Native English

"Skitt" wrote:
[...]
I think that I might be one of those exceptions. I tried extremely hard not
to be different from the native speakers around me.

I was sixteen, but I think that I have a knack for languages. I had already
lived in Germany for five years and spoke fluent German, another language
that was non-native to me.
[...]

It's undoubtedly possible to achieve native or near native proficiency in English, but there is a certain problem, namely the first 16 years, a segment of a child's life when the foundation is laid for English as a native language. Those include the formative years and most of the school experience which has a huge impact on a child, including the development of the way he talks. Language is inextricably intertwined with culture, and a late arrival in an English-speaking environment with elimination of early childhood and most of school are deficiencies which can be expected to create virtually insurmountable obstacles to "native knowledge" of the language commensurate to a person's social stratum. To compensate for the gaps, the non-native might develop cover-up mechanisms and ultimately be able to talk and even write in manner that doesn't attract most natives' attention or might even elicit their praise for a job well done. And it's is quite an achievement which should certainly be highly satisfactory to the achiever who initially set himself the goal of attaining that proficiency level. Nevertheless, something vital is lacking.

When native speakers of English comment here on English usage, they draw from experiences that go back to the time when their language memory first kicked into operation. A query about a word, a sentence construction or turn of phrase might prompt a contributor to write: "I wouldn't say it that way myself, but my grandfather, who was a schoolteacher in Ohio, and some of his buddies often used it when I was a child; therefore, it sounds quite familiar to me." There're so many examples of such things that they can't be listed.

In addition, there's something that might be called a native's personal relationship to his language, its words and expressions. A child who was born in the 1930s during the Great Depression in the US and had a clear memory of the Second World War and its aftermath would surely never forget the language associations of those days. Which one of them can hear the word "Jap" today without all the associations of the war years coming immediately to mind? Or the word "segregation" without mental pictures of those nasty times with vicious, red-jowled, fat-assed, truncheon-swinging Southern policemen swooping down on kneeling, praying "Negroes"? Or, say, the name "Jenny" without remembering Jenny Gibson, the love of your life in the first grade, and cute way she pronounced your name? The non-native can look up words in the dictionary, but how does he download a native's association with his language practically from the day he was born?

No, there's definitely something essential that's missing.

Regards, ----- WB.
.

Relevant Pages

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