Meanwhile the Language Simp is never using the expected flags to symbolize the language he's talking about. While being a joke it is an unironically a good practice
The "native speaker" thing is a problem in other industries too. I teach English in Asia, and I can't tell you the number of times I've seen individuals who are highly skilled and well qualified teachers and highly proficient users of English, but who happen to not come from a "native speaker country" lose out of job opportunities to someone from the Big Five who barely understands the basic linguistic details of their L1. Or worse, I've seen those same highly skilled "non-native" teachers get hired and massively underpaid and overworked because they're now technically working illegally and the employers have them over a barrel. Thankfully the skin colour bias is changing, finally, and some nations outside the Big Five are being added to the "native countries" list, but that doesn't really change anything for the true L2 speakers.
That doesn't even touch on the bias against actual native speakers who don't have the right native speaker "look," like a native english speaker with east asian genetics. It's an odd business, when you can find yourself discriminated against for not standing out from the crowd.
That's so terrible and completely wrong. So few native English speakers understand the grammar and mechanics of English because it's super complicated. Being able to speak English doesn't make you a good language teacher either. I would rather have a teacher who understands the language than someone who happened to be born in a particular place or whose parents spoke a particular language.
In South Africa, we refer to it as your "home language". "Native language" and "mother tongue" are rarely used. That introduces a new problem, since it implies that it is the language in which you are most fluent, when almost everyone has formal education in English.
I didn't know that. This makes me like Language Jones recommendation to take the time to explain our relation to the language even. I can't think of a term like "native language" or "home language" that doesn't create similar problems.
as a Canadian i never understood language flags because we have many languages two of which are official and when we pick English the flag us either the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack, or in the post Brexit EU, Ireland; which is weird on a whole other level Then there’s Quebec French, New Brunswick French, and other French pockets Last but not least the tapestry of indigenous languages not even recognised
Maybe they ought to use the flag of England for the English language. Fun fact about the USA: We have more Spanish speakers than the entire population of Spain.
@@joe_z oh my god! I came here to mention Celeste using the Canadian flag for English but it never clicked that the French flag should also be that lol
The canadian flags and associations with language and culture etc. is a very political topic and the conflict is fought exactly the way he explains in the video. After all, Quebec's flag was clandestinely installed illegally, to begin with, as a form of protest. But also to directly associate the language, culture and flag as the same thing... and for the creators of the flag to dictate what those are.
YESS thankyou i absolutely hate this especially due to being an indian. I've even seen tamizh being represented with sri lankan flag despite yk the majority of tamizh speakers being from tamizh nadu! and not to mention how it absolutely feeds into the wrong hypernational hindi crowd. the problem could be somewhat alleviated if each state had their own flags but that goes out the window considering there are languages that don't have their own states either(like tulu!)
I used to teach middle school in NM, and boy did attempts to impose "native speaker" as a categorization real fail there. The public school system classified any kid who reported speaking a language other than English at home as ESL, even if they had been speaking english their whole life (alongside spanish). Sure most of them did have language proficiency issues, but that was more a systemic failure of the education system to keep everyone on grade level than being 'non-native.' I'm sure you'd have a "fun" time looking into the history of language ed in NM.
Yes, this. As a (former) MLL teacher, I know for certain that many, many "native" English-speaking students would not test out of the program were they required to do so. I still have MLL students in my world language classes who speak English as well or better than their "native" peers but still haven't tested out. Something is a bit awry, and most of it has to do with structural prejudice and bureaucracy. For what it's worth: it's not just NM.
Classifying kids who didn't speak English at home as potentially ESL makes sense, but yeah obviously you'd want to check the levels of the kid before making that designation.
Oh goddd this reminds me of how I got classified as an ESL student (despite only speaking English) for about 4-5 years, because my dad speaks Mandinka, alongside English and other languages (he's from Sierra Leone), but I don't even speak Mandinka (only know a few words and stuff). I'm in Texas tho, so my case has nothing to do with NM's education system.
As someone who has been learning Spanish for years, the use of 🇪🇸 confuses me when using some tools to learn, because I’m trying to learn Latin American Spanish. Then I have to do more research to see if they are of the “vosotros” crowd. 😂 As far as the term “native speaker,” it’s just simpler to use that term, instead of saying “a person who started learning as a child and has a pretty good handle on the language.” Where I have the issue is when some of these tools claim to help you “speak like a native,” which is something that 99% of people will never achieve, and it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The goal should be to speak to be understood, period.
Foreign-language instruction in the US had been Eurocentric for over a century. I mean, Latin was in the standard curriculum in the US until the... 1980s(?).
I learned my grandparents' virtually extinct pre-war German dialect as a child, then picked up more modern Pfälzisch & Saarländisch from my kids & their schoolmates. My mother, born to German-speaking parents in the US during WWII, never learned more than a simple blessing said over family meals. Language, culture & national identities are complex, and the nuances can be tricky to navigate, even within basic family units.
I feel like this video does a good job of describing the experience of "historical Anglophones" in Quebec without meaning to. You can have been living here for generations, but without the language as a signifier, you're often not accepted as "part of the nation" - and some will even say so out loud: you are not "a real Quebecer" without descending from the culture that the language represents. The idea that culture, nation, and language are inextricably tied is just a given here.
There is also the pervasive notion in Québec that "bilingual" means either "speaks French and English specifically" or "speaks French and some other language". I know multiple people who expressed that they were bilingual while in Québec, but because they spoke (e.g.) Spanish and English or English and Mandarin, they were told that they "didn't count as bilingual". Québec is so afraid to lose its cultural/linguistic heritage and identity that they are sometimes quite chauvinist and discriminatory toward others. The CAQ's agenda is of course the ultimate example, wherein the word "pasta" becomes forbidden (you have to say "pâtes").
Of course there's some good and some bad that comes out of it. There are a lot of French language classes available for cheap or free, through the government, through employers, etc. - and I think that's a perfectly good way to promote the language and culture. I'm in one of those classes. But then you also get the stripping away of previously existing English communication channels for anything official or from the government, and anxiety that you might, for example, be refused health services in a language you can understand in a moment where it really matters.
Fun small anecdote about flags and nationality. Latin is very near and dear to my heart as a philologist, having studied it since I was 12 and been involved in spoken Latin much of my early adult life. I wanted to get a shirt to represent that and had a choice between an SPQR shirt and one with the Vatican flag. I went with the Vatican flag because I use ecclesiastical pronunciation when speaking Latin. When moving back to Northern Ireland I was moving into an AirBnB, and forgot that the shirt I'd put on back in England before getting on the plane, was that Vatican flag shirt...and my host lived in a Protestant neighbourhood. Got a couple of weird looks for that one as I walked in with my bags 😂
As a Catholic American living next to a Protestant church who has (playfully, but earnestly because I want to rep my faith) considered buying a Vatican flag for my flagpole (but I actually don't because I wouldn't want to actually offend/alienate them; they are lovely people for the most part), this is especially hilarious to me. I hope they ultimately took it in good fun, as much as possible.
People might actually recognize what it is in Belfast (unlike most places outside Italy). Maybe. But it isn't one of the most politicized symbols of the Troubles. And thankfully, things are much quieter than they used to be with the conflict. Also, it's worth saying ... People in Belfast have a way of just staring down anyone looking even slightly unfamiliar or out-of-place, regardless.
This "native speaker" thing... rant incoming 😅 : I'm Swiss - from the "German part". Linguists argue if Swissgerman is a language or a dialect. In my opinion it is a language (especially since I had to transcribe a 4h Interview in Swissgerman to German for uni). We learn German in kindergarden and are forced to use it in school. Everything we write (except chatting with friends) has to be in German. However, I'd never think in German and sometimes I use words or syntax that isn't actually German. But if I use apps (HelloTalk etc.) I have to choose "native German" and feel like a fraud. I'm a "native German" but at the same time I'm absolutely not, depending on the context.
as someone from germany but near Konstanz my slang is very similar to swissgerman, although not the same of course, and while i don't really feel like a fraud, it is funny to see how much germans from different regions struggle to understand me when i either write or talk this slang german to them. (er ist die treppe hinunter gefallen vs. der isch d'stäge nah keit). if it is different to a point where "native speakers" of the language, like germans from northern regions like hamburg for example, cannot understand you whatsoever you could probably classify it as a language and not a slang. in my case Alemannisch is even its own language on wikipedia. so i would argue you are right. swiss german is it's own language too and i always saw it as such personally.
for me it is a dialect but yeah i can relate the transcription thing... If it was an own language, i guess i'd have issues with standard german but i absolutely don't. i see a lot of swiss guys do indeed have very big issues especially with spoken standard german. btw i'm from liechtenstein, maybe my heart is born too close to austria so i am very considerate about using my language and always compare the dialect to standard german to make sure i am not using weird swiss terms german customers or austrian family don't understand like for example "das system verhebt"
I'm 100% with you (also Swiss german). Luckily I'm old enough, that I could speak Swiss German in all school subject except for German, French or English. The standard German requirement for all subjects and all stages came a few years later. My German is decent, but with a hefty accent (which I also cultivate a bit ;-)). But standard German feels foreign. It feels weird to click the flag of the "big canton" to select a language. But hey, it could be worse, if we would have to select the Habsburg flag instead 😂
@@FuncijejHas some truth, but I think there are also some linguistic factors. I grew up on the border of highest alemanic and high alemanic dialects. The grammar I use when speaking is highest alemanic, pronounciation is a mixture of highest and high alemanic and the vocabulary is all over the place with a lot of french influences, germanisms and anglicisms. I would say my native language is Alemanic. But this option is rarely present.
Breton here. I unfortunately never learned the language, and few are the students that do and use it regularly. Decades later, the policies' effects are still felt, but I hope the language can still survive
Policies aren’t everything. Low prestige and too small language areas can also lead to voluntarily giving up, with parents trying to teach their children a language that gives them more opportunities.
Oh man, as someone living in Ukraine and who learned Ukrainian, this is such an interesting video. Did you ever hear of Ivan Dziuba’s “Internationalism or Russification”? It’s about culture as a whole but language is a part of it. Saying that the uniformity of the USSR is done to “uniting the people”, but it’s all Russian focused and the languages and cultures of the other countries (especially Ukrainian) were given a complete second class status, a ripple effect you can sadly see today. When I first moved in 2017, so many similar stories from people who mainly grew up speaking Ukrainian, that when they went to a more Russian speaking city (like Kyiv at a time) there would be an assumption that they were less educated or from a village. A big talking point by pro-Russian voices is “well people in those eastern territories speak russian, so it seems pretty right that they should be a part of russia” (and the assumption about language isn’t really true either when you remember that Surzhyk is a thing). While inside the country there is a movement towards speaking Ukrainian more often, I never run into people who would say that those who still speak russian are not Ukrainian (even if they don’t like hearing russian constantly on the street)
Oh yeah and I should bring up that Ivan Dziuba wrote it in the 1960s and it destroyed his career and sent him to prison since it was considered anti-soviet
Well Ukraine is a pretty fascist country when it comes to minority languages' rights, Poroshenko's slogan was "Army, Language, Church" lmao but they're still playing the victim card. Ukrainian was an official language during the Soviet era, even all non-Ukranians had to learn it, so in a way USSR was more liberal than modern Ukraine when it comes to language policy, soviets never banned the use of minority languages like Ukraine does now
@@popkinbobkin saying “playing the victim card” about a country currently defending itself from a genocide tells me everything I need to know about how serious I should take any opinion you have, not to mention the factual inaccuracies in all your other statements.
In the online language learning community there are people advocating for grammar, people advising against learning grammar, people swearing by flash cards, others saying you have to watch Netflix in your target language, people saying give me comprehensible input or give me death, not to mention endless arguments over the efficacy of language learning apps. The problem is that it all kinda works, more or less, and people on TH-cam especially act like there’s only one way up the proverbial mountain. I’d recommend the video “Cooking internet and lifting internet have the same problem” by Andy Ragusea which highlights a similar problem in other communities.
You're absolutely correct!! I've had my share of online discussions because of this issue, back when I let myself got tangled in such nonsense. I'll check the video* you recommend, Tnx a lot
I was going to post a similar comment, but you said it better than I could have. The comprehensible input community has become cult. As you said, this problem exists in many other subjects (fitness, nutrition, et.)
@@theymademepickaname1248 I don't think it's just about comprehensible input. Its detractors are guilty of exactly the same thing. The video by Andy Ragusea that @davo_v quotes explains the phenomenon pretty well
Don't forget the ones that say you should focus on learning only one language at a time and not start with another until you're at fluency with the first one... and the ones who say you can and should learn multiple languages at the same time.
On the topic of "learning from native speakers" - I once had a language exchange partner whose goal was to learn Indian English. He lived in India, and American English (my native dialect) was not useful to him. I helped him through his (Indian) English courses, and it was a really interesting experience, especially whenever his textbooks disagreed with me.
There are many language apps that proudly talk about how you can interact with "native speakers" through their platform. I think it sounds good on the cover, but I'm now wondering if a "native speaker" is the best person to learn a language from. English is my first language, and I'm probably a bad person to talk to about how it works... I've never really had to think about it too hard. Probably more helpful to learn from someone with an outside perspective on learning the language.
An average native speaker is not a great resource for grammar advice. A professional teacher or book will help you there. But if you want to have a conversation in the target language, having conversations with people who are literally experts in having conversations in that language is quite helpful.
Yes, the average native speaker is probably NOT the best, since they probably can't remember learning it and were never taught to teach it. There is also something to be said that learners make some of the best teachers, they know what a learner is going to struggle with! I know a lot of native English speakers who couldn't answer a grammar question to save their lives.
A native speaker who has also learned another language (more specifically "yours") will be extremely helpful in learning they understand the pain points. like Santiago said you learn a lot about your first language learning another. A professionally trained teacher is always gonna be better but having friends to discuss the language with on a more casual level won't be a detriment.
eh, language as a tool of *cultural* identity can be just as radicalizable as when it is used as a tool of *national* identity. So, no matter what you replace the flags with, unless you teach some kind of culture-agnostic language continuum (which would arguably be harder to communicate in), you'll still expose ways to divide people along its lines. No matter how we slice humanity, it inevitably turns into an us vs. them situation. It's too useful an exploit.
I don’t think that Language Jones advocates that we separate language users through their cultural identity. He said this while explaining what people usually mean when they say “native speaker”, and then describes how that is also problematic. He actually advocates “saying what we actually mean” i.e. taking the extra time to describe the speaker's relationship to the language. This won’t get rid of the human tendency to tribalism, but it lets us speak more clearly and avoid the various problematic elements of identifying languages through flags.
Language is of course inextricable with the cultures of those who use it. I think one point that's trying to be put forward is not to replace national symbols with cultural symbols to represent language - see his critiques of proposed Yiddish flags - but rather the appropriation of symbols already unified by other elements for the representation of language. While it is of course useful to represent languages with symbols, the issue with the symbols is when those symbols already unite a community through other factors beyond 'speaker of the language'. However, I think most would acknowledge that our current use of flags and cultural symbols to represent language is unlikely to change. Nonetheless, it's our responsibility to be mindful of which symbols are chosen, why they have been chosen, and the implications of those choices.
@@jaetwee hahaha yeah I don’t think it’s going to change anytime soon. But I could see a world where people become more aware of those nuances and push back against the use of flags or at least hesitate to use them. We can try to stop unknowing support of nationalistic ideals.
I think you'll find that language tends to be more naturally divisive than other aspects of culture - excluding that other divisive aspect of culture: religion (though not all religions in equal measure.) No matter. The real crux of the issue is that human beings are a social species with fairly strong in-group /out-group tendencies. There's enough evidence to say that it even seems to be an evolutionary trait it's best to accept that reality - we like to divide into groups that become cultures (with distinct languages, religious views and other cultural traits) and then guard against the "Other". Then we can engineer a way to mitigate those instincts. That's pretty much what we've been trying to do anyways with various political solutions in Late modernity.
If the term "native speaker" isn't scientific and isn't useful in linguistics, how should we say "a language is defined by the way native speakers speak it" or something similar? How can we know how, for example, a verb conjugation is supposed to be done in a particular language if we can't observe how a "native speaker" does it?
"A language is defined by how the majority of it's speakers (including those who learned it as their second language) uses it." Let's be honest, in the age of the internet, it doesn't really matter if someone is a "native speaker" or not. Also, the concept of a language being "defined" is already a vague concept that doesn't really work that well. Language is fluid.
hmm - usage implies a community of language speakers. People already distinguish between different communities of speakers to specify different dialects (you get "British English", "American English", "Australian English", "Indian English" etc.), so surely specifying which community's speech standards and rules you are talking about would be the fix here - you don't need to define language in terms of "native speaker", just be more specific about which community of language speakers you are talking about.
The problem is, there is no "native speaker" there are many speaking a language and they all use variants and also a language naturaly changes over time, as young generations just change it. Usually that what is taught as "native" is a political descision. For example in germany (or famously in france) there are boards set up by the goverment that define what is the "correct" & "native" language. The Swiss and Austrians don't adhere to these rules in the case of german and the Belgians and Swiss in the case of french also don't adhere to those rules. But even in Germany and France: Go and Speak to a Bavarian, Saxon, Provencal, Breton "native speaker" - you will find out that observing them is something very different than what is taught as "native languge".
I'm a native speaker of swahili, my mother is tanzania. I cannot hold a conversation in swahili for my life does that make me not a native speaker? Swahili was the first language i spoke thats the problem with linguistics, its all one step forward six back.
You are not a native speaker of Swahili, and you shouldn't go around saying that you are one. Your post is an obvious example of the Straw Man Fallacy.
@CameronNewland I disagree that it is an obvious straw man argument. I could conceive of a genuine argument that "native language" is the first language you were exposed to and that that language was spoken by your ancestors. Furthermore, I'm not sure that being able to currently speak the language is necessary to be a native speaker of the language. In which case, following those rules, @AmaniElArnab creates a valid situation that is very hard to accept. You can change the definition of “native speaker”, but that’s his point, it’s not a scientific term, it’s a socially understood one without a clear definition that creates confusing situations.
