atw: Re: Looks good, but ....

From: "Michael Lewis" <mlewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 15:00:29 +1000
> Good call, Michael (Lewis)
> 
> I gather from what I have seen and from what I have had related to me, that 
many people - particularly in South East Asian countries - learn English from a 
very early age, if not from birth - but it's a local variation on the English I 
grew up 
speaking as a true native speaker.  
> 
> I guess I stretched the definition of 'native speaker' to 'someone who learnt 
English either concurrently with their country's official language or at least 
from 
the very early years of school...'  

Fair enough, especially in this context, but there are fluency issues arising 
from 
several underlying factors.

In linguistics, "native speaker" is explicitly someone who learns the language 
from birth and uses it at home. There's a distinction between "language 
acquisition" (first language) and "language learning" (any other). Only 
children 
who are born into truly bilingual (or, very rarely of course, multilingual) 
families 
will be native speakers of more than one language. In other cases, the first 
language is normally the medium of instruction for the second language; even 
in "immersion" programs, instructions on how to get to the classroom in the 
first 
place are given in the first language.

"Fluency" tends to be identifiable with whether you "think in" the language. If 
you think in yur native language, then mentally translate into the second 
language as you speak, you'll rarely display anything like true fluency. But 
fluency in a sociolect won't be regarded as true fluency by speakers of the 
dominant or prestigious "standard form". 

Of course, advertisers in particular will often adopt a language variant that's 
specific to their target demographic group. Perhaps that's what the Nokia 
brochure does.


Michael Lewis

--------------------------------------
Brandle Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia
www.brandle.com.au
--------------------------------------


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atw: Re: Looks good, but ....

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