Re: A DISTURBING proposal! (was Re: Personal langs and converse of aux)

On 7 Feb,  Andrew Chaney wrote:

>On Tuesday, February 6, 2001, at 06:30 PM, JörgRhiemeier wrote:
>
>> >       2.)it's designed to be an
>> > excellent "first" language for my kids.
>>
>> You are really going to do THAT???  Have your children grow up with a
>> language that no-one else speaks outside their core family?  I consider
>> this MONSTROUSLY unadvisable, as it might result in SEVERE mental
>> development disorders.  (I am not a pyschologist, but common sense alone
>> tells me that this cannot be good for your children.)
>
>
>I do hope you intend to teach them a real language as well.
>
>I wouldn't think it would do harm for them to grow up
>bilingual (natlang + conlang)?  But conlang only would
>not be good.  Any psychologists on the list?
I don't know, but there is at least one Speech-Language-Pathologist: me!
Relax guys! Worst case scenario: "Bring 'em in for speech therapy!"
Happens to me a lot! Kid _born and raised_  in Israel; heard his first word
of Hebrew at age 5 when he went to kindergarten,  (but only from the
kindergarten teacher --- and how much does she talk anyway?)
and spoke his first word of Hebrew, well --- he doesn't speak any Hebrew!
 Lives a normal life: talks to friends, watches TV, listens to music, plays
on the computer, goes shopping, reads books and newpapers, etc.
 all in his parents' native lang!
    Of course, in school, he must speak Hebrew with the teachers,
so, against his will and better judgement,  they send him to me
to make a Hebrew-speaker out of him!
Good luck! :-P

Actually I think it is important to keep in mind two distinctions here:
        1. "first" lang   versus  multiple langs acquired by children
        2. "exposure to"  versus  "imposing on"

    Remember, langs do more than just impart information! Among other
things,
your lang tells people who you are --- and more to the point: it tells _you_
who you are at some very basic level.
    I agree that people can have multiple "first" langs, as long as they
can compartmentalize their world equally. If not, they end up as my kids
have:
totally fluent in multiple langs ( Hebrew and English in this case),
but they regard only one of the langs ( Hebrew in this case ) as their
"first" lang.
The test, as I heard once, is:
A "first" lang is one that you, _when alone, by yourself_, automatically
                    a.  count (or do arithmetic) in
                    b.  cry in
                    c.  pray in (or whatever you do in times of great inner
turmoil)
    As to exposure versus imposing, IME, exposure to multiple langs never
hurt anybody. I'd expect this to hold true also for conlangs. The problem is
when one or both parents try to impose a lang on a kid when he doesn't
want it and/or his environment doesn't warrant it. The more unreal the
pressure
they apply, the more damage they do. If he's got a tendency toward it,
the kid might end up stuttering (No problem! Send him to me! :-P I've seen
enough cases like this!) Or worse: the kid may develop serious mental
problems. (IMHO, any parent that pushes a kid this far already has one
him/herself!)
    Jorg (sorry, I don't know how to do umlauts in Outlook Express) has a
point though. It's unfortunately not uncommon for conquering peoples to
force their lang on the people they conquered and sometimes the way
they do this can be brutal and horrid! To treat a kid as a conquered enemy
upon whom the parent is forcing his/her will is unspeakable; forget about
the
lang issue!
    In short, I'm all for exposing kids to all the langs, con and nat, they
want to be exposed to, as long as there is no force. They might even get
better in them
than their parents!  ;-)


Dan Sulani

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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.