@@Gorg1122 "Native speaker" does have a clear definition, and no, it's not possible for a native speaker to not be able to converse in, or understand, that language. You're trying too hard, but you are simply running in circles and embarrassing yourself.
Thank you. It makes sense of China talking about Chinese rather than Mandarin and Cantonese. It's been bugging me as to why something that I'd always understood as the ignorant thing to say is now encouraged.
You managed to completely avoid the most hilarious flag as language: it's so common you completely overlook it, but it's everywhere. Is English a union jack, a stars and stripes, maybe a red maple leaf or some variant of a southern cross flag. It's so common to see a website which can represent a localization choice with one or many of these variants for English. I've even seen cross of st george on occasion..
I still don't see the problem with "native speaker". It's not clearly defined? So... what? Most people have an idea what it means. Learned the language at 6? Yes, probably not 100% clear. If he is 7 now, probably not what we would consider a native speaker because he doesn't know much yet. If he's an adult now, and has been speaking the language since he was 6 - probably native level by now. Language is full of terms that don't have a clear cut-off. It still works.
as a software engineer, I have a similar grievance with a convention that I know I'm unlikely to change: the use of the term "bug". While the term helpfully evokes something hard-to-find and pesky out of proportion to their size, the problem is it suggests the presence of an _external contaminant_ that can manifest anywhere and can only be prevented by hermetically sealing away the system from its surrounding environment. In fact, most "bugs" are caused by _internal discrepancy_ and can be discovered and resolved through deeper introspection of assumptions and scenarios. "Misalignment" or "gap" would be more accurate and helpful but lacks the compelling mental imagery
That’s a really interesting point, and a holdover from when room sized computers might have actually had real bugs in them! But I can see how now, it seems to absolve the programmer of responsibility for their code. External locus of control. Very interesting!
I don’t disagree, but etymologically it comes from actual bugs with the first recorded usage being a beetle that got stuck in an early Edison phone and the first computer bug was a moth that got stuck in a panel
@@vitsu_ yes, i'm familiar with the story, and it is certainly a compelling one. yet one could just as well infer that the root cause was not the moth, but the _gap_ through which it slipped in consider: had the contaminant been a fallen autumn leaf rather than a moth, would it make sense to be using the term a "leaf" or a "fall" instead of a "bug"?
bugs are like, both external and internal, since well, you have bug that comes from outside and gets stuck inside lmao but yeah, the word "bug" in software context does NOT imply either external or internal, it usually just means something unexpected happens, and glitch is its full synonym. for external attacks on internals we have the word "exploit" and also the CVE numbers now i will throw up some terms: unfulfilled requirement, exception, illegal state, contract violation, panic, failed assertion, vulnerability, corruption, fatal flaw, unchecked, fault, undefined behavior
That's very interesting to me. I'm also a software engineer, but from a Spanish-speaking country. Here, we generally don't translate technical jargon, we often just use English words, and "bug" is one of those words. For me, the word "bug" (in a Spanish-speaking context) does imply the internal discrepancy, rather than an external element. It gives a sense of personal responsibility. I think that's because we use that word exclusively as technical jargon, nobody uses "bug" outside the context of the software industry.
I agree what you rea syaing in spirit, but the word "native speaker" is a really useful term that quickly and clearly communicates the idea of "someone who grew up speaking this langague as their primary language, and has a strong intuitive understanding of that language". Most people either clearly fit or clearly do not fit this idea. Even if their are a lot of people who blur the lines.
I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with what you say here exactly. But as you acknowledge, although ‘most’ people fit, ‘a lot’ do not. So… it’s not actually a great descriptor and maybe we could do better?
"Everyone supports candidate X", as I saw in a news report not long ago..., "except minorities, women, hispanics, and young people." This quote clearly communicates the intended message: that "everyone who matters" means old white men. "Native Speaker" is used to communicate the exact same concept, often in exactly the same way. One very clear example is using the flag of South Africa to represent Afrikaans. "Most people" in South Africa speak Zulu or Xhosa. Only about 13% of the population speaks Afrikaans. But it's the old white men who carry the flag.
The most egregious case of flag usage I’ve seen was in Canada. At a provincial park, they had brochures in English and French. For English, they used the Canadian flag 🇨🇦. For French they used the France flag 🇫🇷. As a proud bilingual Canadian myself, I don’t even know where to begin on how stupid this was.
@@stephenspackman5573 I would say stupidity. I would be very surprised to see French represented by the French flag here in Canada; it would be much more common to see it represented by the Québec flag. (Undoubtedly this would annoy many francophones from New Brunswick, Ontario, or Manitoba, whose French is no less French than that of the Québecois, but, well.)
If they want to use foreign flags, use England for English and France for French, because those terms are related. Otherwise, use Québec and British Columbia?
It should have been UK and France, if they really wanted to be clear. The Canadian flag means nothing linguistically since Canada is an officially bilingual country
I think, "native" is so convenient, because its so fuzzy. You can use it to collectively refer to many different things. And as an aspirational goal it is more useful then "i want to be able to speak the language like someone who lived there since he was two years old".
Agree with your points, but re "native speaker" your solution is a nonstarter. Asking people to replace their 2-syllable shorthand term with a cumbersome explanatory phrase, are you kidding? See "mormon".
Yeah, you have a point, Hebrew is my mother tongue but if I will make a video on Hebrew with the Israeli flag, it would be a big nationalist statement and I wouldn’t like to do it.
At the same time, Israel is the only country where Modern Hebrew is the default spoken language. So the fact that using the flag to denote the language is a political statement is really not the fault of the language at all, but more the fault of people who over-politicize everything about Israeli and/or Jewish culture.
I didn't think i could disagree with you from both sides, @@rapramix, but apparently i can! @_oaktree_ is very correct that there's a massive (and massively harmful and/or hateful) movement to politicize every thing having to do with Jews and Israelis. This is how you get so many "progressive" people who think it's ok to discriminate against someone because of their nationality, as long as it's Israeli, or because of their religion, as long as it's mainstream Judaism. How many other people can't use the flag of their country as a simple signifier of their origin/identity without being accused of every perversion & crime in the book? And at the same time, the resurrection of Hebrew in the modern era as a spoken vernacular definitely had serious political elements. The success of Modern Hebrew was considered one of the greatest victories of the Return to Zion movement by its adherents, both for the love of the ancestral tongue itself and also because they thought any functional nation-state (like the one they were building) needs a language.
To me, it just says that's where most Hebrew speakers live. I noticed that this video acts as if there's an implication that Hebrew is the only language spoken there? I don't understand how we even got there.
@@MRed0135 no, also Palestinian Arabic . The thing is that the Israeli flag represents a political statement while the Hebrew language isn’t political per se. Although , I wouldn’t be shocked if Eliezer Ben Yehuda was a Zionist . Nonetheless, you can speak Hebrew from age 10 months like me and also oppose Zionism
As the same... would you consider yourself a native speaker of Standard German? I would, although, with the Swiss variety of Standard German, of course. I neither see a problem with the term "native" - as I speak the language better than many Germans, although with a typical 🇨🇭 accent - nor with the flags. Sure, German is represented by a German flag, but that makes sense to me. Not only is Switzerland of the nations that have several languages, most of them are also shared with other countries. So German being represented by Germany is fine.
Hello from 🇦🇹! Should German be represented by one single flag? As an English teacher I would use several flags to represent the Englishes we're in dialogue with - thus practically proving Language Jones's point that flags for languages are an unsatisfactory shorthand at best.
Isn't this all an exercise in the etymological fallacy? We talk about ancillary protocols, but just because the word "ancillary" has its roots in Roman slavery doesn't mean anyone using the word is supporting slavery. Just because someone uses the word "native speaker" doesn't mean they're supporting an ultranationalist agenda (and I would bet that most people are unaware of this connection anyhow). The alternative to calling someone a "native speaker" is to give what is functionally a biography for them, and it'll start breaking down once you refer to more than one such person. Less direct information also means more room to confuse and confound. Someone could be "an Irish speaker for 20 years!" but neglect to mention that, from the perspective of those who grew up using Irish Gaelic as a daily community language (and see how many more words that is than "are Irish Gaelic native speakers"?), they have completely failed to master the phonology and speak in a completely unintelligible manner, and have only learned the language through formal education, which is notably of extremely poor quality. If they claim to be "a native speaker" but turn out not to be able to even distinguish its phonemes, then there's a specific section you can point to where they lied. I won't comment much on the flag thing, since I mostly agree. My major critique is the same as the last one: What would you replace it with? Ultimately this is all like proposing an English spelling reform. What we have is, for better or worse, already entrenched. I don't see it disappearing anytime soon.
I agree on the flag thing, it is indeed kinda annoying. but I think the term 'native' has a precise meaning that the language is acquired in childhood, not learned at any point later in life (although it is true that at some point the person might get less eloquent in their native language than they are in the learned one). Therefore the term 'native level' would mean that the majority of the other speakers of the language will hardly pick up on the fact the the language is learned as a second one.
Isn't what you are describing rather the term "mother tongue" than "native speaker"? To me at least, native speaker describes how other people perceive your speech, not necessarily at what point you started learning that language. In most situations this coincides, but it doesn't have to.
One thing I learned from lurking on the "English Language Learners" forum on Stack Exchange is that there are a lot of mostly unspoken, unwritten language rules that a native speaker will intuitively pick up without realizing it, and what often differentiates a non-native speaker from a native one is that they won't follow those rules.
I feel like this is more of an issue for larger countries which encompass multiple cultures, less so for smaller countries which are formed around a single identity everyone feels drawn to.
Yes. I am thinking that England has had a history of colonisation. Therefore they have been in conflict with the poeple trying to protect themselves by forming nation states. Their ruthless opression of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, African, Native-American, Indian, Indonesian cultures. Bigger countries want to preserve their power, therefore the idea of a nation state is dangerous, and the people that define it. I think that this cultural undertow can explain American foreign policy.
French forces protecting their homeland during WW1 where nationalists. Nationalism in Poland was an important factor in separationg them from Sovjet. Ghandi was an "Indian nationalist", and spendt a lot of time trying to construct an Indian identity. sfbe
The moment you said "flag" I figured out where this was going and got really excited. I've decided awhile back that I personally dislike the term native speaker, and this is entirely due to my own experience with languages. I acquired, to varying degrees of fluency (as you do), four languages as a kid (and continue to speak them, with different but still varying degrees of fluency), but have never felt like I could confidently claim to be a native speaker in any of them on the international stage. As you mentioned, the term seems to have more of a social definition than anything. For three of these languages I speak, I don't know enough about the culture and nuances typically associated with them because I don't come from any of the countries typically associated with them (the way a "native speaker" of English is typically expected to be from the UK or US or Aus/NZ). My pronouciation and word choices are occasionally not "native" either because I grew up with the local variant of the languages, which has undergone the inevitable localisation. The one language I could argue to have the background and culture for......I don't really, and definitely do not speak it fluently. This is the official language of the country I come from, and growing up I predominantly only used it for official business such as interacting with the government. I don't speak it with the "correct" accent, so to speak, either, though I suppose you can argue the variant I speak is one of the variants available in the country. As such, the terms "first language", "mother tongue" and "national language" all refer to different languages to me. Currently, I've settled with gibberish as my native tongue, seeing as that's what I spout when surprised or confused =P
This all seems like a huge stretch. Language-learning should be made as accessible as possible. Not wanting to learn a bunch of symbols for a bunch of languages isn't lazy, it's unnecessary and ridiculous. And also Duolingo using the french flag for standard french isn't going to further cultural genocide.
are the flags making it more accessible? I can understand why making new symbols seems annoying and forced, but arguably the name of the language alone is the only thing necessary for accessibility right? I don’t know if the French flag next to the word French is really that crucial. If you can’t come up with better UX tools that don’t possibly propagate a nationalist sentiment, maybe it can just say French?
@@dankwojak3689 why is it okay to write "French" but not use the "French" flag? Both of these are referring to the exact same nation. If the flag is wrong because it doesn't specifically represent Quebecois language, for example, then why would the word be any better? It's still not representing the Quebecois. (not to mention that flags are universal, whereas "French" is not written that way in various languages, particularly those with different alphabets)
You can want to learn French and have absolutely 0 interest in French of France, but the use of the French flag centers French of France, and ”French of France” generally centers Parisian French over other dialects like Meridional French, Gaga French, or Chti, which are all spoken in mainland France. Someone may want to learn French to rediscover their Cajun/Creole roots or to speak with their Ivorian family-in-law, yet the vast majority of language resources just assume that learners of French want to learn Parisian French through perspective of Parisian culture by way of Parisian and European cultural products. So the French learner of Creole descent will learn French, sure, but it’s a French disconnected from their actual heritage and that imposes European dominance over diaspora communities.
@@ryanv7945 Ehhh getting rid of flags won't do anything to fix that. The flags are a symptom of the "the vast majority of language resources just assume that learners of French want to learn Parisian French through perspective of Parisian culture by way of Parisian and European cultural products" problem, not the cause, and I really doubt that getting rid of them would help shift the mindset enough to matter.
@@lexihopes if it’s not a big deal either way then why not just avoid it anyways? What would be the advantage in using these flags outside of maintaining the status quo? Because it’s exactly the status quo that’s being questioned, so to justify it with itself is circular reasoning. Avoiding flags won’t singularly fix the problem, sure, but continuing to use them will still promote the problem. Rejecting a change that challenges the status quo because it doesn’t completely rewrite it on first pass is short sided imo. It’s small, but avoiding nation-state flags as short hand for languages is a noticeable and frankly easy way to challenge the delegitimation of ”non-standard” dialects and regional varieties of language. Furthermore, a conscious effort by linguists and language enthusiasts to avoid nation-state flags and promote regional varieties could be the start of a perceptual shift toward language by the general public.
I’d like to see more regional languages get the resources and recognition that they deserve. Although a majority of people may not want to study those languages, there are enthusiasts like us who will happily dive headfirst into those rabbit holes.
as a serb myself i always felt quite uncomfortable when languages were represented by country flags but I couldn't really coherently voice why, so this video literally felt like it came from my subconsciousness, thank you language jones for refreshing takes
I actually, no lie, started thinking deeply about this as a child. I was 12 when I learned it's called, "Spanish," and not, "Mexican." I was already a history nerd who read books in class instead of paying attention, but yeah this topic is what really threw me into the world of learning and appreciating cultures. Great thought provoking video. I'm not sure how long it's been since I thought about this. Its really important. I think it has something to do with the way Latin American immigrants are treated. It adds to the idea that they're savages that use what the "Holy Race is gracious enough to build them." Thank you for sharing.
I just realized a funny irony. Latin American people are looked down on for using European languages, yet we're exactly the same for speaking English instead of American lol
I used to use the flags thing as a conversation starter on dating apps all the time. if you know your familial history, you're pretty much guaranteed to trip over an ancestor who would never in a million years identify with the flag you boost, despite living on the territories they claim to represent.
Still watching, but I agree with your point about "native language." I studied anthropology in college (heavy focus in cultural and linguistic anthropology) and have always preferred "primary language," because it feels more neutral.
I agree. Many people born in America are not 'native' speakers of English, and should not be called that. The primary language for those people is Spanish.
@@stevencarr4002 I"d just say they're both native English and Spanish speakers. Unless they're not of course, then don't say native obviously. I would just not say that one or the other language is their "native" language, that seems a bit strange to say. But it seems to make sense that one can be a native speaker, or have native level fluency. And if my mom who doesn't speak a lick of anything but English ISN'T a native English speaker, then I don't know what she is. lol
@@stevencarr4002 I’ll use my wife as an example. She spoke only Spanish at home and learned English at school starting at 4. She’s bilingual, but never formally studied Spanish. She speaks Spanish every day with her family, prefers Spanish-language TV, and even has quirks in her English that make it seem like she’s thinking in Spanish. And yet her English vocabulary is many times larger than her Spanish. She couldn’t perform her job as if she needed to speak only Spanish. She’s never studied Spanish reading or writing and has trouble spelling and remembering where accents go. But her English is good enough to have gotten through several college degrees. So which would be her “native language”? Arguably Spanish. But her Spanish isn’t really “native level”. Is English her “native language”? She didn’t start learning it until she was 4 and never spoke it at home growing up but she’s definitely at a “native level”. It kind of makes the term meaningless.
I consider myself a native speaker of English and Spanish. I grew up in the US, did my formal education there, but spoke Spanish outside of school. But I've had people both in the US and Mexico tell me i am wrong. Why? Because i grew up in the US, therefore i cannot be a native Spanish speaker. Or, my mother tongue is Spanish, so I can't be a native English speaker. I also have a different accent when i speak English since i haven't spoken it on a regular basis since march 2020. One thing i am sure of though, Spanish is my only mother tongue. It is the only language i speak every single day without fail, since the day i could talk. No language will ever equal that, no matter how good i get at it.
I’ve been thinking about the native speaker thing a lot. I grew up in belgium in a fully dutch-speaking family but consumed so much english-language media as a child that I basically spoke perfect english when I was 12. I think in a mixture of both, often dependent on the context (e.g. when I am with other english speakers, my thoughts are also all in english, but when I am alone, my internal monologue is about 60% english, 40% dutch). people in the uk also consistently identify me as a native speaker. I’m not really sure what that makes me
Ah, yes, the "native speaker". In my country many people want a "native speaker"of English as a teacher, so language schools hire random digital nomads looking for an extra buck as "teachers". Do these people understand their language on a level that would allow them to teach it? Nope. But they still get paid more and are very wanted.
