Achieving Community
When people move to another nation, it is very true that they may probably lose the knowledge of their mother tougue. Just as the reading “Achieving Community” mentioned, some people just fail to speak their own language. In this case, as far as I am concerned, the reasons could be in two ways. The first one is that they may truly lose their own language, while the second reason is that they just refuse to speak.
During the summer break of 2015, I had a chance to take part in a summer school in Yale University. In the 21-day interval, one of the classes that I took was called English Language Learner, which was basically designed for the foreign students to improve their English skill. The teacher of this class was a approximately 50-year-old Chinese immegrant, who came to the United States in 1990s, for about 20 years. In fact, he had been in China for about 30 years, but his Chinese skill just had a significant loss. He could speak some single words or phrases; he could read some simple paragraphs; he could write a few words, but he couldn’t no longer speak or write long, complicated sentences. It sounds weird, but it is actually the truth. We had asked him why, and he said that he had even not used a single word of Chinese in the United States. Without further learning and practice, he lost his mother tougue.
Suddenly, I realised that language does not have a significant relationship with nationalities, but it does have a strong connection with usage. Without sufficient usage and practice, a person may certainly lose his or her mother tougue.
Another example appears in recent months. My aunt has married with a Chinese American who has been in the United States for dozens of years. However, based on my understanding, his Chinese skill is much better than my previous English teacher in Yale summer school (Although there is undoubtedly some difference betweeen him and a real Chinese). Probably, this is because he use Chinese more in daily life, result in the higher usage and practice.
The second reason might be that they refuse to speak their mother tougue. In fact, I have no idea why they do so; maybe it is because they are too shy to be different from other people. When others all speak English, they may think that it is not good to speak other languages. Overall, I believe that this is only the minor reason, for the reason that I truly cannot understand this unique idea.
