Wednesday, November 05, 2008

母语

日前在星洲日报看到一篇文章,作者认为华人的母语是方言。。。

在马来西亚,保守的董教总坚持“以母语教数理”。但是,华人的母语,到底是华语,还是粤语、闽南话、客家话、潮语。。。

我姑姑的丈夫是英国人。她孩子的母语,到底是华语,方言还是英语?按字面解释,他们的母语应该就是我姑姑的母语,但别忘了这是一个父系社会。很明显的,发明“母语”这词的人,并不知道有异族通婚这回事。

在美国,mother tongue 是一个不太常用的字,取而代之的是 first languageFirst language 可以解释为一个人最精通的语言。大多数美国人的第一语言是英语,主要的例外是讲西班牙话的拉丁美洲裔人。

土生土长的华裔美国人,也就是所谓的 ABC,也在英文学校上课。我没听说过花旗国有中文学校,不过,南加州的西来寺有周末中文班。许多台湾移民都把他们的子女送去西来寺学中文。我在美国期间,接触的华人都是移民,不清楚 ABC 最精通那一种语言。

母语是一个过时的概念。与其争论我们的母语是什么,还是多学几个 second language 吧。

8 comments:

  1. I heard that Canada has Chinese medium schools.

    Although linguists did say that Mandarin is also one of the Chinese dialects (it gains prominence mainly due to its extensive use as a unifying language to bring all the mutually unintelligible Chinese-dialect speaking groups together), I still regard it as my sole mother tongue deep down inside me.

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  2. 波士顿也有周日中文班~

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  3. mother tongue refers to mother's first language? i thought it means whatever our first language is? regardless or father's or mother's

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  4. kyh
    From the perspective of linguistics, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien etc. are distinctive languages which share a common writing.

    Prior to 1911, Mandarin was the language spoken by the court. (Mandarin = 满大人) After 1911 it was picked as the unifying language. Somehow in Hong Kong that unifying language is Cantonese.

    kikey
    Thanks for the info. Do you know of any schools in the States where Chinese is the medium?

    xin
    Got a few definitions for mother tongue from answer.com...
    - one's native language
    - a parent language
    - the language learned by children and passed from one generation to the next

    There are cases whereby second generation Chinese Americans speak English as their first language. Here the mother tongue has not been passed down. That's why I say the concept of mother tongue is outdated.

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  5. 在这里大家都是语言专家嘛....^_^

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  6. 迷迭香
    So it doesn't matter what our mother tongue is, right?

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  7. Very informative post. For me, mother tongue is the language of our parents.

    But then it becomes difficult, for example, for ethnic Chinese whose culture really has been mixed.

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  8. 宝茹
    I think intermarriage is getting more common, so it is going to be more difficult to determine a person's mother tongue.

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