The flag thing has bothered me for some time now. I'm a non-native Mandarin speaker. What flag do they use? Usually, the flag of the PRC. This is a political flag, not even a national flag, FAR from being a linguistic flag. So we can use the flag of Taiwan, right? Well, that's a political flag, too, and in both of those countries, there are other very widely-used languages. The native speaker thing, I have to give some thought to, but a related topic came up with me in a group on social media. It was a perfectly respectful discussion, which turns out to not be as unusual as some people might say, but that's beside the point. The discussion was about learning Guarani for immigrants to Paraguay. Now, if you want to go to Paraguay, Spanish is the first go-to language, BUT Guarani is used every bit as much. And that brought us to using Javanese on Java, even if you speak Indonesian. Or Cantonese in southern China, or Nahuatl in Oaxaca. In all of those cases, the *dominant* language will get you by just fine, day to day, but a lot of the people in those places - I would argue, the cool ones - code-switch, and knowing some of the *local* language opens up a whole new world that you would not have access to without at least some well-placed words in the local language. And those local languages bear NO similarity to the colonial language imposed on them, but the locals meld them seamlessly. And, as you pointed out, the flag of Spain, used to represent the Spanish language, gives just a LITTLE BIT of power to people who want Catalán or Euskara to disappear. Not much power, but it's the wrong message. Entirely by the way of vexillology, for China, I'm a big fan of the Five-Colored flag. That is the only non-political flag that China ever had, as far as I know. They should go back to that...but it still doesn't represent Mandarin Chinese. Nothing does. The Five-Colored flag represents speakers of five different languages (all of which are featured on PRC folding money, weirdly).
The Irish language is an excellent illustration of the nationalisation of language. Gaeilge is the name of the language which is untainted by any notion of politics, belonging or jingoism,; the suggestion being that anyone may lear Gaeilge but only Irish people may learn Irish. The language is in what is likely a terminal decline, with areas of community-speech diminishing and a muddled approach to promoting the language that is akin to throwing a drowning man a concrete lifebuoy. It is lauded as the country's first language in the constitution, yet policy has consistently eroded the confidence of the people who speak it as their first language, "native" to them if you like, and indeed has run contrary to good sense. Ireland tried to do something impossible by placing the language firmly in the hands of the school system, in whose tender care it slowly withered leaving only the bitter twisted roots of resentment in the students who had the language foisted upon them. A plant that is placed inside four walls and given scant attention will survive, but never being exposed to wind, sun and rain means that despite having rooted well it will never flourish or develop fitness. And so it is that Ireland's own brand of nationalism has almost killed not just a language but the culture that is inextricably entwined with this language.
I definitely agree with the flags parts, although I am less concerned about with the nationalism/fascism part and more with the ambiguities that can arise for using them. I am a language weirdo who also know way to much about computers, so I use the unambiguous ISO language codes (e.g. EN = English, FR = French, TG = Tagalog, etc.) when making short references to various languages. I am a bit weary about getting rid of the term 'native speaker', as I do think it is quite useful and does point to something based on reality.
Case for flags for languages: situation is the same as using name of peoples or countries for naming the language. Is it fine to call English language English, even if spoken by person from Nigeria or the USA? If we can call it English, then we can use flag of England, UK, USA, etc. to talk about the language in pictures. What is the alternative for identifying the English language?
Is there an alternative term for someone who has spoken a language to the point they have an intuitive understanding of a language beyond formal rules? "Fluency" only refers to the ability to speak fluidly, something achievable through rigorous study. Participation in a community and experience speaking in it is an essential part of understanding a language, one that doesn't need to be referred to in terms of racial or cultural belonging. Without an alternative term, "native speaker" isn't going anywhere.
I'm french, I'm also watching a french linguist youtuber called Linguisticae who fight regularly with the "Académie Française" on those kind of subject. Like the "purity" of the french language, how young people can't speak or read french anymore, how we are invaded by English everyday, etc. So I kinda understand that and how there are some people that try to "normalize" the language through a kinda of "nationalistic ideal" of the language. And even when it not people, it could also be some kind of social phenomenon that don't always start from an intention of normalizing the language (like the use of "native speaker"). On one end, I'm sometimes annoyed by that but on the other, it's also just a normal phenomenon. You could also say that we need to have common word and grammar to still be able to communicate. And that's somewhat necessary. The only problem is when it's too much and it's start to erase the diversity inside a language. I don't remember when it was but it happen in french at some point to normalize the language because people could not really communicate (something maybe in the 18th century, I forgot). And it was useful. But here and there, it also destroy dialect. Fortunately, it changed a bit now and you can learn some dialect in school from what I remember. You can even be evaluated on those for the "baccalauréat" (important french diploma at the end of high school). So while, it's a constant fight, I'm a bit more distant on that now. I'm a bit distant because I'm also more interested on the educative side now (also, I'm done on the politic side for now, don't want to think too much about that). And I hate the idea of "native speaker" or "native level". Seriously, that just doesn't exist and it's just harmful to learners. "Native speaker" are clone of each other, they are diversified. While it's true that, for exemple, some common word are necessary, you don't need to learn 24k most common words in newspapers. That kinda like "model citizen" ideal that should be able to read everything. But just NO. People have different jobs, different interests, they didn't had identical lives either and they didn't develop identical "language". I'm not even talking ability. That's just pure knowledge/exposure through their life. Like I can't read/understand law text or economic text in french and really understand them. Same for slang for younger people. It's also like you can't understand a joke without the ref. You can as good as you want, mastered all the grammar, learn all the word, you won't understand it. I extending that to other aspect but I pretty sure if we were able to extract the data directly from the brain of people, we will find tons of big frequency list that are all different. And I'm talking mainly word but besides that, I'm sure it would be more less true for other aspect the language. The idea of "native speaker" or "native level" erase all of that. Same when we talk about the same language in different country (I don't have the word, it's not dialect but the same things at that level). And just also for foreign learner, that's exist too. You don't need to learn everything depending on your situation. I mean, I learn some common word in English but I forgot a lot of them since I don't live in an English country. Like curtain. I don't have curtain, I have some "rideaux" because I didn't use it in more than 10 years. Like I don't particularly like small talk and since I don't live in an English country, it just didn't stick. Same for half of the word in my house. But in the same, I would probably lost some "native speaker" on math, informatics, etc. Like, I'm both "better" and "worse" than that freaking "native speaker" which doesn't mean anything. And it's not just knowledge, like I did study those subject. Part of that is "pure" language. Like word, expression, etc. And even maybe grammar in some case (whatever grammar mean here and that may also define roughly as "rules of usage"). And also, it's just more "fun" to learn what you like or just talk about you first, who you are and also talk to people that are similar to you (and also have a similar "sub-language" in that other language that you're learning). Instead of trying to be that tasteless monstrosity that doesn't mean anything and doesn't even exist called "native speaker". Anyway, I talk too much x). So, I wouldn't say "dark ideology" because that's necessary to have some "unity" at some degree (trying to be neutral here) but when it erase everything, it's not good either. It kinda does on the internet like a lot of other things but that's also just partially a social phenomenon rather than an ill-will ideology in my opinion (even I want to get angry too sometimes :v). Well partially, there's probably some equivalent of the "académie française" at those level too. Also, it's kinda useful as reference for learners too at the beginning but after that it's just a hindrance in my opinion. That is costly for some people (can't speak about themselves or what they like even at "high" level). Anyway, interesting topic but it's also kinda connect with too much things x). I need to stop here xD PS: If you have the motivation one day, please create a discord, would be a lot of fun to have the community there too. Also more useful to be ping for the new video (rather than TH-cam notification) PPS: sorry if I made too much english mistake, it's kinda late here and I can't spot the mistakes at this hour (I hope I didn't skip too much word too, tend to do that sometimes x) )
Duolingo is also pretty inconsistent in how they use the flags. Some languages are represented by the flag of the country where the language originated or is perceived to have originated (ex: Spanish flag for Spain), but others are represented by the flag of the country with the most speakers today (ex: USA flag for English, Brazilian flag for Portuguese). Never mind that Mexico alone has almost 3x as many people that speak Spanish as Spain does, and that most of the user-base of the app almost certainly has more interactions with Latin Americans than Spaniards.
Can't speak for the other languages you mentioned, but the Brazilian flag on Duolingo makes perfect sense. They are teaching Brazilian Portuguese, rather than any other version of the language, it makes a difference.
Not sure how much i agree here. I get there are issues, but having flags and recognizing native speakers is also part of preserving languages. If we dont attach a language to a culture then identity associated with that language is less meaningful. This especially applies to languages that have been repressed or marginalized.
The issue is using the term "native" to describe the thing you're talking about recognizing. It generally refers to the *place* a person is born (with all of the political baggage that goes with that in terms of migration), which is not the same thing as the *language* they learned as a child. If someone is born in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a French-speaking household, isn't it a little confusing to describe that as "native French"? Does the flag of France represent their culture?
@@JasonAQuest Better example is a person who is ethnic Ukrainian born into a russian-speaking household due to russian influences in Ukraine. If we dont use the russian flag to represent their language then it is reinforcing the notion that russian is natural to Ukraine which it absolutely is not. I get the potential issue with flags but there are issues with not using them as well.
@@MasiukA "If we dont use the russian flag to represent their language then it is reinforcing the notion that russian is natural to Ukraine which it absolutely is not." why is russian not "natural" to ukraine and what does it even mean?
@@jeanivanjohnson russian is from russia, not Ukraine, and we should not be normalizing the idea, especially when Ukraine is currently being invaded and genocided by russia, that russia or its language has any natural place in Ukraine. The only reason russian is spoken in Ukraine is because of invasion and russification.
I long for the day when nationalism is nothing more than something akin to a cultural fan club. A world where state governments worldwide are broadly similar, recognizing human rights and establish social safety nets, while nations are groups people belong to by birth or affinity, with no more life significance than having curly hair or green eyes. Knowing that someone is Swedish should just mean that I can trust their lutefisk recipe - it shouldn't tell me anything about their politics. Being proud that you're "white" is stupid - be proud that you are Polish or German or whatever, and let "being proud" just mean that you enjoy the wonderful things about your own national culture and let everybody else do the same for their own national culture.
As a native English speaker 🇵🇰 and a near native German speaker 🇦🇷 I have to say this video is really poor. Language is part of what makes an ethnicity, and until very recently ethnic groups largely lived in monocultural societies. So the modern flags will always be associated with the countries that speak the language regardless of political correctness. Same for regional flags and there association with a language or dialect.
If you zoom out and look at the kind of people who use these language learning products then it starts to make sense. The average 1st world middle class language learner (regardless of race) probably doesn't know much about the nuance of national identities the world over. To them the language they learned in school is the language of their country, their "native" language. So they project this onto every other language and by extension every other nation. It's easy to understand that people in Mexico and Spain both speak a dialect of Spanish because it's established by their respective nation states, but it's much harder to place minority languages like Mazahua. Projecting a flag onto them belittles the fact that a lot of these languages are spoken by people who don't have their own nation or feel as though they are a part of a nation that doesn't have the same "native" language as them, let alone represents their interests. Now I'm not so crazy right wing nutjob but the idea of creating a nation with a common spoken language can actually be a good thing. Literacy rates in countries like Indonesia rose dramatically after the government established enforced a common language. It sounds pretty messed up from our western viewpoint especially when you consider that only 5% of the country spoke that language at the time. However, the hard truth is there's no perfect way to integrate a country with 700 local languages. Now that over 90% of the country speaks the language they've seen immense progress. (social issues notwithstanding) In 1972 there was even a join effort between Indonesia and Malaysia to harmonize the writing systems of both their national languages. So I don't like the idea of portraying nation states as evil things that erase the existence of minorities in the name of national purity. It's sort of reductive in the same way giving every language on DuoLingo a flag is reductive. It's really tough because I agree with your points but at the same time don't really see a better alternative. Most people are interested in the languages of nation states, as that's the main language spoken by the people when they actually go there. I just get a little put off when I constantly see people living in the most privileged time in history complain about the very systems that gave them that prosperity. I really don't see terms like "native language" or "native speaker" to be that harmful, and to most people they aren't that ambiguous. As a linguist I'm sure you understand the concept of a category that is perfectly understood/comprehensible, but not rigidly/scientifically defined. That's just kind of how language works. As for the flags, maybe just remove the ones that don't make sense. In the case of Yiddish, I liken it to the flying of a pride flag. They don't seek to identify themselves as a separatist nation state any more than the LGBT do. Creating more representation for a minority isn't part of a dark ideology, it's part of progress. In fact I think a lot more awareness of the many minority languages of the world would result if they did all fly some kind of flag.
I suppose the main thing that bugs me in the prioritization of modern/living languages over "dead" languages and of speaking over reading. I do speak many languages when I can but I read a whole lot more languages than I speak. I studied philology and have used those skills to learn many related languages, principally for reading. Of course I try to talk whenever I can. Yet I've had people tell me I don't "really" know a language when I can read novels and textbooks in it comfortably but I struggle to have a conversation in it.
I feel like one of the most glaring instances of this is for English of all languages. UK flag? US flag? Seems to depend which continent the programmer is on.
French, an official language in 5 countries in Europe, a handful in America and a gazillion in Africa. Biggest city using french as an official language as far as I'm aware ? Kinshasa, DRC. Everytime someone says that someone from another country uses a "weird" or "bad" french, I die a little inside. French is named after my country but we do not own it FFS.
"Native" Spanish speaker from Spain here. I have always been deeply suspicious of the use of national flags to indicate languages, precisely because of examples such as Puerto Rico, which you mention. Edit: that includes flags of any political entity or purported nation. Your example of the Yiddish flag is absolutely appropriate. Wonderful take!!!
On flags, I somewhat disagree. Sometimes it's important to have a symbol to represent a language, and a flag seems to be the most obvious such symbol. I do think that sometimes flags are problematic, but frankly they are the best solution I could come up with
Off the top of my head, in the translation industry we often use 2-letter abbreviations instead, like DE for German, EN for English, and then specify further if needed, like American English if they want the dates to be MM/DD/YY rather than DD/MM/YY and they don't want "favor" spelled "favour."
I think it being the easiest solution atm isn’t a good reason to change the system imo. Like yeah it’s useful shorthand, but the shorthand is propagating ideas we don’t condone. Trying to change the system might not work because the flags are just that good at communicating the idea, but it doesn’t hurt to try right? It costs practically nothing to advocate for and use a new system on a personal level
Semantics. 🤷🏽♀️ I don't think the flag thing or calling people native/non-native speakers are big deals at all. There are more important things to do... like actually learn more languages. I struggle enough with that. 😅
In addition to being inappropriate for Spanish-speaking regions in the Americas, using the flag of Spain for "Spanish" is also bad for representing *Spain* , for the same reason as France and French. There are *several* regional languages widely spoken in Spain, so equating its national flag with Castillian essentially endorses the fascist Franco regime's attempted erasure of Catalan, Galician, Basque, etc. See also: the UK flag and Scots, Welsh, Gaelic, Cornish, etc.
I dunno, it seems to me that your argument should perhaps result in a call to differentiate "native speaker" from "native level"? If a native language is just a language you were "born into", a "mother tongue", i.e. a language that you grew up learning naturally in your childhood, then it's a biographical descriptor of the speaker rather than a description of their speech. Maybe our experiences are different, but that's also what I'd expect people to mean by it: I'm not sure I recognise the same level of ambiguity about the phrase you do. So in that context "native level" (a term more specific to the jargon of language-learning environments?) is the idea that really doesn't make any sense!
Well one thing that I've recently just realised and that doesn't seem to be talking about is the fact that when you are starting to learn a language and you set a goal to learn the 2000 or 5000 most common words of the language and you accomplish this, then you are actually only at the starting line of your journey in the language. After this point, immersion becomes a more meaningful and viable way to expand your vocabulary and internalise the language. But it seems everyone is pretending that learning 2000-5000 words in and of itself is the goal that gives us fluency when in reality it just make things comprehensible to you and now you can start to learn and develop fluency.
Thank you for making this video. As an Indian, this has been bugging me for a long time. I'm bilingual in Tamil and English, and I would say that English is my preferred language of communication, although I do speak my native (lol ironic) quite well. My schooling was entirely in English, I speak to my friends in English, and almost the entirety of my reading, both online and offline, is in English. Also, I've had to learn English myself, so wouldn't I be in a better position to teach someone English? A native speaker has had the neurological pathways built in naturally, so things have just always made intuitive sense to them. They didn't have to think about rules, their exceptions and things that don't make sense and things that simply have to be learnt lol. I also speak Hindi, though less ably, and the native speaker thing doesn't seem to bother them as much. I'm not exactly sure why, though.
Flags for language in very popular in Quebec, Canada. It's strange that for the two official languages of Canada people will use either a US or UK flag for English, and the France flag for French, even it's a specifically Canada-themed website.
Nationalists will go into rants about heroism and bloodshed, but what about all the languages, cultures that have been lost along the way? They (nationalists) won't mention these, because these are considered "foreing" elements that needs to a be eliminated, these are nothing but obstacles for them to overcome. The truth is every language a "flag" has devoured is a treasure lost for humankind.
BTW, TH-cam didn't suggest a video on screen when you said "this video", but DID suggest RobWords Tracing English as far back as possible after the video ended.
On the problematics of "Native Language", Jacques Derrida in "The Language of the Other" makes a testament from the story of his life, to show that we all have an insurmountable distance that prevents us from a true belonging of the words we use, even our mother tongue he says is "the language of the other"
Thank you for your insights in this topic and many other in different videos as well. Something about the language learning community that is bugging me, although I completely understand, is the lack of information, insight and research in how to teach languages to kids. I teach French in the Netherlands, but the kids (age 11-15) in my class did not choose to study French; they have to. I am always looking for ways to improve my teaching skills, but I run into problems I cannot find discussed by others, which is a pity.
