Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 June 2

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June 2

Is there anybody in the world that has studied a very difficult language from a monolingual English speaker's perspective and attempted to raise a child in it as a non-native speaker?

This person has done just that. She has no Spanish-speaking heritage or upbringing, but she learned Spanish in school and mastered it to the extent that she decided to raise her children in it. Her husband spoke English; she spoke Spanish as a non-native speaker. I am wondering if there are similar stories, but from people who learn especially difficult languages (from a monolingual English speaker's perspective), such as Japanese. A monolingual English speaker who has no Japanese heritage or upbringing and is not even ethnic Japanese decides to learn Japanese purely as a second language, goes to Japan to improve his/her language abilities, returns to the States, and finds a job as a Japanese-as-a-foreign-language teacher. This person may marry a monolingual English speaker and decides to do the one-parent-one-language approach, where one parent speaks English, while the other parent speaks Japanese. Okay, it doesn't have to be Japanese. But I'm looking for someone - anyone - in the same or similar position as the author of that article, but teaches a language in an entirely different language family. SSS (talk) 03:40, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

See Cornish language: "A few parents are inspired to create new first language speakers, by teaching their children the language from birth". Cornish was revived well after it had ceased to be used as a first language. It is one of the Brittonic languages which have consonant mutation, and the most widely used of the revived forms, Kernewek Kemmyn, retains inflection found in medieval Cornish texts. Alansplodge (talk) 14:41, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Is there an example from a non-Indo-European language family? SSS (talk) 17:35, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Modern Hebrew. See Revival of the Hebrew language. Prior to the 19th century, Hebrew was essentially a liturgical language, and was not used as a day-to-day language for over 1000 years (Hebrew essentially died out in the 5th century). Hebrew is an Afroasiatic language, and not an Indo-European one. Also, the Finnish language arguably came close to extinction during years of Finland under Swedish rule, when the Fennoman movement revived it as a fully functional language. Finnish is a Uralic language, which is ALSO not Indo-European. --Jayron32 21:53, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Has anybody written about that experience in English? Or are those experiences pre-Internet? SSS (talk) 22:48, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the Wikipedia articles I cited are in English. Lemme check... Yup, English. --Jayron32 02:06, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

You might also be interested in the development of creole languages. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 01:12, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

You might be interested in the book "Bringing Our Languages Home: Language Revitalization for Families". The book portrays different people who have chosen to raise their children in an endangered language, or in some cases, in a language that has not had native speakers for years. Many of the chapters talk about Native Americans learning their ancestral language and trying to pass it on to their children. This includes Miami, Wamponoag, Karuk, Yuchi, and Mohawk. There is also a chapter about the Shaw's Road Gaeltacht in Belfast. I would guess that such cases of monolingual English speakers learning a completely unrelated heritage language and trying to pass it on to their children is quite common. I have personally met a Mohawk family where the parents learned the language as adults and were speaking it with their children. You did however mention "heritage" in your question, and arguably these families were learning the language their ancestors spoke. There is, however, also a chapter written by the son of the linguist Kenneth L. Hale, who apparently raised his children speaking Warlpiri, which would clearly qualify as such a case. --Terfili (talk) 14:16, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

It's better than nothing. Previously, I focused on non-heritage speakers. People who teach a non-native language to their children that their ancestors did not speak at all. For example, an American of German descent does not learn German, his ancestral language, but instead learns Japanese, marries a non-Japanese-speaking woman, and raises the child to be a native Japanese speaker. SSS (talk) 00:01, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

In that case the story I mentioned about Kenneth Hale, who according to his son only spoke to them in Warlpiri, would definitely fit your criteria. --Terfili (talk) 05:57, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Where can I find information about a certain writer

Dear Wikipedia Administrators,

Where can I find information about a certain writer ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Metricon01 (talk • contribs) 11:15, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Which writer?--Jayron32 11:23, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

For many writers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<name of writer> or at the Goodreads site for less well-known writers. --Doroletho (talk) 13:34, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Tried Google ? If your writer is famous enough (s)he should be on Wikipedia as well. But remember all good writers are not guaranteed to be there on Wikipedia. For example Surender Mohan Pathak is currently the most famous (and perhaps the only- forgive my prejudice) detective novelist in India, and just a few years ago his name was not there on Wikipedia! Reason - he doesn't write in English.  Jon Ascton  (talk) 13:56, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

He was in hi.wikipedia.org since 2009. That's still something.--Doroletho (talk) 21:46, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't see an article about a certain writer, but we do have one about A Certain Smile, a Certain Sadness. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 01:08, 3 June 2018 (UTC)