A friend’s aunt was born in Estonia, brought up in Sweden, then moved to Germany before finally settling in England. So, her language acquisition was in the order of: (1) Estonian; (2) Swedish; (3) German; (4) English. In her later years, as her Alzheimer’s started to get a grip on her, she’d first lose her English, so my friend had to converse with his aunt in German. Then she’d start to lose her German, so my friend resorted to using Swedish. In the end, my friend had to start learning Estonian when her Swedish started to disappear as well. So the “last in, first out” principle applies not just to employment and redundancy, but to language loss as well.
Update 251111: The penny's just dropped. People say Alzheimer sufferers can remember things that happened way back but not what they did a few minutes ago. This language loss case is the same pattern.
Update 041211: I spoke my dialect until the age of six when I then went to school and started acquiring higher level language usage (e.g., abstract concept vocabulary and expressions of ideas and thoughts) in English and Mandarin, so my level of dialect is something like that of a ten-year-old. Should Alzheimer's hit me, will I end up with just my dialect (as that was the first language I acquired), and therefore communicating like a ten-year-old?? Eek.
Update 251111: The penny's just dropped. People say Alzheimer sufferers can remember things that happened way back but not what they did a few minutes ago. This language loss case is the same pattern.
Update 041211: I spoke my dialect until the age of six when I then went to school and started acquiring higher level language usage (e.g., abstract concept vocabulary and expressions of ideas and thoughts) in English and Mandarin, so my level of dialect is something like that of a ten-year-old. Should Alzheimer's hit me, will I end up with just my dialect (as that was the first language I acquired), and therefore communicating like a ten-year-old?? Eek.
Very interesting. Just this morning I could not understand what my American born wife Natalie was asking me, in spite of her repeating the question several times. And we only have one language to forget, not three...I often joke with her that when I get senile and completely forget my English, and she forgets her Italian, we will need to hire an interpreter...
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to an English stream school at age 7 years 3 months, I spoke my mother tongue (a S.E. Chinese dialect called Teochew / Cháozhōu 潮州) only when at home, and even then, only when directly communicating with the adults, or when tuning in to their conversations as a passive audience. So, I speak a simple, child-level version of Teochew, as I started to build up my vocabulary in English and Mandarin at school. I know more complex-idea words in Mandarin than I do in my dialect -- words like philosophy (don't know how to say it in my dialect); psychology (ditto); emotion words like "to feel hurt"; etc. After two years in Taiwan, I had to speak to my mother in Mandarin as I'd forgotten my dialect (she understood a bit of Mandarin, but not English). After 16 years in London, I had to ask my brother to translate certain words / expressions into Teochew for me when I spoke to my mother during a visit home.
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