What's been bugging me in the language learning space are what I call "method purists". People who have glommed onto some particular strategy for language learning and then claim that it is THE way to learn language, and everybody else are morons, or are irrevocably ruining their ability to reach native-level fluency (see what I did there?) or will somehow "fossilize" early-stage errors into their brains or whatever. My experience with different methods is admittedly broad but not deep--classroom pedagogy, linguistics-informed study, mix-media casual (Duolingo), and comprehensible input--but in my experience these methods *build* on one another. They all have weaknesses that the other ones compensate for. E.g. CI is great and all, but boy is it frustrating to recognize some new word but not *quite* be able to intuit the meaning from context. Isn't it better to just look up the word? Why *not* take advantage of dictionaries and strategic interrogation of google translate to figure out meanings more quickly, so I can then not be stuck on that one word for who knows how long? But no, if you do that, then you have the CI brojobs say "No! Don't look it up! Then you're just learning the language, not acquiring it!" With an implied "you beta cuck" on the end. The pedagogic method of just looking something up in a reference work compensates for one of the weaknesses of CI. Likewise, pedagogic learning is great for literal use of a language, but kinda terrible for gaining facility with non-literal idioms. But CI is fabulous for getting exposure to idioms! They build on each other. They compensate for each other's weaknesses. And *every* method I've used has contributed something that the other methods didn't, and has increased my ability to make connections, deduce meanings, etc. The method purists can have fun in their little sandboxes, but they'll never convince me that their sand is absolutely better than anybody else's sand. Meanwhile, I'm gonna have even more fun playing in *all* the sandboxes.
Haha, really like your sandbox reference. It also pains me when I don't get a new word from context while reading. Similar happens when I understand all words, but do not get a specific grammar concept (for example the usage of 'ce' in italian sometimes). I just have to look it up. Could never be a CI purist or my head would explode 😅
When do you see German illustrated with an Austrian flag, or Mandarin with the flag of Taiwan? Urdu is often represented by the flag of Pakistan, although of course there are many speakers of Urdu as their first language in India. People do indeed talk about Serbo-Croatian. When I was growing up, they were considered to be one language (at least in Britain). But of course, the Serbs and the Croats want their own flags to represent their own language. Many people in Ukraine are 'native' Russian speakers. We should avoid that term. We should never state that there are native Russian speakers in Ukraine.
I don't mind using flags to symbolise languages and using the word collocation "native speaker". For me these questions are not crucial. I know that there can be some misunderstandings and some people can be dissatisfied. But it's impossible to make everything perfect for everyone. But if it would be necessary for the majority of people to change things, I wouldn't mind it too. So I will watch how the situation changes and draw conclusions.
I once got into an unexpectedly heated fight with a friend over the very concept of "native" speakers and of some language being objectively better -- more skilled, more effective at communicating its point -- than other. This was all about English (not ranking different languages against each other), and it turned out my friend had some severe trauma over the thought of having their language usage (writing) be judged in any way, so ultimately we had to agree just not to discuss it anymore, because the topic was hurting them. But to me it *had* seemed obvious that there was a clear answer. Native speakers exist, since we can rather easily pick up on people whose language is weirdly off (like the Uncanny Valley effect), and maybe the lines aren't quite where I'd expect them to be, but those lines still *exist* -- right? And a skilled writer (or orator) can use language in a way that clearly and unambiguously communicates their point using word choice and phrasing appropriate to the listeners and the environment, whereas a child hasn't yet developed the skill to say what they mean how they mean using words that don't muddle the attempt at communication. So clearly there's a way to rank language usage, like saying that the Mona Lisa was drawn more skillfully than a child's stick-figure attempt at drawing their family -- even if there's also value to that stick figure. (And I never intended to assert that ranking skillfullness somehow implied that the stick figure was... negative, in some way? Or that the end goal of every language user "should be" to get to the Mona Lisa level -- that's ridiculous. One can always improve, but one is not required to improve. One can always decide that the level they're at is fine for their needs and that they'll devote their energy to improving other skills instead.) You've made me see that the concept of native speakers is fuzzier than I had anticipated. I'm not sure what to do with that data point. And I'm not sure what, if anything, it implies about my assertion that language usage is rankable.
P.S. This is the metric I've developed over the years, the existence of which led to the fight: There are different stages of art (including the art of language) that we can grow through: 0. Doodler 1. Amateur 2. Sophomore 3. Apprentice 4. Master 5. Artisan ...I've messed around with the terms over the years and I'm not quite happy with them, but they amount to the following concepts: 0. I don't even yet have the conception that I'm working toward a goal; I'm just developing proto-skills 1. My skill is rudimentary but at least I have some goal in mind; also, because I haven't yet internalized any rules, I can create things that higher levels literally lose the ability to create 2. I have learned some Rules and now I'm stuck in that mindset, that there are Rules and that those who don't follow the Rules are somehow doing something wrong 3. I have learned that Rules are really more like Guidelines, and started to branch out a bit, exploring the new freedom to "break" the Rules and see where that leads me 4. I have mastered the craft enough that I can use the skill however I like. I understand the purpose of the "Rules" / Best Practices, and I know when and how to break those guidelines for effect. 5. I have so immersed myself in the medium that I no longer consciously think about the "Rules" or breaking them, I just Do and it comes together the way I intend or a way that transcends my intentions That's how I started thinking about levels of skill, whether writing or art or skating or pottery or whatever. It seems like a useful framework. Doesn't mean that everyone needs to move toward mastery, or that people whose skill is or remains at the lower levels should feel inferior; there's reason for all the levels to exist. Some of my favorite fan art came from a rather amateur artist and it delights me because of how energetic and distinctive it is -- it could never be drawn by an artist who'd learned how shoulders attach to the body.
Yeah, this is legit. A second element of this is the social expectation in America that there is an ROI associated with learning a language. Not, “This will bring me wealth.” But rather, “This will bring me capital.” But there are certain corners of the culture in America which demand that the justification of any interest outside of vocation be supported by whether the learner will use their knowledge in pursuit of wealth, influence, or access to a market. It diminishes the humanity of the people that learned that language as a child, that think in that language, that live in a culture that expresses shared values in that language, that know words in their language that they could only translate if you gave them a lots of time to explain myriad social and cultural interactions, and historical background information.
The discussion of flags had me thinking back to a coupe of decades ago when I was a preschool teacher. We had a visiting tutor that would come in a few times a week to introduce Spanish language lessons to our class of mostly non-Spanish-speaking students. In our weekly newsletter home to families, I added a little box with that week's Spanish vocabulary with Anglo-friendly pronunciation guides so that families could engage their kids at home. Unthinkingly, I snagged a clip art of the Spanish flag to use as a visual marker for that little corner of the newsletter. Even though I wasn't yet totally awakened to the pervasive ways colonization still plays out in our contemporary world, I did have a moment of realization where I thought, "Huh, none of the kids in our class who speak Spanish are from Spain - does this graphic really reflect our classroom culture?" Not yet knowing the concept of "many Englishes" or "many Spanishes" I nonetheless also eventually reasoned that using a single flag to reflect one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world was semiotically inadequate. I eventually swapped out the single Spanish flag icon for a little border around that part of the page, consisting of flags from several (maybe all? Definitely at least a collection that covered our classroom) Spanish-speaking countries, which felt more appropriate and pluralistic.
Lots of depth to this topic especially when it’s expanded to language planning and attempts to recover languages from cultural genocide. Language planning as a it relates to decolonization is a really complex topic that I’d love to learn more about.
When updating my CV, I felt uneasy about linking languages to flags. I speak four foreign languages, and I initially thought of adding a flag to represent each one. I had no issue placing the Italian flag next to "Italian." However, I felt conflicted when I added the American flag next to "English," as my English is a blend of different dialects. I was particularly hesitant to use the Spanish flag for "Spanish," as I proudly speak Dominican Spanish. Interestingly, I didn’t experience the same discomfort when adding the French flag.
As a "heritage speaker" now living in the country where my heritage language is spoken (moved when I was 28), I definitely feel like there is something like a "native speaker." There just are some aspects of the language that are still too difficult for me to grasp, despite growing up around the language and hearing it at home. I think many other heritage speakers could share similar stories. Which leads me to my point: perhaps the concept of a "native speaker" isn't a figment of the imagination of hypernationalists and fascists, as you imply, but an actually useful concept in the real world. As for flags associated with languages: sorry, but as a speaker of Polish, I don't see the issue. The language isn't spoken elsewhere by other groups of people, besides the Polish diaspora. Sure, it doesn't work for Spanish or English as well as it does for "smaller" languages, but we do see that when someone wants to learn British English vs. American English, different flags are used. And no, this doesn't mean that use of these flags associated with a language is just a hop and a skip away from genocidal ideologies. It's just an easy heuristic for people to understand.
Very vaguely related: I recently started teaching English as a foreign language and today I had a perplexing time trying to choose a fitting icon for my brand new "Work" folder. My most obvious options were the union jack and the star-spangled banner, but of course... the English I teach is not only both but much more! I fit in as much diversity as I can. I settled on a 90s looking computer.
English is spoken by multiple countries so of course apps or anything else that wants to quickly use a visual representation will have to exclude all the other countries that also speak the same language. Usually they choose England or America. A lot of the time it's England I've seen and it feels like a small slight to me because I'm a native English speaker but I have never been to England. But I can deal. It's mostly for practicality and I get that. And technically England was the first country to speak English. If you have an alternative to flags please suggest it though. If you write the name of the language then suddenly you're not speaking a universal language but the one you're writing in. Flags are just really practical. Most of the time the term "native speaker" is pretty clear cut. The majority of people don't grow up wondering what their native language is. Sure you get some exceptions but I don't see any issues with the term and I don't find it confusing. The exception I can think of would be people that started growing up in one country but then got uprooted and moved to another country. But if someone says they consider themselves to be a native English speaker I generally just go with it. They know better than me - they are them after all. Again, if we didn't say native speaker what else would we say? I guess you could define the term in every video if you want to be clear to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Really interesting stuff, and very relevant to English. The world seems to divide into those that use The Stars and Stripes and those that use the Union Flag to represent English. To say the very least of it, both carry connotations, to peoples around the world, that go well beyond the linguistic. Are we to expect a speaker of English from, say, Drogheda to embrace the use of the Butcher's Apron to represent his or her language? And here in the UK, we have bedded-down, ancient language communities that speak Scots, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, and Belfast is one of the centres of a major revival in Irish; and that's not to mention our speakers of Subcontinental and African languages, Caribbean creoles, Yiddish, etc (my home borough is, according to some measures, the most linguistically diverse neighbourhood in the whole of Europe, and includes Europe's largest Yiddish-speaking community). The situation is scarcely less complex Stateside! We are not English, in other words, and English is not us. When, as a Limey tourist, I visited the Smithsonian in the 90s, and was wondering whether to get a guide, I remember noticing that Spanish was represented by the flag of Spain, but Portuguese by the flags of both Portugal and Brazil. English was Old Glory; and that alone. I probably noticed the inconsistency because I'm a non-American Anglophone, but actually you could argue it's Portuguese that throws the issue most starkly into relief. If you're referencing Portugal and Brazil, Smithsonian, why aren't you referencing Mozambique and Angola? And why include Brazil (the most populous Lusaphone nation) but not Mexico, whose population is two-and-a-half times that of Spain AND WHICH IS YOUR NEIGHBOUR TO THE SOUTH? I'm not sure there are answers that any of us could really defend.
The representating Spanish with the Spanish flag instead of the Mexican one is for a simple reason. They don't teach the Mexican dialect in schools. I didn't take Spanish in high school because, even though I was a 6 hour drive from Mexico, they taught Castilian! Being taught the dialect of his colonizers by a brown guy (RIP Mr Murillo) was too much for me.
@@overlordnat I can't remember whether it was an audio guide or a written one, but either way, good point. I find myself wondering, now, what they do in Ireland; if I'd had my wits about me I'd have checked when I went to Kilmainham Gaol a couple of years ago. My guess is that they just use the word "English".
I agree with all your points, I also think the language learning community puts not enough emphasis on different dialects and subcultures. For example, I personally would love to learn more about Southern Chinese languages like Hakka or Gan as part of my martial arts journey, but there's precious little information available about any Chinese languages outside of Mandarin and Cantonese, despite the smaller languages still having tens of millions of native speakers.
I find it fascinating that in Switzerland the German language is presented by the German flag, and that people are considered to be native speakers of the language. In fact Hochdeutch is the language that is learnt at school, and a different language (some call it dialect) of Schwiizertüütsch/Mundart is spoken at home, among friends and family, even these days on TV. For them, switching to Hochdeutch is akin to code switching. Perhaps there are trappings of an episode there for you.
As a Brazilian I'm all in favor of keeping using flags because they use the Brazilian flag and that makes the Portuguese angry and the Portuguese MUST be angry. Keep the good job, guys!
Been an ESL teacher for over 30 years. Every time a student asks about speaking "like a native speaker", I just answer that my Uglish sounds like my South African one, and my British sounds like Filipino English. I stand behind the idea that language is just a tool for communication, not an absolute identifier. Give people a language and we'll see to "corrupt" it make it our own.
In some spaces I’ll ask a question and I’ve had people straight up tell me “you don’t need to know that” Maybe I don’t *need* to know it, but I WANT to know it! I get that some stuff is a bit too complicated for the average person to explain. (Which is completely understandable and I’m not mad about that.) It’s just endlessly frustrating when I ask a cultural question or about something basic like numbers and then get told that it’s worthless to learn about it so don’t bother.
Adding to your first argument, I'd like to point out that using national flags as a stand-in for the language doesn't do justice to the speakers of that language outside said nation. French for ex. is just as rooted in other countries, in Europe alone Belgium, Luxemburg and Switzerland, in all three considered an official language. Sure France might be the nexus but using their flag feels like unjustly monopolizing and appropriating the language (too much). As if one nation is the true source and any speaker outside of it, had it superimposed as some kind of passive participant ( which might be or not be the case). It all ties into this (heinous in my opinion) idea that a language equates a nation which it simply does not.
from the start I knew you would talk about the "yiddish flags", which is really the best example of why languages can't always be representaed by flags. For french regional languages, they definitely have flags, because "regionalistes" (understand regional nationalists) waste no time making them (see britanny but also occitania or Savoy). And we have this situation where there're attempts at reviving these languages against french homogenization which are backed in no small part by pretty xenophobic people (whose role is too often underplayed by the more left-leaning language-revivalists)
There’s also a practical reason I don’t like seeing flags representing languages is that I have no clue what language it is because I don’t recognize the flag. The UN recognizes 195 countries. That’s 195 flags plus the problem of countries that have multiple languages. I recognize about 20 of them. And if I see the flag of Canada, for example, is it English, French or one of the First Nations languages?
The flag of the shah?! I believe that flag has a history that goes back at least 500 years prior to the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty. Point taken, but that is not the flag of the Shah.
I’m a professional Swahili interpreter. I learned the language as an adult . Sometimes my organization asks for a “native“ to translate a certain document, even though I am the best translator. Thank you for bringing up the subject because it needs to be talked about more.
Heh! I'm Swiss. So how am I to represent my Swiss German with a flag? Localised websites often combine two flags or add a "D", "F" or "I" to the Swiss flag. I have never come across localisation for Rumantsch...
"Peasants into Frenchmen" is another wonderful book on basically the same topic
@@bradyisbeast12 I haven’t read it! I’m unreasonably excited about this
Meanwhile the Language Simp is never using the expected flags to symbolize the language he's talking about. While being a joke it is an unironically a good practice
And calls English American every single time.
I heard he does that
@@LanguageSimp omg you've seen the language simp's stuff as well? I'm glad he's starting to get some traction
@@RhapsodyinLingo I've been a Language Jones fan far longer than you've been alive, buddy
@@LanguageSimp I think he meant LanguageSimp.
The "native speaker" thing is a problem in other industries too. I teach English in Asia, and I can't tell you the number of times I've seen individuals who are highly skilled and well qualified teachers and highly proficient users of English, but who happen to not come from a "native speaker country" lose out of job opportunities to someone from the Big Five who barely understands the basic linguistic details of their L1. Or worse, I've seen those same highly skilled "non-native" teachers get hired and massively underpaid and overworked because they're now technically working illegally and the employers have them over a barrel. Thankfully the skin colour bias is changing, finally, and some nations outside the Big Five are being added to the "native countries" list, but that doesn't really change anything for the true L2 speakers.
That doesn't even touch on the bias against actual native speakers who don't have the right native speaker "look," like a native english speaker with east asian genetics. It's an odd business, when you can find yourself discriminated against for not standing out from the crowd.
That's really sad.
This this this.
Who are the five? US, UK, Canada, Australia and.... Ireland or NZ?
That's so terrible and completely wrong. So few native English speakers understand the grammar and mechanics of English because it's super complicated. Being able to speak English doesn't make you a good language teacher either. I would rather have a teacher who understands the language than someone who happened to be born in a particular place or whose parents spoke a particular language.
In South Africa, we refer to it as your "home language". "Native language" and "mother tongue" are rarely used. That introduces a new problem, since it implies that it is the language in which you are most fluent, when almost everyone has formal education in English.
I didn't know that. This makes me like Language Jones recommendation to take the time to explain our relation to the language even. I can't think of a term like "native language" or "home language" that doesn't create similar problems.
In French, it's langue maternelle, literally mother tongue.
as a Canadian i never understood language flags because we have many languages two of which are official and when we pick English the flag us either the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack, or in the post Brexit EU, Ireland; which is weird on a whole other level
Then there’s Quebec French, New Brunswick French, and other French pockets
Last but not least the tapestry of indigenous languages not even recognised
Maybe they ought to use the flag of England for the English language.
Fun fact about the USA: We have more Spanish speakers than the entire population of Spain.
The video game _Celeste_ uses the Canadian flag for English! (But not French 😂)
@@joe_z oh my god! I came here to mention Celeste using the Canadian flag for English but it never clicked that the French flag should also be that lol
The canadian flags and associations with language and culture etc. is a very political topic and the conflict is fought exactly the way he explains in the video. After all, Quebec's flag was clandestinely installed illegally, to begin with, as a form of protest. But also to directly associate the language, culture and flag as the same thing... and for the creators of the flag to dictate what those are.
