free to have your own definition, but presenting it as though it has equal weighting to the standard definition in technical and/or common colloquial use is not helpful.

If a non-native comes here and uses a word, putting your own personal definition on equal footing with the agreed majority usage is potentially very misleading.

The meaning of "native language" may have fuzzy edges in popular use, but that doesn't change the core meaning: a native language is a language that you've almost always spoken. If you do not have a native language, you lose the ability to ever acquire a language.
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Re: Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Thu Apr 06, 2023 3:25 pm

If the definition of native language is the language you learned from “earliest” childhood, as a mom of a seven year old, I can tell you that seven year olds are still little kids. Squishy, cuddly balls of unformed clay, really. I absolutely think you made the cut to consider yourself a native speaker of Mandarin.
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allf100
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Location: China
Languages: Hokkien(mother tongue, yet less fluent than my Mandarin)
Mandarin
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Japanese(A little)
Persian (A little, completely forgot it.)
Sankrit (Just for alphabet, and forgot them all)
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Re: Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

Postby allf100 » Fri Apr 07, 2023 10:39 am

Lawyer&Mom wrote:If the definition of native language is the language you learned from “earliest” childhood, as a mom of a seven year old, I can tell you that seven year olds are still little kids. Squishy, cuddly balls of unformed clay, really. I absolutely think you made the cut to consider yourself a native speaker of Mandarin.


Thank you very much for your reply! That makes sense for me. I like the metaphor of yours.

Now I am a physically very mature person, yet I still consider myself as unformed clay. 8-)
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Re: Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

Postby Cainntear » Sat Apr 08, 2023 7:14 am

TSS42 wrote:
Cainntear wrote:You are free to have your own definition...


Excellent. Thank you for granting me that freedom. Very gracious of you.

Cainntear wrote:...but presenting it as though it has equal weighting to the standard definition in technical and/or common colloquial use is not helpful.


I don't care whether it is helpful to the rest of the world or not. It's helpful to me, that's good enough. I couldn't care less about any "standard" definition. That's for others to split hairs about.


This forum is international and you are a native English speaker. As such using your own definition without clearly making it out only stands to confuse second language learners of English. It is entirely unhelpful to present your personal definition as though it is on a par with the standard one.
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Re: Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

Postby Irena » Sat Apr 08, 2023 6:28 pm

Haha! We have our very own Humpty Dumpty on the forum! :lol: :lol: :lol: But yeah, it's usually not the best idea to imitate Mr. Humpty Dumpty in one's target language...
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Re: Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

Postby Iversen » Sat Apr 08, 2023 7:16 pm

I have so far not seen twain eggshaped persons sitting on a wall reciting silly rhymes in this thread - so no Humpty-Dumpties here.

Apart from that: there is a consensus that you have to learn a language as a kid for it to become your native language - and the main reason for this is the observation that a perfect command over a language, including its pronunciation, is hard to achieve later in life. There is however not a clear consensus on when you cease to be a kid, nor on whether a very imperfectly learnt language can be your native tongue (maybe as a shoddy second one)- and not even on whether it can loose its status if you never use it and can't speak it anymore (if that's possible). So it is possible to formulate a definition, but if it refers to a fluid situation then it will always be somewhat arbitrary. And there are cases where the learned ones have agreed on a definition which simply doesn't correspond to the usual use of a word. For instance a strawberry isn't a berry, but a banana is - according to the botanicists. And sometimes there are more than one official definition to choose from. including some you choose to disregard because they have ridiculous consequences.

But at least one thing is clear: you don't have to be able to write a native language - otherwise we could exclude a large part of the population - past and present -of the Earth's population from having a native language.
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allf100
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Posts: 155
Joined: Mon May 27, 2019 8:32 am
Location: China
Languages: Hokkien(mother tongue, yet less fluent than my Mandarin)
Mandarin
English
German(A little)
Japanese(A little)
Persian (A little, completely forgot it.)
Sankrit (Just for alphabet, and forgot them all)
x 139

Re: Am I a native speaker of Mandarin?

Postby allf100 » Mon Apr 10, 2023 4:56 pm

Iversen wrote:...


Sorry, I didn't intend to ingore your comment which I didn't notice until now.

Thank you very much for your reply.
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