Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 October 9

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October 9

Do young children even have a native language if they are enrolled in an immersion program?

I once recently read that students are being placed into immersion language programs, where all the subjects are taught in the target language. The same report then talked about concerns of the children's native language and the foreign language, but I was thinking, if a child becomes a fluent, native-like speaker in the second language, then wouldn't that mean the child has two native languages instead of one? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 00:45, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Immersion programs are just during school hours. Based on my experience with kids in such programs, this is nothing like the immersion of real life in the native language of their homes and their locality. They may become quite fluent, but not truly native, in the language of their school. To be a native speaker, you must be using that language to talk to your parents, relatives, playmates, shopkeepers and neighbors; listening to that language on radio and television; etc. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

To put some numbers on it, in the US, at least, school tends to be about 7 hours a day for 180 days a year, or 1260 hours. There are 8766 hours in a year, and about 2/3 of those, or 5844, are waking hours. So, 1260/5844 = 21.5% of the waking hours using the "immersion language", and the rest of their waking hours using their native language. So, it certainly isn't anywhere near 50/50. StuRat (talk) 02:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't the word "native" mean "the one you were born with"? I've come across the term "Native American", which I'm told is correctly spelled with a capital N - is a "native American" what the founding fathers or their successors call a "natural - born American"? 82.14.24.95 (talk) 09:41, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Obviously "native language" doesn't mean "the one you were born with" as newborns don't speak nor comprehend any language; indeed, the word wikt:infant literally means "speechless". --92.27.207.68 (talk) 10:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Our First language article deals with the definitions. I think your premise is false, since While in womb, babies begin learning language from their mothers according to the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. Alansplodge (talk) 10:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Yet, being "able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language" doesn't imply any degree of comprehension, defined in wikt as "assimilation of knowledge". --92.27.207.68 (talk) 12:22, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

The French immersion schools in Ontario start in grade 1, so kids have 5 or 6 years of speaking English (and/or another language) at home and in school before they start learning in French. Teaching is only 70% in French at first, then 80% in grade 4, and I'm not sure if it increases to 90% in higher grades, but I don't think it's ever 100% in an elementary immersion school. Maybe in high school it's 100%, but there are no physical French immersion high schools here - if kids want to continue the immersion program in high school, they have to do it in a sort of segregated program at an English school. This is of course only anecdotal evidence, but in my experience this means that kids in French immersion programs are taught in French most (but not all) of the time and talk to the teacher in French when they have to, but speak English at school the rest of the time with the other kids (at recess, lunch, on the bus, etc), and English (or their family's native language) at home. It's also rare for immersion schools to have native French-speaking teachers. I only know of one native French speaker, while the rest are all English speakers who learned French in school (this is probably how French immersion kids end up with a frankly bizarre French accent). In Ontario, there are also French-language school boards where instruction is 100% in French 100% of the time, but those are for native French-speaking families, and are completely separate from immersion schools. Immersion schools are part of the English school boards. Kids in English schools also learn French, but that is just one class a day. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:24, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

The Latin nativus means "born". More studies: [1], [2], [3]. 46.208.167.127 (talk) 14:18, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Etymological fallacy --92.27.207.68 (talk) 15:28, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

How do you figure? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:56, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

The historical origins of a word are not identical to the modern usage of that word. Knowing what the latin word "nativus" meant to Latin speakers is interesting, but not useful for determining the exact meaning of the modern word "native", which is to say that words mean today what they mean today as they are actually used, not what they used to mean at some point in the past. The etymological fallacy is that word meaning is permanently fixed and cannot change over time. That has never been true. --Jayron32 16:56, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

I know what "etymological fallacy" means. I just don't know why the IP thinks it's a fallacy in this particular case. "Native" is what you're "born with". You're not literally born with any specific language, but whatever the language of your native environment is, is liable to become your native language. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:07, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

What is a "native environment"? By your definition of "native" you seem to be saying it's the environment a person was born in. Are you saying that if a person was born in China but moved to the UK a day later, and grew up speaking English, their native language is Chinese? CodeTalker (talk) 22:09, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Not unless they were born already knowing how to talk. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:57, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

"Native" has also come to mean "connected with something in a natural way",[4] which would fit the moved-to-the-UK scenario. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:09, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Someone has already mentioned First language, which would seem to be a more precise term than "native language". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

"Native" and "natural" come from the same root. "Natural" is from Latin natura, "birth", and nativus means "born", so "natural born" is one of those redundancies about which Henry Fowler wrote [5]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.14.24.95 (talk) 11:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

You just did it again. Henry^Flower 15:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)