@@danrobrish3664no. Use the flag of Missouri.
As we all know all language learners are secretly Norwegian nationalists
@@NeichoKijimura the runes should have alerted us
Bad company in the yt comments section holy
@@yvetteday5656 yeah, seem to have struck a nerve
[Insert Norwegian sentence] 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴
Bokmal or Nynorsk?
I learn different Indian languages, the flag was already meaningless because India has so many different languages
YESS thankyou i absolutely hate this especially due to being an indian. I've even seen tamizh being represented with sri lankan flag despite yk the majority of tamizh speakers being from tamizh nadu! and not to mention how it absolutely feeds into the wrong hypernational hindi crowd. the problem could be somewhat alleviated if each state had their own flags but that goes out the window considering there are languages that don't have their own states either(like tulu!)
I used to teach middle school in NM, and boy did attempts to impose "native speaker" as a categorization real fail there. The public school system classified any kid who reported speaking a language other than English at home as ESL, even if they had been speaking english their whole life (alongside spanish). Sure most of them did have language proficiency issues, but that was more a systemic failure of the education system to keep everyone on grade level than being 'non-native.' I'm sure you'd have a "fun" time looking into the history of language ed in NM.
For those wondering, "NM" here means "New Mexico", a state in the USA with a large number of Spanish speakers.
Yes, this. As a (former) MLL teacher, I know for certain that many, many "native" English-speaking students would not test out of the program were they required to do so. I still have MLL students in my world language classes who speak English as well or better than their "native" peers but still haven't tested out. Something is a bit awry, and most of it has to do with structural prejudice and bureaucracy. For what it's worth: it's not just NM.
Classifying kids who didn't speak English at home as potentially ESL makes sense, but yeah obviously you'd want to check the levels of the kid before making that designation.
@@CalCapone3 Note that speaking a language other than English at home doesn't prevent speaking English at home as well.
Oh goddd this reminds me of how I got classified as an ESL student (despite only speaking English) for about 4-5 years, because my dad speaks Mandinka, alongside English and other languages (he's from Sierra Leone), but I don't even speak Mandinka (only know a few words and stuff). I'm in Texas tho, so my case has nothing to do with NM's education system.
As someone who has been learning Spanish for years, the use of 🇪🇸 confuses me when using some tools to learn, because I’m trying to learn Latin American Spanish. Then I have to do more research to see if they are of the “vosotros” crowd. 😂
As far as the term “native speaker,” it’s just simpler to use that term, instead of saying “a person who started learning as a child and has a pretty good handle on the language.” Where I have the issue is when some of these tools claim to help you “speak like a native,” which is something that 99% of people will never achieve, and it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The goal should be to speak to be understood, period.
I use the Spanish flag for that exact reason, I am learning and speak the vosotros form lol.
Foreign-language instruction in the US had been Eurocentric for over a century. I mean, Latin was in the standard curriculum in the US until the... 1980s(?).
I learned my grandparents' virtually extinct pre-war German dialect as a child, then picked up more modern Pfälzisch & Saarländisch from my kids & their schoolmates.
My mother, born to German-speaking parents in the US during WWII, never learned more than a simple blessing said over family meals.
Language, culture & national identities are complex, and the nuances can be tricky to navigate, even within basic family units.
Saarländer here 😊
This is difficult to understand but interesting. I am thinking very hard and will listen some times more to understand better. (from Germany)
Saarland gibts nicht.
I feel like this video does a good job of describing the experience of "historical Anglophones" in Quebec without meaning to. You can have been living here for generations, but without the language as a signifier, you're often not accepted as "part of the nation" - and some will even say so out loud: you are not "a real Quebecer" without descending from the culture that the language represents. The idea that culture, nation, and language are inextricably tied is just a given here.
There is also the pervasive notion in Québec that "bilingual" means either "speaks French and English specifically" or "speaks French and some other language". I know multiple people who expressed that they were bilingual while in Québec, but because they spoke (e.g.) Spanish and English or English and Mandarin, they were told that they "didn't count as bilingual". Québec is so afraid to lose its cultural/linguistic heritage and identity that they are sometimes quite chauvinist and discriminatory toward others. The CAQ's agenda is of course the ultimate example, wherein the word "pasta" becomes forbidden (you have to say "pâtes").
Of course there's some good and some bad that comes out of it. There are a lot of French language classes available for cheap or free, through the government, through employers, etc. - and I think that's a perfectly good way to promote the language and culture. I'm in one of those classes. But then you also get the stripping away of previously existing English communication channels for anything official or from the government, and anxiety that you might, for example, be refused health services in a language you can understand in a moment where it really matters.
Fun small anecdote about flags and nationality. Latin is very near and dear to my heart as a philologist, having studied it since I was 12 and been involved in spoken Latin much of my early adult life. I wanted to get a shirt to represent that and had a choice between an SPQR shirt and one with the Vatican flag. I went with the Vatican flag because I use ecclesiastical pronunciation when speaking Latin.
When moving back to Northern Ireland I was moving into an AirBnB, and forgot that the shirt I'd put on back in England before getting on the plane, was that Vatican flag shirt...and my host lived in a Protestant neighbourhood. Got a couple of weird looks for that one as I walked in with my bags
😂
As a Catholic American living next to a Protestant church who has (playfully, but earnestly because I want to rep my faith) considered buying a Vatican flag for my flagpole (but I actually don't because I wouldn't want to actually offend/alienate them; they are lovely people for the most part), this is especially hilarious to me. I hope they ultimately took it in good fun, as much as possible.
I wouldn't think that most people even know what the Vatican flag looks like. I know I wouldn't recognize it if I saw it.
People might actually recognize what it is in Belfast (unlike most places outside Italy). Maybe.
But it isn't one of the most politicized symbols of the Troubles. And thankfully, things are much quieter than they used to be with the conflict.
Also, it's worth saying ... People in Belfast have a way of just staring down anyone looking even slightly unfamiliar or out-of-place, regardless.
@@BlissfulDee You'd probably recognise the papal tiara and keys... even if you don't know the flag is vertical yellow and white!
This "native speaker" thing... rant incoming 😅 : I'm Swiss - from the "German part". Linguists argue if Swissgerman is a language or a dialect. In my opinion it is a language (especially since I had to transcribe a 4h Interview in Swissgerman to German for uni). We learn German in kindergarden and are forced to use it in school. Everything we write (except chatting with friends) has to be in German. However, I'd never think in German and sometimes I use words or syntax that isn't actually German. But if I use apps (HelloTalk etc.) I have to choose "native German" and feel like a fraud. I'm a "native German" but at the same time I'm absolutely not, depending on the context.
as someone from germany but near Konstanz my slang is very similar to swissgerman, although not the same of course, and while i don't really feel like a fraud, it is funny to see how much germans from different regions struggle to understand me when i either write or talk this slang german to them. (er ist die treppe hinunter gefallen vs. der isch d'stäge nah keit). if it is different to a point where "native speakers" of the language, like germans from northern regions like hamburg for example, cannot understand you whatsoever you could probably classify it as a language and not a slang. in my case Alemannisch is even its own language on wikipedia. so i would argue you are right. swiss german is it's own language too and i always saw it as such personally.
I have a pet theory that the difference between language and dialect is whatever the force of nation-states wills it to be
for me it is a dialect but yeah i can relate the transcription thing... If it was an own language, i guess i'd have issues with standard german but i absolutely don't. i see a lot of swiss guys do indeed have very big issues especially with spoken standard german. btw i'm from liechtenstein, maybe my heart is born too close to austria so i am very considerate about using my language and always compare the dialect to standard german to make sure i am not using weird swiss terms german customers or austrian family don't understand like for example "das system verhebt"
I'm 100% with you (also Swiss german). Luckily I'm old enough, that I could speak Swiss German in all school subject except for German, French or English. The standard German requirement for all subjects and all stages came a few years later. My German is decent, but with a hefty accent (which I also cultivate a bit ;-)). But standard German feels foreign. It feels weird to click the flag of the "big canton" to select a language. But hey, it could be worse, if we would have to select the Habsburg flag instead 😂
@@FuncijejHas some truth, but I think there are also some linguistic factors. I grew up on the border of highest alemanic and high alemanic dialects. The grammar I use when speaking is highest alemanic, pronounciation is a mixture of highest and high alemanic and the vocabulary is all over the place with a lot of french influences, germanisms and anglicisms. I would say my native language is Alemanic. But this option is rarely present.
Breton here. I unfortunately never learned the language, and few are the students that do and use it regularly. Decades later, the policies' effects are still felt, but I hope the language can still survive
They seem to backing off on bilingual schooling, unfortunately, in pays bigouden sud. But the Breton flag is everywhere.
you mean "patois" 🤣
You can start now 😉
Policies aren’t everything. Low prestige and too small language areas can also lead to voluntarily giving up, with parents trying to teach their children a language that gives them more opportunities.
@@D4BASCHT why is the prestige low and the language area so small though? these are a direct result of the policies in question
He actually said monolingual beta.
I have fun on the channel. If you say it three times, language simp shows up in the comments!
@@languagejones6784can there please be a collab between my two favorite language daddies? I have no idea how to make it work, but I want to see it.
@@languagejones6784 monolingual beta monolingual beta monolingual beta
@@languagejones6784 Hello
is this like compared to multilingual alpha
i feel this too is problematic
Oh man, as someone living in Ukraine and who learned Ukrainian, this is such an interesting video.
Did you ever hear of Ivan Dziuba’s “Internationalism or Russification”? It’s about culture as a whole but language is a part of it. Saying that the uniformity of the USSR is done to “uniting the people”, but it’s all Russian focused and the languages and cultures of the other countries (especially Ukrainian) were given a complete second class status, a ripple effect you can sadly see today. When I first moved in 2017, so many similar stories from people who mainly grew up speaking Ukrainian, that when they went to a more Russian speaking city (like Kyiv at a time) there would be an assumption that they were less educated or from a village.
A big talking point by pro-Russian voices is “well people in those eastern territories speak russian, so it seems pretty right that they should be a part of russia” (and the assumption about language isn’t really true either when you remember that Surzhyk is a thing). While inside the country there is a movement towards speaking Ukrainian more often, I never run into people who would say that those who still speak russian are not Ukrainian (even if they don’t like hearing russian constantly on the street)
Oh yeah and I should bring up that Ivan Dziuba wrote it in the 1960s and it destroyed his career and sent him to prison since it was considered anti-soviet
Well Ukraine is a pretty fascist country when it comes to minority languages' rights, Poroshenko's slogan was "Army, Language, Church" lmao but they're still playing the victim card. Ukrainian was an official language during the Soviet era, even all non-Ukranians had to learn it, so in a way USSR was more liberal than modern Ukraine when it comes to language policy, soviets never banned the use of minority languages like Ukraine does now
@@popkinbobkin saying “playing the victim card” about a country currently defending itself from a genocide tells me everything I need to know about how serious I should take any opinion you have, not to mention the factual inaccuracies in all your other statements.
Yeah, and I’m sure Stepan Bandera was a great woke liberal as well who loved cultural diversity and minority rights!😂
Soviet Ukraine was far more progressive in every way than the current regime, which is a disgrace to humanity.
In the online language learning community there are people advocating for grammar, people advising against learning grammar, people swearing by flash cards, others saying you have to watch Netflix in your target language, people saying give me comprehensible input or give me death, not to mention endless arguments over the efficacy of language learning apps. The problem is that it all kinda works, more or less, and people on TH-cam especially act like there’s only one way up the proverbial mountain.
I’d recommend the video “Cooking internet and lifting internet have the same problem” by Andy Ragusea which highlights a similar problem in other communities.
You're absolutely correct!! I've had my share of online discussions because of this issue, back when I let myself got tangled in such nonsense. I'll check the video* you recommend, Tnx a lot
I was going to post a similar comment, but you said it better than I could have. The comprehensible input community has become cult. As you said, this problem exists in many other subjects (fitness, nutrition, et.)
@@theymademepickaname1248 I don't think it's just about comprehensible input. Its detractors are guilty of exactly the same thing. The video by Andy Ragusea that @davo_v quotes explains the phenomenon pretty well
Fully agree. Also it's Adam Ragusea btw
Don't forget the ones that say you should focus on learning only one language at a time and not start with another until you're at fluency with the first one... and the ones who say you can and should learn multiple languages at the same time.
On the topic of "learning from native speakers" - I once had a language exchange partner whose goal was to learn Indian English. He lived in India, and American English (my native dialect) was not useful to him. I helped him through his (Indian) English courses, and it was a really interesting experience, especially whenever his textbooks disagreed with me.
Is Indian English some people's first language in India? (I almost said native language there...)
I still have trouble separating the name "Indian" from a people that we now designate as "Native American".
@@Cuinn837How, paleface!
@@paulwalther5237 yes, although it's rare. A friend of mine told me that he's more proficient in English than in Hindi
@@Cuinn837 Many Native Americans call themselves Indian and have no problem with that.
Related: I wish Duolingo (only bc it's the one I use most) would let me explore regional Spanishes.
There are many language apps that proudly talk about how you can interact with "native speakers" through their platform. I think it sounds good on the cover, but I'm now wondering if a "native speaker" is the best person to learn a language from. English is my first language, and I'm probably a bad person to talk to about how it works... I've never really had to think about it too hard. Probably more helpful to learn from someone with an outside perspective on learning the language.
English is my first language and tbh, I didn't get a lot of things until I had to learn them in my second (French).
An average native speaker is not a great resource for grammar advice. A professional teacher or book will help you there.
But if you want to have a conversation in the target language, having conversations with people who are literally experts in having conversations in that language is quite helpful.
Yes, the average native speaker is probably NOT the best, since they probably can't remember learning it and were never taught to teach it. There is also something to be said that learners make some of the best teachers, they know what a learner is going to struggle with! I know a lot of native English speakers who couldn't answer a grammar question to save their lives.
A native speaker who has also learned another language (more specifically "yours") will be extremely helpful in learning they understand the pain points. like Santiago said you learn a lot about your first language learning another. A professionally trained teacher is always gonna be better but having friends to discuss the language with on a more casual level won't be a detriment.
High level L2 speakers are good to learn from since they can explain how they learnt the language
eh, language as a tool of *cultural* identity can be just as radicalizable as when it is used as a tool of *national* identity. So, no matter what you replace the flags with, unless you teach some kind of culture-agnostic language continuum (which would arguably be harder to communicate in), you'll still expose ways to divide people along its lines. No matter how we slice humanity, it inevitably turns into an us vs. them situation. It's too useful an exploit.
I don’t think that Language Jones advocates that we separate language users through their cultural identity. He said this while explaining what people usually mean when they say “native speaker”, and then describes how that is also problematic. He actually advocates “saying what we actually mean” i.e. taking the extra time to describe the speaker's relationship to the language. This won’t get rid of the human tendency to tribalism, but it lets us speak more clearly and avoid the various problematic elements of identifying languages through flags.
@@Gorg1122I find the term problematic to be problematic.
Language is of course inextricable with the cultures of those who use it. I think one point that's trying to be put forward is not to replace national symbols with cultural symbols to represent language - see his critiques of proposed Yiddish flags - but rather the appropriation of symbols already unified by other elements for the representation of language.
While it is of course useful to represent languages with symbols, the issue with the symbols is when those symbols already unite a community through other factors beyond 'speaker of the language'.
However, I think most would acknowledge that our current use of flags and cultural symbols to represent language is unlikely to change. Nonetheless, it's our responsibility to be mindful of which symbols are chosen, why they have been chosen, and the implications of those choices.
@@jaetwee hahaha yeah I don’t think it’s going to change anytime soon. But I could see a world where people become more aware of those nuances and push back against the use of flags or at least hesitate to use them. We can try to stop unknowing support of nationalistic ideals.
I think you'll find that language tends to be more naturally divisive than other aspects of culture - excluding that other divisive aspect of culture: religion (though not all religions in equal measure.)
No matter. The real crux of the issue is that human beings are a social species with fairly strong in-group /out-group tendencies. There's enough evidence to say that it even seems to be an evolutionary trait it's best to accept that reality - we like to divide into groups that become cultures (with distinct languages, religious views and other cultural traits) and then guard against the "Other". Then we can engineer a way to mitigate those instincts.
That's pretty much what we've been trying to do anyways with various political solutions in Late modernity.
If the term "native speaker" isn't scientific and isn't useful in linguistics, how should we say "a language is defined by the way native speakers speak it" or something similar? How can we know how, for example, a verb conjugation is supposed to be done in a particular language if we can't observe how a "native speaker" does it?
I think you're not doing descriptivism if you define "correct language" based off of a subset of speakers (and a small one at that for English)
"A language is defined by how the majority of it's speakers (including those who learned it as their second language) uses it."
Let's be honest, in the age of the internet, it doesn't really matter if someone is a "native speaker" or not.
Also, the concept of a language being "defined" is already a vague concept that doesn't really work that well. Language is fluid.
hmm - usage implies a community of language speakers. People already distinguish between different communities of speakers to specify different dialects (you get "British English", "American English", "Australian English", "Indian English" etc.), so surely specifying which community's speech standards and rules you are talking about would be the fix here - you don't need to define language in terms of "native speaker", just be more specific about which community of language speakers you are talking about.
The problem is, there is no "native speaker" there are many speaking a language and they all use variants and also a language naturaly changes over time, as young generations just change it. Usually that what is taught as "native" is a political descision.
For example in germany (or famously in france) there are boards set up by the goverment that define what is the "correct" & "native" language. The Swiss and Austrians don't adhere to these rules in the case of german and the Belgians and Swiss in the case of french also don't adhere to those rules.
But even in Germany and France: Go and Speak to a Bavarian, Saxon, Provencal, Breton "native speaker" - you will find out that observing them is something very different than what is taught as "native languge".
