| Important Things with Demetri Martin | ||||
| Money - New Expressions | ||||
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Wednesday, June 23, 2010
He really sold the pie shack.
Demitri Martin coins a few new expressions.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Language Maintenance as an English-speaking Foreigner
Looking at some introductory examples of sociolinguistic issues, the topics of language loss, death, and maintenance typically show English as "the killer language" that decimates any L-varieties (typically foreign languages of immigrants) that happen to exist.
I find myself in an interesting position as an L1 English speaker, L2 Japanese speaker who lives in Seoul, South Korea with a Korean spouse and daughter. English is highly valued as a skill here, but only minor steps have been taken to institutionalize it. Why should it be institutionalized in a country where the vast majority share a common language, after all?
Although our first daughter (3.5 years) is trilingual, English is primarily a receptive skill for her. When I speak to her in English, she typically responds in Korean or Japanese. If the studies that show that peers have the largest impact on language development and our daughter ends up going to school in Korea (as she does now at a Korean day care), English may end up being stigmatic. She already has a non-Korean name and non-Korean physical features, so I anticipate that she'll hide any foreign language ability in class.
I'm doing as much as I can to ward off any language loss in the family, and I suspect that our second daughter (due early September 2010) will have an affect on our first daughter's language choices. My wife is also brushing up on her English skills so that our house operates primarily on English. We're doing our best to maintain trilingual children.
In the position I'm in, English is not so much a "killer language", but instead a victim of language homogeneity.
I find myself in an interesting position as an L1 English speaker, L2 Japanese speaker who lives in Seoul, South Korea with a Korean spouse and daughter. English is highly valued as a skill here, but only minor steps have been taken to institutionalize it. Why should it be institutionalized in a country where the vast majority share a common language, after all?
Although our first daughter (3.5 years) is trilingual, English is primarily a receptive skill for her. When I speak to her in English, she typically responds in Korean or Japanese. If the studies that show that peers have the largest impact on language development and our daughter ends up going to school in Korea (as she does now at a Korean day care), English may end up being stigmatic. She already has a non-Korean name and non-Korean physical features, so I anticipate that she'll hide any foreign language ability in class.
I'm doing as much as I can to ward off any language loss in the family, and I suspect that our second daughter (due early September 2010) will have an affect on our first daughter's language choices. My wife is also brushing up on her English skills so that our house operates primarily on English. We're doing our best to maintain trilingual children.
In the position I'm in, English is not so much a "killer language", but instead a victim of language homogeneity.
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