CHAT: multilingual families

I can relate, living in Texas and being part of a very multicultural society
(especially for a small town). Everything here is bilingual at least. Some
of my fellow Anglos may find that a problem, but I think it's cool.

I saw a sign at the Social Security office for the 2000 Census in 13 (!)
languages. And I was able to partly understand the Farsi section.

Anyway, the Latino families in this town, which for the most part speak both
English and Spanish at least a functional level, have special situations in
using each language:

Spanish: among relatives in the nuclear and extended family, in church
functions (and most of course go to St. Patrick), endearment speech to
non-Hispanics and Hispanics alike

English: in the general population, in school (I don't know how the
bilingual education/ESL system works in Texas nowadays), among Latino youth
as a "cosmopolitan" language.

Now I wonder, how long would it take to develop an ethnolect (a "Spanglish"
of sorts) like that which emerged among many African-Americans (Black
English or so-called "Ebonics").

(I outta add a page on that topic...)

http://www.geocities.com/dawier

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of H. S. Teoh
> Sent: Tuesday, 06 February, 2001 9:43 PM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: Re: A DISTURBING proposal! (was Re: Personal langs and converse
> of aux)
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 06, 2001 at 09:04:47PM -0500, E-Ching Ng wrote:
> [snip]
> > I grew up in a household where three languages were routinely
> spoken, and I
> > was fluent in the two that were spoken to me before I turned five -
> > Mandarin and Hokkien.  (As luck would have it, we then moved to
> England for
> > a couple of years and so it was English, that third language,
> that I needed
> > to survive outside the home - oh well - but now it's my best
> language, and
> > it's the other two which I'm no longer fully fluent in.)
>
> I grew up in Malaysia... most of my family members spoke Hokkien; my
> mother spoke Mandarin; and at school, we spoke Mandarin and Malay. Then
> later, my dad started speaking to me in English almost exclusively. Did
> that isolate me? No indeed! Instead, I learned English much faster than I
> would have otherwise. In fact, now it's my most fluent language, and I
> think exclusively in English now (I remember a time when I would sometimes
> think in Hokkien; not anymore). But I am still fluent in Hokkien, and
> semi-fluent in Mandarin. Malay is waning, unfortunately, due to lack of
> use -- no one to practice it with.
[qatla]


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