I'm a native speaker of swahili, my mother is tanzania. I cannot hold a conversation in swahili for my life does that make me not a native speaker? Swahili was the first language i spoke thats the problem with linguistics, its all one step forward six back.
That’s a really good characterization of linguists
You are not a native speaker of Swahili, and you shouldn't go around saying that you are one. Your post is an obvious example of the Straw Man Fallacy.
@CameronNewland I disagree that it is an obvious straw man argument. I could conceive of a genuine argument that "native language" is the first language you were exposed to and that that language was spoken by your ancestors. Furthermore, I'm not sure that being able to currently speak the language is necessary to be a native speaker of the language. In which case, following those rules, @AmaniElArnab creates a valid situation that is very hard to accept. You can change the definition of “native speaker”, but that’s his point, it’s not a scientific term, it’s a socially understood one without a clear definition that creates confusing situations.
@@CameronNewland this is what i would say if i learned what "strawman" means recently and I needed to test it out on someone.
@@Gorg1122 "Native speaker" does have a clear definition, and no, it's not possible for a native speaker to not be able to converse in, or understand, that language. You're trying too hard, but you are simply running in circles and embarrassing yourself.
Thank you. It makes sense of China talking about Chinese rather than Mandarin and Cantonese. It's been bugging me as to why something that I'd always understood as the ignorant thing to say is now encouraged.
Do you really think Mandarin and Cantonese are the only Chinese languages?
You managed to completely avoid the most hilarious flag as language: it's so common you completely overlook it, but it's everywhere. Is English a union jack, a stars and stripes, maybe a red maple leaf or some variant of a southern cross flag. It's so common to see a website which can represent a localization choice with one or many of these variants for English. I've even seen cross of st george on occasion..
I still don't see the problem with "native speaker". It's not clearly defined? So... what? Most people have an idea what it means. Learned the language at 6? Yes, probably not 100% clear. If he is 7 now, probably not what we would consider a native speaker because he doesn't know much yet. If he's an adult now, and has been speaking the language since he was 6 - probably native level by now. Language is full of terms that don't have a clear cut-off. It still works.
as a software engineer, I have a similar grievance with a convention that I know I'm unlikely to change: the use of the term "bug". While the term helpfully evokes something hard-to-find and pesky out of proportion to their size, the problem is it suggests the presence of an _external contaminant_ that can manifest anywhere and can only be prevented by hermetically sealing away the system from its surrounding environment. In fact, most "bugs" are caused by _internal discrepancy_ and can be discovered and resolved through deeper introspection of assumptions and scenarios. "Misalignment" or "gap" would be more accurate and helpful but lacks the compelling mental imagery
That’s a really interesting point, and a holdover from when room sized computers might have actually had real bugs in them! But I can see how now, it seems to absolve the programmer of responsibility for their code. External locus of control. Very interesting!
I don’t disagree, but etymologically it comes from actual bugs with the first recorded usage being a beetle that got stuck in an early Edison phone and the first computer bug was a moth that got stuck in a panel
@@vitsu_ yes, i'm familiar with the story, and it is certainly a compelling one. yet one could just as well infer that the root cause was not the moth, but the _gap_ through which it slipped in
consider: had the contaminant been a fallen autumn leaf rather than a moth, would it make sense to be using the term a "leaf" or a "fall" instead of a "bug"?
bugs are like, both external and internal, since well, you have bug that comes from outside and gets stuck inside lmao
but yeah, the word "bug" in software context does NOT imply either external or internal, it usually just means something unexpected happens, and glitch is its full synonym. for external attacks on internals we have the word "exploit" and also the CVE numbers
now i will throw up some terms: unfulfilled requirement, exception, illegal state, contract violation, panic, failed assertion, vulnerability, corruption, fatal flaw, unchecked, fault, undefined behavior
That's very interesting to me. I'm also a software engineer, but from a Spanish-speaking country. Here, we generally don't translate technical jargon, we often just use English words, and "bug" is one of those words.
For me, the word "bug" (in a Spanish-speaking context) does imply the internal discrepancy, rather than an external element. It gives a sense of personal responsibility.
I think that's because we use that word exclusively as technical jargon, nobody uses "bug" outside the context of the software industry.
I agree what you rea syaing in spirit, but the word "native speaker" is a really useful term that quickly and clearly communicates the idea of "someone who grew up speaking this langague as their primary language, and has a strong intuitive understanding of that language". Most people either clearly fit or clearly do not fit this idea. Even if their are a lot of people who blur the lines.
I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with what you say here exactly. But as you acknowledge, although ‘most’ people fit, ‘a lot’ do not. So… it’s not actually a great descriptor and maybe we could do better?
@@ghotay3 but could we really?
"Everyone supports candidate X", as I saw in a news report not long ago..., "except minorities, women, hispanics, and young people."
This quote clearly communicates the intended message: that "everyone who matters" means old white men. "Native Speaker" is used to communicate the exact same concept, often in exactly the same way.
One very clear example is using the flag of South Africa to represent Afrikaans. "Most people" in South Africa speak Zulu or Xhosa. Only about 13% of the population speaks Afrikaans. But it's the old white men who carry the flag.
It only looks like "most people fit" if you're looking at a few very specific parts of the world.
@@andyarken7906 Guess you have a limited imagination… /shrug
The most egregious case of flag usage I’ve seen was in Canada. At a provincial park, they had brochures in English and French. For English, they used the Canadian flag 🇨🇦. For French they used the France flag 🇫🇷. As a proud bilingual Canadian myself, I don’t even know where to begin on how stupid this was.
Was that stupidity, do you imagine, or was it a political statement?
@@stephenspackman5573 I would say stupidity. I would be very surprised to see French represented by the French flag here in Canada; it would be much more common to see it represented by the Québec flag. (Undoubtedly this would annoy many francophones from New Brunswick, Ontario, or Manitoba, whose French is no less French than that of the Québecois, but, well.)
If they want to use foreign flags, use England for English and France for French, because those terms are related. Otherwise, use Québec and British Columbia?
@@Liggliluff I think if they used England (a red cross on a white background) very few Canadians would recognise it.
It should have been UK and France, if they really wanted to be clear. The Canadian flag means nothing linguistically since Canada is an officially bilingual country
I think, "native" is so convenient, because its so fuzzy. You can use it to collectively refer to many different things. And as an aspirational goal it is more useful then "i want to be able to speak the language like someone who lived there since he was two years old".
Agree with your points, but re "native speaker" your solution is a nonstarter. Asking people to replace their 2-syllable shorthand term with a cumbersome explanatory phrase, are you kidding? See "mormon".
Yeah, you have a point, Hebrew is my mother tongue but if I will make a video on Hebrew with the Israeli flag, it would be a big nationalist statement and I wouldn’t like to do it.
At the same time, Israel is the only country where Modern Hebrew is the default spoken language. So the fact that using the flag to denote the language is a political statement is really not the fault of the language at all, but more the fault of people who over-politicize everything about Israeli and/or Jewish culture.
@@_oaktree_ definitely true, but the Hebrew language is not a political project. The existence of Israel as a nation state is
I didn't think i could disagree with you from both sides, @@rapramix, but apparently i can!
@_oaktree_ is very correct that there's a massive (and massively harmful and/or hateful) movement to politicize every thing having to do with Jews and Israelis. This is how you get so many "progressive" people who think it's ok to discriminate against someone because of their nationality, as long as it's Israeli, or because of their religion, as long as it's mainstream Judaism. How many other people can't use the flag of their country as a simple signifier of their origin/identity without being accused of every perversion & crime in the book?
And at the same time, the resurrection of Hebrew in the modern era as a spoken vernacular definitely had serious political elements. The success of Modern Hebrew was considered one of the greatest victories of the Return to Zion movement by its adherents, both for the love of the ancestral tongue itself and also because they thought any functional nation-state (like the one they were building) needs a language.
To me, it just says that's where most Hebrew speakers live. I noticed that this video acts as if there's an implication that Hebrew is the only language spoken there? I don't understand how we even got there.
@@MRed0135 no, also Palestinian Arabic . The thing is that the Israeli flag represents a political statement while the Hebrew language isn’t political per se. Although , I wouldn’t be shocked if Eliezer Ben Yehuda was a Zionist . Nonetheless, you can speak Hebrew from age 10 months like me and also oppose Zionism
Native German 🇨🇭 speaker here. I'm still not having a breakthrough with Mandarin Chinese 🇹🇼 but will keep studying diligently.
Video is spot-on.
As the same... would you consider yourself a native speaker of Standard German? I would, although, with the Swiss variety of Standard German, of course. I neither see a problem with the term "native" - as I speak the language better than many Germans, although with a typical 🇨🇭 accent - nor with the flags. Sure, German is represented by a German flag, but that makes sense to me. Not only is Switzerland of the nations that have several languages, most of them are also shared with other countries. So German being represented by Germany is fine.
Hello from 🇦🇹! Should German be represented by one single flag? As an English teacher I would use several flags to represent the Englishes we're in dialogue with - thus practically proving Language Jones's point that flags for languages are an unsatisfactory shorthand at best.
inb4 an East Belgian joins this thread
Isn't this all an exercise in the etymological fallacy? We talk about ancillary protocols, but just because the word "ancillary" has its roots in Roman slavery doesn't mean anyone using the word is supporting slavery. Just because someone uses the word "native speaker" doesn't mean they're supporting an ultranationalist agenda (and I would bet that most people are unaware of this connection anyhow). The alternative to calling someone a "native speaker" is to give what is functionally a biography for them, and it'll start breaking down once you refer to more than one such person.
Less direct information also means more room to confuse and confound. Someone could be "an Irish speaker for 20 years!" but neglect to mention that, from the perspective of those who grew up using Irish Gaelic as a daily community language (and see how many more words that is than "are Irish Gaelic native speakers"?), they have completely failed to master the phonology and speak in a completely unintelligible manner, and have only learned the language through formal education, which is notably of extremely poor quality. If they claim to be "a native speaker" but turn out not to be able to even distinguish its phonemes, then there's a specific section you can point to where they lied.
I won't comment much on the flag thing, since I mostly agree. My major critique is the same as the last one: What would you replace it with?
Ultimately this is all like proposing an English spelling reform. What we have is, for better or worse, already entrenched. I don't see it disappearing anytime soon.
I agree on the flag thing, it is indeed kinda annoying. but I think the term 'native' has a precise meaning that the language is acquired in childhood, not learned at any point later in life (although it is true that at some point the person might get less eloquent in their native language than they are in the learned one). Therefore the term 'native level' would mean that the majority of the other speakers of the language will hardly pick up on the fact the the language is learned as a second one.
Early or childhood acquisition is sometimes used.
Isn't what you are describing rather the term "mother tongue" than "native speaker"? To me at least, native speaker describes how other people perceive your speech, not necessarily at what point you started learning that language. In most situations this coincides, but it doesn't have to.
@@Garbaz Shibboleth's gonna shibby.
@@abmindprof yes, but the word native is shorter and means the same (to me)
One thing I learned from lurking on the "English Language Learners" forum on Stack Exchange is that there are a lot of mostly unspoken, unwritten language rules that a native speaker will intuitively pick up without realizing it, and what often differentiates a non-native speaker from a native one is that they won't follow those rules.
I feel like this is more of an issue for larger countries which encompass multiple cultures, less so for smaller countries which are formed around a single identity everyone feels drawn to.
Yes. I am thinking that England has had a history of colonisation. Therefore they have been in conflict with the poeple trying to protect themselves by forming nation states. Their ruthless opression of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, African, Native-American, Indian, Indonesian cultures. Bigger countries want to preserve their power, therefore the idea of a nation state is dangerous, and the people that define it. I think that this cultural undertow can explain American foreign policy.
French forces protecting their homeland during WW1 where nationalists. Nationalism in Poland was an important factor in separationg them from Sovjet. Ghandi was an "Indian nationalist", and spendt a lot of time trying to construct an Indian identity. sfbe
The moment you said "flag" I figured out where this was going and got really excited. I've decided awhile back that I personally dislike the term native speaker, and this is entirely due to my own experience with languages. I acquired, to varying degrees of fluency (as you do), four languages as a kid (and continue to speak them, with different but still varying degrees of fluency), but have never felt like I could confidently claim to be a native speaker in any of them on the international stage. As you mentioned, the term seems to have more of a social definition than anything. For three of these languages I speak, I don't know enough about the culture and nuances typically associated with them because I don't come from any of the countries typically associated with them (the way a "native speaker" of English is typically expected to be from the UK or US or Aus/NZ). My pronouciation and word choices are occasionally not "native" either because I grew up with the local variant of the languages, which has undergone the inevitable localisation. The one language I could argue to have the background and culture for......I don't really, and definitely do not speak it fluently. This is the official language of the country I come from, and growing up I predominantly only used it for official business such as interacting with the government. I don't speak it with the "correct" accent, so to speak, either, though I suppose you can argue the variant I speak is one of the variants available in the country. As such, the terms "first language", "mother tongue" and "national language" all refer to different languages to me. Currently, I've settled with gibberish as my native tongue, seeing as that's what I spout when surprised or confused =P
This all seems like a huge stretch. Language-learning should be made as accessible as possible. Not wanting to learn a bunch of symbols for a bunch of languages isn't lazy, it's unnecessary and ridiculous. And also Duolingo using the french flag for standard french isn't going to further cultural genocide.
are the flags making it more accessible? I can understand why making new symbols seems annoying and forced, but arguably the name of the language alone is the only thing necessary for accessibility right? I don’t know if the French flag next to the word French is really that crucial.
If you can’t come up with better UX tools that don’t possibly propagate a nationalist sentiment, maybe it can just say French?
@@dankwojak3689 why is it okay to write "French" but not use the "French" flag? Both of these are referring to the exact same nation. If the flag is wrong because it doesn't specifically represent Quebecois language, for example, then why would the word be any better? It's still not representing the Quebecois.
(not to mention that flags are universal, whereas "French" is not written that way in various languages, particularly those with different alphabets)
You can want to learn French and have absolutely 0 interest in French of France, but the use of the French flag centers French of France, and ”French of France” generally centers Parisian French over other dialects like Meridional French, Gaga French, or Chti, which are all spoken in mainland France.
Someone may want to learn French to rediscover their Cajun/Creole roots or to speak with their Ivorian family-in-law, yet the vast majority of language resources just assume that learners of French want to learn Parisian French through perspective of Parisian culture by way of Parisian and European cultural products. So the French learner of Creole descent will learn French, sure, but it’s a French disconnected from their actual heritage and that imposes European dominance over diaspora communities.
@@ryanv7945 Ehhh getting rid of flags won't do anything to fix that. The flags are a symptom of the "the vast majority of language resources just assume that learners of French want to learn Parisian French through perspective of Parisian culture by way of Parisian and European cultural products" problem, not the cause, and I really doubt that getting rid of them would help shift the mindset enough to matter.
@@lexihopes if it’s not a big deal either way then why not just avoid it anyways? What would be the advantage in using these flags outside of maintaining the status quo? Because it’s exactly the status quo that’s being questioned, so to justify it with itself is circular reasoning. Avoiding flags won’t singularly fix the problem, sure, but continuing to use them will still promote the problem. Rejecting a change that challenges the status quo because it doesn’t completely rewrite it on first pass is short sided imo.
It’s small, but avoiding nation-state flags as short hand for languages is a noticeable and frankly easy way to challenge the delegitimation of ”non-standard” dialects and regional varieties of language. Furthermore, a conscious effort by linguists and language enthusiasts to avoid nation-state flags and promote regional varieties could be the start of a perceptual shift toward language by the general public.
I’d like to see more regional languages get the resources and recognition that they deserve. Although a majority of people may not want to study those languages, there are enthusiasts like us who will happily dive headfirst into those rabbit holes.
as a serb myself i always felt quite uncomfortable when languages were represented by country flags but I couldn't really coherently voice why, so this video literally felt like it came from my subconsciousness, thank you language jones for refreshing takes
I actually, no lie, started thinking deeply about this as a child. I was 12 when I learned it's called, "Spanish," and not, "Mexican."
I was already a history nerd who read books in class instead of paying attention, but yeah this topic is what really threw me into the world of learning and appreciating cultures.
Great thought provoking video. I'm not sure how long it's been since I thought about this.
Its really important. I think it has something to do with the way Latin American immigrants are treated. It adds to the idea that they're savages that use what the "Holy Race is gracious enough to build them."
Thank you for sharing.
I just realized a funny irony. Latin American people are looked down on for using European languages, yet we're exactly the same for speaking English instead of American lol
Huh? Who looks down on them for speaking European languages? I've never heard anyone even remotely hint at that.
I used to use the flags thing as a conversation starter on dating apps all the time. if you know your familial history, you're pretty much guaranteed to trip over an ancestor who would never in a million years identify with the flag you boost, despite living on the territories they claim to represent.
Still watching, but I agree with your point about "native language." I studied anthropology in college (heavy focus in cultural and linguistic anthropology) and have always preferred "primary language," because it feels more neutral.
I agree. Many people born in America are not 'native' speakers of English, and should not be called that. The primary language for those people is Spanish.
@@stevencarr4002 and there are, of course, the languages of the various indigenous peoples of North America.
@@katthecheshiremouse Of course. They have a first language and their secondary or L2 language is English.
@@stevencarr4002 I"d just say they're both native English and Spanish speakers. Unless they're not of course, then don't say native obviously. I would just not say that one or the other language is their "native" language, that seems a bit strange to say. But it seems to make sense that one can be a native speaker, or have native level fluency.
And if my mom who doesn't speak a lick of anything but English ISN'T a native English speaker, then I don't know what she is. lol
@@stevencarr4002 I’ll use my wife as an example. She spoke only Spanish at home and learned English at school starting at 4. She’s bilingual, but never formally studied Spanish. She speaks Spanish every day with her family, prefers Spanish-language TV, and even has quirks in her English that make it seem like she’s thinking in Spanish.
