At the moment, I'm TA-ing for a course called Language and Power here at the University of Oregon, and I've been recounting the following story to my students.
It happened more than 10 years ago after I'd just moved from Singapore to Melbourne. I was at my university orientation, where I met a number of people, including a guy from Sweden. We got to talking, and he eventually asked me what languages I spoke. I told him that I spoke English and some Chinese (Mandarin), but that my Chinese wasn't very good.
The very next thing he said to me was, "Oh, so you don't speak any language well!"
Before I could recover from the shock of what he'd just said, he quickly proceeded to 'correct' my English. I remember we were talking about purchasing textbooks for our courses at a particular bookshop. I said something like: "You can get them cheap over there." He told me that it should be: "You can get them cheaply over there." because you need an adverb with the verb 'get'. At that point, I said something like, "No, I'm using it as an adjective to describe the thing I'm getting." But it was clear that I had little say in what was 'right' or what was 'wrong'.
Now this was before I'd started any formal study in linguistics, but I had had 'English grammar' lessons in school in Singapore, with explanations given for many 'grammatical rules'. Of course, people like me were a pain for our English teachers because they'd give us a particular phrase or sentence, and ask us why it was 'correct' or 'grammatical'.
We'd just say, "Because it sounds right."
And that's the thing about your 'mother tongue' - you don't need to be formally taught the rules of the language in school. Through enough exposure as a child, you just know what 'sounds' right and what doesn't. That knowledge is what linguists usually think of as 'grammar' - it's not the rules that you are explicitly taught in a classroom (unless the language is not your native language), it's knowing how to say things that don't sound odd to either you or the people from the community you grew up with.
To be repeatedly confronted and told that my mother tongue - the language I used at home and in daily life, and the language I knew best (let's not even go into what Singapore calls one's 'mother tongue') was 'incorrect' or defective has had a few effects on me. On the downside, I find it difficult to claim 'ownership' or 'expertise' in English. Even now I am quick to get defensive about my own linguistic knowledge, sometimes justifiably so, but sometimes I perhaps get a little too defensive. On the upside, I've often felt motivated me to learn more languages (to varying degrees of fluency). Most importantly, this insecurity has made me delve deeper into the field of linguistics.
Jacques Derrida, in his book Monolingualism of the Other, wrote, "I have but one language - yet that language is not mine." While his words can be interpreted on many different levels (his central thesis was that we are all alienated from our 'mother tongue'), I can think of no better quote to apply to the linguistic situation I find myself in. I also imagine that this is something many people in the modern world whose 'languages' or 'dialects' are looked down upon and vilified can relate to.
(Yes, I ended that last sentence with a preposition. And yes, it's perfectly grammatical to do so in English.)
It happened more than 10 years ago after I'd just moved from Singapore to Melbourne. I was at my university orientation, where I met a number of people, including a guy from Sweden. We got to talking, and he eventually asked me what languages I spoke. I told him that I spoke English and some Chinese (Mandarin), but that my Chinese wasn't very good.
The very next thing he said to me was, "Oh, so you don't speak any language well!"
Before I could recover from the shock of what he'd just said, he quickly proceeded to 'correct' my English. I remember we were talking about purchasing textbooks for our courses at a particular bookshop. I said something like: "You can get them cheap over there." He told me that it should be: "You can get them cheaply over there." because you need an adverb with the verb 'get'. At that point, I said something like, "No, I'm using it as an adjective to describe the thing I'm getting." But it was clear that I had little say in what was 'right' or what was 'wrong'.
Now this was before I'd started any formal study in linguistics, but I had had 'English grammar' lessons in school in Singapore, with explanations given for many 'grammatical rules'. Of course, people like me were a pain for our English teachers because they'd give us a particular phrase or sentence, and ask us why it was 'correct' or 'grammatical'.
We'd just say, "Because it sounds right."
And that's the thing about your 'mother tongue' - you don't need to be formally taught the rules of the language in school. Through enough exposure as a child, you just know what 'sounds' right and what doesn't. That knowledge is what linguists usually think of as 'grammar' - it's not the rules that you are explicitly taught in a classroom (unless the language is not your native language), it's knowing how to say things that don't sound odd to either you or the people from the community you grew up with.
To be repeatedly confronted and told that my mother tongue - the language I used at home and in daily life, and the language I knew best (let's not even go into what Singapore calls one's 'mother tongue') was 'incorrect' or defective has had a few effects on me. On the downside, I find it difficult to claim 'ownership' or 'expertise' in English. Even now I am quick to get defensive about my own linguistic knowledge, sometimes justifiably so, but sometimes I perhaps get a little too defensive. On the upside, I've often felt motivated me to learn more languages (to varying degrees of fluency). Most importantly, this insecurity has made me delve deeper into the field of linguistics.
Jacques Derrida, in his book Monolingualism of the Other, wrote, "I have but one language - yet that language is not mine." While his words can be interpreted on many different levels (his central thesis was that we are all alienated from our 'mother tongue'), I can think of no better quote to apply to the linguistic situation I find myself in. I also imagine that this is something many people in the modern world whose 'languages' or 'dialects' are looked down upon and vilified can relate to.
(Yes, I ended that last sentence with a preposition. And yes, it's perfectly grammatical to do so in English.)
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