And yet her English vocabulary is many times larger than her Spanish. She couldn’t perform her job as if she needed to speak only Spanish. She’s never studied Spanish reading or writing and has trouble spelling and remembering where accents go. But her English is good enough to have gotten through several college degrees.
So which would be her “native language”? Arguably Spanish. But her Spanish isn’t really “native level”. Is English her “native language”? She didn’t start learning it until she was 4 and never spoke it at home growing up but she’s definitely at a “native level”.
It kind of makes the term meaningless.
I consider myself a native speaker of English and Spanish. I grew up in the US, did my formal education there, but spoke Spanish outside of school. But I've had people both in the US and Mexico tell me i am wrong. Why? Because i grew up in the US, therefore i cannot be a native Spanish speaker. Or, my mother tongue is Spanish, so I can't be a native English speaker. I also have a different accent when i speak English since i haven't spoken it on a regular basis since march 2020.
One thing i am sure of though, Spanish is my only mother tongue. It is the only language i speak every single day without fail, since the day i could talk. No language will ever equal that, no matter how good i get at it.
I’ve been thinking about the native speaker thing a lot. I grew up in belgium in a fully dutch-speaking family but consumed so much english-language media as a child that I basically spoke perfect english when I was 12. I think in a mixture of both, often dependent on the context (e.g. when I am with other english speakers, my thoughts are also all in english, but when I am alone, my internal monologue is about 60% english, 40% dutch). people in the uk also consistently identify me as a native speaker. I’m not really sure what that makes me
As a Ukrainian, I just want to say that some languages wouldn't even exist now without nationalism and/or nation-states.
Ah, yes, the "native speaker". In my country many people want a "native speaker"of English as a teacher, so language schools hire random digital nomads looking for an extra buck as "teachers". Do these people understand their language on a level that would allow them to teach it? Nope. But they still get paid more and are very wanted.
The flag thing has bothered me for some time now. I'm a non-native Mandarin speaker. What flag do they use? Usually, the flag of the PRC. This is a political flag, not even a national flag, FAR from being a linguistic flag. So we can use the flag of Taiwan, right? Well, that's a political flag, too, and in both of those countries, there are other very widely-used languages. The native speaker thing, I have to give some thought to, but a related topic came up with me in a group on social media. It was a perfectly respectful discussion, which turns out to not be as unusual as some people might say, but that's beside the point. The discussion was about learning Guarani for immigrants to Paraguay. Now, if you want to go to Paraguay, Spanish is the first go-to language, BUT Guarani is used every bit as much. And that brought us to using Javanese on Java, even if you speak Indonesian. Or Cantonese in southern China, or Nahuatl in Oaxaca. In all of those cases, the *dominant* language will get you by just fine, day to day, but a lot of the people in those places - I would argue, the cool ones - code-switch, and knowing some of the *local* language opens up a whole new world that you would not have access to without at least some well-placed words in the local language. And those local languages bear NO similarity to the colonial language imposed on them, but the locals meld them seamlessly. And, as you pointed out, the flag of Spain, used to represent the Spanish language, gives just a LITTLE BIT of power to people who want Catalán or Euskara to disappear. Not much power, but it's the wrong message. Entirely by the way of vexillology, for China, I'm a big fan of the Five-Colored flag. That is the only non-political flag that China ever had, as far as I know. They should go back to that...but it still doesn't represent Mandarin Chinese. Nothing does. The Five-Colored flag represents speakers of five different languages (all of which are featured on PRC folding money, weirdly).
The Irish language is an excellent illustration of the nationalisation of language. Gaeilge is the name of the language which is untainted by any notion of politics, belonging or jingoism,; the suggestion being that anyone may lear Gaeilge but only Irish people may learn Irish. The language is in what is likely a terminal decline, with areas of community-speech diminishing and a muddled approach to promoting the language that is akin to throwing a drowning man a concrete lifebuoy. It is lauded as the country's first language in the constitution, yet policy has consistently eroded the confidence of the people who speak it as their first language, "native" to them if you like, and indeed has run contrary to good sense. Ireland tried to do something impossible by placing the language firmly in the hands of the school system, in whose tender care it slowly withered leaving only the bitter twisted roots of resentment in the students who had the language foisted upon them. A plant that is placed inside four walls and given scant attention will survive, but never being exposed to wind, sun and rain means that despite having rooted well it will never flourish or develop fitness. And so it is that Ireland's own brand of nationalism has almost killed not just a language but the culture that is inextricably entwined with this language.
I definitely agree with the flags parts, although I am less concerned about with the nationalism/fascism part and more with the ambiguities that can arise for using them. I am a language weirdo who also know way to much about computers, so I use the unambiguous ISO language codes (e.g. EN = English, FR = French, TG = Tagalog, etc.) when making short references to various languages.
I am a bit weary about getting rid of the term 'native speaker', as I do think it is quite useful and does point to something based on reality.
Case for flags for languages: situation is the same as using name of peoples or countries for naming the language. Is it fine to call English language English, even if spoken by person from Nigeria or the USA? If we can call it English, then we can use flag of England, UK, USA, etc. to talk about the language in pictures. What is the alternative for identifying the English language?
Is there an alternative term for someone who has spoken a language to the point they have an intuitive understanding of a language beyond formal rules? "Fluency" only refers to the ability to speak fluidly, something achievable through rigorous study. Participation in a community and experience speaking in it is an essential part of understanding a language, one that doesn't need to be referred to in terms of racial or cultural belonging. Without an alternative term, "native speaker" isn't going anywhere.
I'm french, I'm also watching a french linguist youtuber called Linguisticae who fight regularly with the "Académie Française" on those kind of subject. Like the "purity" of the french language, how young people can't speak or read french anymore, how we are invaded by English everyday, etc. So I kinda understand that and how there are some people that try to "normalize" the language through a kinda of "nationalistic ideal" of the language. And even when it not people, it could also be some kind of social phenomenon that don't always start from an intention of normalizing the language (like the use of "native speaker").
On one end, I'm sometimes annoyed by that but on the other, it's also just a normal phenomenon. You could also say that we need to have common word and grammar to still be able to communicate. And that's somewhat necessary. The only problem is when it's too much and it's start to erase the diversity inside a language. I don't remember when it was but it happen in french at some point to normalize the language because people could not really communicate (something maybe in the 18th century, I forgot). And it was useful. But here and there, it also destroy dialect. Fortunately, it changed a bit now and you can learn some dialect in school from what I remember. You can even be evaluated on those for the "baccalauréat" (important french diploma at the end of high school). So while, it's a constant fight, I'm a bit more distant on that now.
I'm a bit distant because I'm also more interested on the educative side now (also, I'm done on the politic side for now, don't want to think too much about that). And I hate the idea of "native speaker" or "native level". Seriously, that just doesn't exist and it's just harmful to learners. "Native speaker" are clone of each other, they are diversified. While it's true that, for exemple, some common word are necessary, you don't need to learn 24k most common words in newspapers. That kinda like "model citizen" ideal that should be able to read everything. But just NO. People have different jobs, different interests, they didn't had identical lives either and they didn't develop identical "language". I'm not even talking ability. That's just pure knowledge/exposure through their life. Like I can't read/understand law text or economic text in french and really understand them. Same for slang for younger people. It's also like you can't understand a joke without the ref. You can as good as you want, mastered all the grammar, learn all the word, you won't understand it. I extending that to other aspect but I pretty sure if we were able to extract the data directly from the brain of people, we will find tons of big frequency list that are all different. And I'm talking mainly word but besides that, I'm sure it would be more less true for other aspect the language. The idea of "native speaker" or "native level" erase all of that. Same when we talk about the same language in different country (I don't have the word, it's not dialect but the same things at that level).
And just also for foreign learner, that's exist too. You don't need to learn everything depending on your situation. I mean, I learn some common word in English but I forgot a lot of them since I don't live in an English country. Like curtain. I don't have curtain, I have some "rideaux" because I didn't use it in more than 10 years. Like I don't particularly like small talk and since I don't live in an English country, it just didn't stick. Same for half of the word in my house. But in the same, I would probably lost some "native speaker" on math, informatics, etc. Like, I'm both "better" and "worse" than that freaking "native speaker" which doesn't mean anything. And it's not just knowledge, like I did study those subject. Part of that is "pure" language. Like word, expression, etc. And even maybe grammar in some case (whatever grammar mean here and that may also define roughly as "rules of usage"). And also, it's just more "fun" to learn what you like or just talk about you first, who you are and also talk to people that are similar to you (and also have a similar "sub-language" in that other language that you're learning). Instead of trying to be that tasteless monstrosity that doesn't mean anything and doesn't even exist called "native speaker".
Anyway, I talk too much x). So, I wouldn't say "dark ideology" because that's necessary to have some "unity" at some degree (trying to be neutral here) but when it erase everything, it's not good either. It kinda does on the internet like a lot of other things but that's also just partially a social phenomenon rather than an ill-will ideology in my opinion (even I want to get angry too sometimes :v). Well partially, there's probably some equivalent of the "académie française" at those level too. Also, it's kinda useful as reference for learners too at the beginning but after that it's just a hindrance in my opinion. That is costly for some people (can't speak about themselves or what they like even at "high" level). Anyway, interesting topic but it's also kinda connect with too much things x). I need to stop here xD
PS: If you have the motivation one day, please create a discord, would be a lot of fun to have the community there too. Also more useful to be ping for the new video (rather than TH-cam notification)
PPS: sorry if I made too much english mistake, it's kinda late here and I can't spot the mistakes at this hour (I hope I didn't skip too much word too, tend to do that sometimes x) )
Duolingo is also pretty inconsistent in how they use the flags. Some languages are represented by the flag of the country where the language originated or is perceived to have originated (ex: Spanish flag for Spain), but others are represented by the flag of the country with the most speakers today (ex: USA flag for English, Brazilian flag for Portuguese). Never mind that Mexico alone has almost 3x as many people that speak Spanish as Spain does, and that most of the user-base of the app almost certainly has more interactions with Latin Americans than Spaniards.
Can't speak for the other languages you mentioned, but the Brazilian flag on Duolingo makes perfect sense. They are teaching Brazilian Portuguese, rather than any other version of the language, it makes a difference.
Not sure how much i agree here. I get there are issues, but having flags and recognizing native speakers is also part of preserving languages. If we dont attach a language to a culture then identity associated with that language is less meaningful. This especially applies to languages that have been repressed or marginalized.
The issue is using the term "native" to describe the thing you're talking about recognizing. It generally refers to the *place* a person is born (with all of the political baggage that goes with that in terms of migration), which is not the same thing as the *language* they learned as a child. If someone is born in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a French-speaking household, isn't it a little confusing to describe that as "native French"? Does the flag of France represent their culture?
@@JasonAQuest Better example is a person who is ethnic Ukrainian born into a russian-speaking household due to russian influences in Ukraine. If we dont use the russian flag to represent their language then it is reinforcing the notion that russian is natural to Ukraine which it absolutely is not.
I get the potential issue with flags but there are issues with not using them as well.
@@JasonAQuest Local TH-cam commenter learns of polysemy
@@MasiukA "If we dont use the russian flag to represent their language then it is reinforcing the notion that russian is natural to Ukraine which it absolutely is not."
why is russian not "natural" to ukraine and what does it even mean?
@@jeanivanjohnson russian is from russia, not Ukraine, and we should not be normalizing the idea, especially when Ukraine is currently being invaded and genocided by russia, that russia or its language has any natural place in Ukraine. The only reason russian is spoken in Ukraine is because of invasion and russification.
I long for the day when nationalism is nothing more than something akin to a cultural fan club. A world where state governments worldwide are broadly similar, recognizing human rights and establish social safety nets, while nations are groups people belong to by birth or affinity, with no more life significance than having curly hair or green eyes.
Knowing that someone is Swedish should just mean that I can trust their lutefisk recipe - it shouldn't tell me anything about their politics. Being proud that you're "white" is stupid - be proud that you are Polish or German or whatever, and let "being proud" just mean that you enjoy the wonderful things about your own national culture and let everybody else do the same for their own national culture.
I feel like I really share your sentiment here
As a native English speaker 🇵🇰 and a near native German speaker 🇦🇷 I have to say this video is really poor. Language is part of what makes an ethnicity, and until very recently ethnic groups largely lived in monocultural societies. So the modern flags will always be associated with the countries that speak the language regardless of political correctness. Same for regional flags and there association with a language or dialect.
If you zoom out and look at the kind of people who use these language learning products then it starts to make sense. The average 1st world middle class language learner (regardless of race) probably doesn't know much about the nuance of national identities the world over. To them the language they learned in school is the language of their country, their "native" language. So they project this onto every other language and by extension every other nation. It's easy to understand that people in Mexico and Spain both speak a dialect of Spanish because it's established by their respective nation states, but it's much harder to place minority languages like Mazahua. Projecting a flag onto them belittles the fact that a lot of these languages are spoken by people who don't have their own nation or feel as though they are a part of a nation that doesn't have the same "native" language as them, let alone represents their interests.
Now I'm not so crazy right wing nutjob but the idea of creating a nation with a common spoken language can actually be a good thing. Literacy rates in countries like Indonesia rose dramatically after the government established enforced a common language. It sounds pretty messed up from our western viewpoint especially when you consider that only 5% of the country spoke that language at the time. However, the hard truth is there's no perfect way to integrate a country with 700 local languages. Now that over 90% of the country speaks the language they've seen immense progress. (social issues notwithstanding) In 1972 there was even a join effort between Indonesia and Malaysia to harmonize the writing systems of both their national languages.
So I don't like the idea of portraying nation states as evil things that erase the existence of minorities in the name of national purity. It's sort of reductive in the same way giving every language on DuoLingo a flag is reductive. It's really tough because I agree with your points but at the same time don't really see a better alternative. Most people are interested in the languages of nation states, as that's the main language spoken by the people when they actually go there. I just get a little put off when I constantly see people living in the most privileged time in history complain about the very systems that gave them that prosperity. I really don't see terms like "native language" or "native speaker" to be that harmful, and to most people they aren't that ambiguous. As a linguist I'm sure you understand the concept of a category that is perfectly understood/comprehensible, but not rigidly/scientifically defined. That's just kind of how language works. As for the flags, maybe just remove the ones that don't make sense. In the case of Yiddish, I liken it to the flying of a pride flag. They don't seek to identify themselves as a separatist nation state any more than the LGBT do. Creating more representation for a minority isn't part of a dark ideology, it's part of progress. In fact I think a lot more awareness of the many minority languages of the world would result if they did all fly some kind of flag.
*Kurdistan enters the chat.*
Me when people use the flag of France when there's the flag of l'Organisation internationale de la francophonie:
Tabarnac.
I suppose the main thing that bugs me in the prioritization of modern/living languages over "dead" languages and of speaking over reading. I do speak many languages when I can but I read a whole lot more languages than I speak. I studied philology and have used those skills to learn many related languages, principally for reading. Of course I try to talk whenever I can. Yet I've had people tell me I don't "really" know a language when I can read novels and textbooks in it comfortably but I struggle to have a conversation in it.
I feel like one of the most glaring instances of this is for English of all languages. UK flag? US flag? Seems to depend which continent the programmer is on.
French, an official language in 5 countries in Europe, a handful in America and a gazillion in Africa. Biggest city using french as an official language as far as I'm aware ? Kinshasa, DRC. Everytime someone says that someone from another country uses a "weird" or "bad" french, I die a little inside. French is named after my country but we do not own it FFS.
"Native" Spanish speaker from Spain here. I have always been deeply suspicious of the use of national flags to indicate languages, precisely because of examples such as Puerto Rico, which you mention. Edit: that includes flags of any political entity or purported nation. Your example of the Yiddish flag is absolutely appropriate. Wonderful take!!!
On flags, I somewhat disagree. Sometimes it's important to have a symbol to represent a language, and a flag seems to be the most obvious such symbol. I do think that sometimes flags are problematic, but frankly they are the best solution I could come up with
Off the top of my head, in the translation industry we often use 2-letter abbreviations instead, like DE for German, EN for English, and then specify further if needed, like American English if they want the dates to be MM/DD/YY rather than DD/MM/YY and they don't want "favor" spelled "favour."
I think it being the easiest solution atm isn’t a good reason to change the system imo. Like yeah it’s useful shorthand, but the shorthand is propagating ideas we don’t condone. Trying to change the system might not work because the flags are just that good at communicating the idea, but it doesn’t hurt to try right? It costs practically nothing to advocate for and use a new system on a personal level
@@ancientromewithamyThis does not solve it completely. Some country codes, like NL, are for both a nation-state and language.
Having the US flag to represent English is an atrocity, culturally, linguistically, historically, emotionally and aesthetically. Man is not wrong.
Semantics. 🤷🏽♀️ I don't think the flag thing or calling people native/non-native speakers are big deals at all. There are more important things to do... like actually learn more languages. I struggle enough with that. 😅
In addition to being inappropriate for Spanish-speaking regions in the Americas, using the flag of Spain for "Spanish" is also bad for representing *Spain* , for the same reason as France and French. There are *several* regional languages widely spoken in Spain, so equating its national flag with Castillian essentially endorses the fascist Franco regime's attempted erasure of Catalan, Galician, Basque, etc. See also: the UK flag and Scots, Welsh, Gaelic, Cornish, etc.
I dunno, it seems to me that your argument should perhaps result in a call to differentiate "native speaker" from "native level"?
If a native language is just a language you were "born into", a "mother tongue", i.e. a language that you grew up learning naturally in your childhood, then it's a biographical descriptor of the speaker rather than a description of their speech. Maybe our experiences are different, but that's also what I'd expect people to mean by it: I'm not sure I recognise the same level of ambiguity about the phrase you do. So in that context "native level" (a term more specific to the jargon of language-learning environments?) is the idea that really doesn't make any sense!
Well one thing that I've recently just realised and that doesn't seem to be talking about is the fact that when you are starting to learn a language and you set a goal to learn the 2000 or 5000 most common words of the language and you accomplish this, then you are actually only at the starting line of your journey in the language. After this point, immersion becomes a more meaningful and viable way to expand your vocabulary and internalise the language. But it seems everyone is pretending that learning 2000-5000 words in and of itself is the goal that gives us fluency when in reality it just make things comprehensible to you and now you can start to learn and develop fluency.
Thank you for making this video. As an Indian, this has been bugging me for a long time. I'm bilingual in Tamil and English, and I would say that English is my preferred language of communication, although I do speak my native (lol ironic) quite well.
My schooling was entirely in English, I speak to my friends in English, and almost the entirety of my reading, both online and offline, is in English. Also, I've had to learn English myself, so wouldn't I be in a better position to teach someone English?
A native speaker has had the neurological pathways built in naturally, so things have just always made intuitive sense to them. They didn't have to think about rules, their exceptions and things that don't make sense and things that simply have to be learnt lol.
I also speak Hindi, though less ably, and the native speaker thing doesn't seem to bother them as much. I'm not exactly sure why, though.
Flags for language in very popular in Quebec, Canada. It's strange that for the two official languages of Canada people will use either a US or UK flag for English, and the France flag for French, even it's a specifically Canada-themed website.
Nationalists will go into rants about heroism and bloodshed, but what about all the languages, cultures that have been lost along the way? They (nationalists) won't mention these, because these are considered "foreing" elements that needs to a be eliminated, these are nothing but obstacles for them to overcome. The truth is every language a "flag" has devoured is a treasure lost for humankind.
not really
Use the term "Natural" speaker as a substitute for "Native" speaker.
BTW, TH-cam didn't suggest a video on screen when you said "this video", but DID suggest RobWords Tracing English as far back as possible after the video ended.
On the problematics of "Native Language", Jacques Derrida in "The Language of the Other" makes a testament from the story of his life, to show that we all have an insurmountable distance that prevents us from a true belonging of the words we use, even our mother tongue he says is "the language of the other"
Thank you for your insights in this topic and many other in different videos as well. Something about the language learning community that is bugging me, although I completely understand, is the lack of information, insight and research in how to teach languages to kids. I teach French in the Netherlands, but the kids (age 11-15) in my class did not choose to study French; they have to. I am always looking for ways to improve my teaching skills, but I run into problems I cannot find discussed by others, which is a pity.
What's been bugging me in the language learning space are what I call "method purists". People who have glommed onto some particular strategy for language learning and then claim that it is THE way to learn language, and everybody else are morons, or are irrevocably ruining their ability to reach native-level fluency (see what I did there?) or will somehow "fossilize" early-stage errors into their brains or whatever. My experience with different methods is admittedly broad but not deep--classroom pedagogy, linguistics-informed study, mix-media casual (Duolingo), and comprehensible input--but in my experience these methods *build* on one another. They all have weaknesses that the other ones compensate for.
E.g. CI is great and all, but boy is it frustrating to recognize some new word but not *quite* be able to intuit the meaning from context. Isn't it better to just look up the word? Why *not* take advantage of dictionaries and strategic interrogation of google translate to figure out meanings more quickly, so I can then not be stuck on that one word for who knows how long? But no, if you do that, then you have the CI brojobs say "No! Don't look it up! Then you're just learning the language, not acquiring it!" With an implied "you beta cuck" on the end.
The pedagogic method of just looking something up in a reference work compensates for one of the weaknesses of CI. Likewise, pedagogic learning is great for literal use of a language, but kinda terrible for gaining facility with non-literal idioms. But CI is fabulous for getting exposure to idioms! They build on each other. They compensate for each other's weaknesses.
And *every* method I've used has contributed something that the other methods didn't, and has increased my ability to make connections, deduce meanings, etc. The method purists can have fun in their little sandboxes, but they'll never convince me that their sand is absolutely better than anybody else's sand. Meanwhile, I'm gonna have even more fun playing in *all* the sandboxes.
Haha, really like your sandbox reference.
It also pains me when I don't get a new word from context while reading. Similar happens when I understand all words, but do not get a specific grammar concept (for example the usage of 'ce' in italian sometimes). I just have to look it up. Could never be a CI purist or my head would explode 😅
I think "native speaker" could be swapped out with "high level speaker" pretty seamlessly. No idea for the flags though
When do you see German illustrated with an Austrian flag, or Mandarin with the flag of Taiwan?
Urdu is often represented by the flag of Pakistan, although of course there are many speakers of Urdu as their first language in India.
People do indeed talk about Serbo-Croatian. When I was growing up, they were considered to be one language (at least in Britain). But of course, the Serbs and the Croats want their own flags to represent their own language.
Many people in Ukraine are 'native' Russian speakers. We should avoid that term. We should never state that there are native Russian speakers in Ukraine.
I don't mind using flags to symbolise languages and using the word collocation "native speaker". For me these questions are not crucial. I know that there can be some misunderstandings and some people can be dissatisfied. But it's impossible to make everything perfect for everyone. But if it would be necessary for the majority of people to change things, I wouldn't mind it too. So I will watch how the situation changes and draw conclusions.
I once got into an unexpectedly heated fight with a friend over the very concept of "native" speakers and of some language being objectively better -- more skilled, more effective at communicating its point -- than other. This was all about English (not ranking different languages against each other), and it turned out my friend had some severe trauma over the thought of having their language usage (writing) be judged in any way, so ultimately we had to agree just not to discuss it anymore, because the topic was hurting them.
But to me it *had* seemed obvious that there was a clear answer. Native speakers exist, since we can rather easily pick up on people whose language is weirdly off (like the Uncanny Valley effect), and maybe the lines aren't quite where I'd expect them to be, but those lines still *exist* -- right?
And a skilled writer (or orator) can use language in a way that clearly and unambiguously communicates their point using word choice and phrasing appropriate to the listeners and the environment, whereas a child hasn't yet developed the skill to say what they mean how they mean using words that don't muddle the attempt at communication. So clearly there's a way to rank language usage, like saying that the Mona Lisa was drawn more skillfully than a child's stick-figure attempt at drawing their family -- even if there's also value to that stick figure.
(And I never intended to assert that ranking skillfullness somehow implied that the stick figure was... negative, in some way? Or that the end goal of every language user "should be" to get to the Mona Lisa level -- that's ridiculous. One can always improve, but one is not required to improve. One can always decide that the level they're at is fine for their needs and that they'll devote their energy to improving other skills instead.)
You've made me see that the concept of native speakers is fuzzier than I had anticipated. I'm not sure what to do with that data point. And I'm not sure what, if anything, it implies about my assertion that language usage is rankable.
P.S. This is the metric I've developed over the years, the existence of which led to the fight:
There are different stages of art (including the art of language) that we can grow through:
0. Doodler
1. Amateur
2. Sophomore
3. Apprentice
4. Master
5. Artisan
...I've messed around with the terms over the years and I'm not quite happy with them, but they amount to the following concepts:
0. I don't even yet have the conception that I'm working toward a goal; I'm just developing proto-skills
1. My skill is rudimentary but at least I have some goal in mind; also, because I haven't yet internalized any rules, I can create things that higher levels literally lose the ability to create
2. I have learned some Rules and now I'm stuck in that mindset, that there are Rules and that those who don't follow the Rules are somehow doing something wrong
3. I have learned that Rules are really more like Guidelines, and started to branch out a bit, exploring the new freedom to "break" the Rules and see where that leads me
4. I have mastered the craft enough that I can use the skill however I like. I understand the purpose of the "Rules" / Best Practices, and I know when and how to break those guidelines for effect.
5. I have so immersed myself in the medium that I no longer consciously think about the "Rules" or breaking them, I just Do and it comes together the way I intend or a way that transcends my intentions
That's how I started thinking about levels of skill, whether writing or art or skating or pottery or whatever. It seems like a useful framework. Doesn't mean that everyone needs to move toward mastery, or that people whose skill is or remains at the lower levels should feel inferior; there's reason for all the levels to exist. Some of my favorite fan art came from a rather amateur artist and it delights me because of how energetic and distinctive it is -- it could never be drawn by an artist who'd learned how shoulders attach to the body.
Yeah, this is legit.
A second element of this is the social expectation in America that there is an ROI associated with learning a language. Not, “This will bring me wealth.” But rather, “This will bring me capital.” But there are certain corners of the culture in America which demand that the justification of any interest outside of vocation be supported by whether the learner will use their knowledge in pursuit of wealth, influence, or access to a market. It diminishes the humanity of the people that learned that language as a child, that think in that language, that live in a culture that expresses shared values in that language, that know words in their language that they could only translate if you gave them a lots of time to explain myriad social and cultural interactions, and historical background information.
The discussion of flags had me thinking back to a coupe of decades ago when I was a preschool teacher. We had a visiting tutor that would come in a few times a week to introduce Spanish language lessons to our class of mostly non-Spanish-speaking students. In our weekly newsletter home to families, I added a little box with that week's Spanish vocabulary with Anglo-friendly pronunciation guides so that families could engage their kids at home. Unthinkingly, I snagged a clip art of the Spanish flag to use as a visual marker for that little corner of the newsletter.
Even though I wasn't yet totally awakened to the pervasive ways colonization still plays out in our contemporary world, I did have a moment of realization where I thought, "Huh, none of the kids in our class who speak Spanish are from Spain - does this graphic really reflect our classroom culture?" Not yet knowing the concept of "many Englishes" or "many Spanishes" I nonetheless also eventually reasoned that using a single flag to reflect one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world was semiotically inadequate.
I eventually swapped out the single Spanish flag icon for a little border around that part of the page, consisting of flags from several (maybe all? Definitely at least a collection that covered our classroom) Spanish-speaking countries, which felt more appropriate and pluralistic.
Lots of depth to this topic especially when it’s expanded to language planning and attempts to recover languages from cultural genocide. Language planning as a it relates to decolonization is a really complex topic that I’d love to learn more about.
When updating my CV, I felt uneasy about linking languages to flags. I speak four foreign languages, and I initially thought of adding a flag to represent each one. I had no issue placing the Italian flag next to "Italian." However, I felt conflicted when I added the American flag next to "English," as my English is a blend of different dialects. I was particularly hesitant to use the Spanish flag for "Spanish," as I proudly speak Dominican Spanish. Interestingly, I didn’t experience the same discomfort when adding the French flag.
As a "heritage speaker" now living in the country where my heritage language is spoken (moved when I was 28), I definitely feel like there is something like a "native speaker." There just are some aspects of the language that are still too difficult for me to grasp, despite growing up around the language and hearing it at home. I think many other heritage speakers could share similar stories. Which leads me to my point: perhaps the concept of a "native speaker" isn't a figment of the imagination of hypernationalists and fascists, as you imply, but an actually useful concept in the real world.
As for flags associated with languages: sorry, but as a speaker of Polish, I don't see the issue. The language isn't spoken elsewhere by other groups of people, besides the Polish diaspora. Sure, it doesn't work for Spanish or English as well as it does for "smaller" languages, but we do see that when someone wants to learn British English vs. American English, different flags are used. And no, this doesn't mean that use of these flags associated with a language is just a hop and a skip away from genocidal ideologies. It's just an easy heuristic for people to understand.
Very vaguely related: I recently started teaching English as a foreign language and today I had a perplexing time trying to choose a fitting icon for my brand new "Work" folder. My most obvious options were the union jack and the star-spangled banner, but of course... the English I teach is not only both but much more! I fit in as much diversity as I can.
I settled on a 90s looking computer.
English is spoken by multiple countries so of course apps or anything else that wants to quickly use a visual representation will have to exclude all the other countries that also speak the same language. Usually they choose England or America. A lot of the time it's England I've seen and it feels like a small slight to me because I'm a native English speaker but I have never been to England. But I can deal. It's mostly for practicality and I get that. And technically England was the first country to speak English. If you have an alternative to flags please suggest it though. If you write the name of the language then suddenly you're not speaking a universal language but the one you're writing in. Flags are just really practical.
Most of the time the term "native speaker" is pretty clear cut. The majority of people don't grow up wondering what their native language is. Sure you get some exceptions but I don't see any issues with the term and I don't find it confusing. The exception I can think of would be people that started growing up in one country but then got uprooted and moved to another country. But if someone says they consider themselves to be a native English speaker I generally just go with it. They know better than me - they are them after all. Again, if we didn't say native speaker what else would we say? I guess you could define the term in every video if you want to be clear to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Really interesting stuff, and very relevant to English. The world seems to divide into those that use The Stars and Stripes and those that use the Union Flag to represent English. To say the very least of it, both carry connotations, to peoples around the world, that go well beyond the linguistic. Are we to expect a speaker of English from, say, Drogheda to embrace the use of the Butcher's Apron to represent his or her language?
And here in the UK, we have bedded-down, ancient language communities that speak Scots, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, and Belfast is one of the centres of a major revival in Irish; and that's not to mention our speakers of Subcontinental and African languages, Caribbean creoles, Yiddish, etc (my home borough is, according to some measures, the most linguistically diverse neighbourhood in the whole of Europe, and includes Europe's largest Yiddish-speaking community). The situation is scarcely less complex Stateside!
We are not English, in other words, and English is not us.
When, as a Limey tourist, I visited the Smithsonian in the 90s, and was wondering whether to get a guide, I remember noticing that Spanish was represented by the flag of Spain, but Portuguese by the flags of both Portugal and Brazil. English was Old Glory; and that alone. I probably noticed the inconsistency because I'm a non-American Anglophone, but actually you could argue it's Portuguese that throws the issue most starkly into relief. If you're referencing Portugal and Brazil, Smithsonian, why aren't you referencing Mozambique and Angola? And why include Brazil (the most populous Lusaphone nation) but not Mexico, whose population is two-and-a-half times that of Spain AND WHICH IS YOUR NEIGHBOUR TO THE SOUTH? I'm not sure there are answers that any of us could really defend.
The representating Spanish with the Spanish flag instead of the Mexican one is for a simple reason. They don't teach the Mexican dialect in schools. I didn't take Spanish in high school because, even though I was a 6 hour drive from Mexico, they taught Castilian! Being taught the dialect of his colonizers by a brown guy (RIP Mr Murillo) was too much for me.
Presumably the tour guide speaking in English would be an actual Yank though, so the American flag would be accurate in that instance?
@@overlordnat I can't remember whether it was an audio guide or a written one, but either way, good point.
I find myself wondering, now, what they do in Ireland; if I'd had my wits about me I'd have checked when I went to Kilmainham Gaol a couple of years ago. My guess is that they just use the word "English".
I'm getting really p*ssed off by all the people calling Hebrew a "coloniser language".
it's probably because of the ethnic cleansing aspirations of some of the folks out there
I agree with all your points, I also think the language learning community puts not enough emphasis on different dialects and subcultures. For example, I personally would love to learn more about Southern Chinese languages like Hakka or Gan as part of my martial arts journey, but there's precious little information available about any Chinese languages outside of Mandarin and Cantonese, despite the smaller languages still having tens of millions of native speakers.
I find it fascinating that in Switzerland the German language is presented by the German flag, and that people are considered to be native speakers of the language. In fact Hochdeutch is the language that is learnt at school, and a different language (some call it dialect) of Schwiizertüütsch/Mundart is spoken at home, among friends and family, even these days on TV. For them, switching to Hochdeutch is akin to code switching. Perhaps there are trappings of an episode there for you.
As a Brazilian I'm all in favor of keeping using flags because they use the Brazilian flag and that makes the Portuguese angry and the Portuguese MUST be angry. Keep the good job, guys!
Been an ESL teacher for over 30 years. Every time a student asks about speaking "like a native speaker", I just answer that my Uglish sounds like my South African one, and my British sounds like Filipino English. I stand behind the idea that language is just a tool for communication, not an absolute identifier. Give people a language and we'll see to "corrupt" it make it our own.
In some spaces I’ll ask a question and I’ve had people straight up tell me
“you don’t need to know that”
Maybe I don’t *need* to know it, but I WANT to know it!
I get that some stuff is a bit too complicated for the average person to explain. (Which is completely understandable and I’m not mad about that.) It’s just endlessly frustrating when I ask a cultural question or about something basic like numbers and then get told that it’s worthless to learn about it so don’t bother.
Adding to your first argument, I'd like to point out that using national flags as a stand-in for the language doesn't do justice to the speakers of that language outside said nation. French for ex. is just as rooted in other countries, in Europe alone Belgium, Luxemburg and Switzerland, in all three considered an official language. Sure France might be the nexus but using their flag feels like unjustly monopolizing and appropriating the language (too much). As if one nation is the true source and any speaker outside of it, had it superimposed as some kind of passive participant ( which might be or not be the case). It all ties into this (heinous in my opinion) idea that a language equates a nation which it simply does not.
from the start I knew you would talk about the "yiddish flags", which is really the best example of why languages can't always be representaed by flags. For french regional languages, they definitely have flags, because "regionalistes" (understand regional nationalists) waste no time making them (see britanny but also occitania or Savoy). And we have this situation where there're attempts at reviving these languages against french homogenization which are backed in no small part by pretty xenophobic people (whose role is too often underplayed by the more left-leaning language-revivalists)
There’s also a practical reason I don’t like seeing flags representing languages is that I have no clue what language it is because I don’t recognize the flag. The UN recognizes 195 countries. That’s 195 flags plus the problem of countries that have multiple languages. I recognize about 20 of them. And if I see the flag of Canada, for example, is it English, French or one of the First Nations languages?
The flag of the shah?! I believe that flag has a history that goes back at least 500 years prior to the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty. Point taken, but that is not the flag of the Shah.
I’m a professional Swahili interpreter. I learned the language as an adult . Sometimes my organization asks for a “native“ to translate a certain document, even though I am the best translator. Thank you for bringing up the subject because it needs to be talked about more.
Heh! I'm Swiss. So how am I to represent my Swiss German with a flag? Localised websites often combine two flags or add a "D", "F" or "I" to the Swiss flag. I have never come across localisation for Rumantsch...