I'm a native English speaker who has no other language, and I feel I'm in the minority here, where it seems there are lots of people who speak multiple languages.
So what is your first language?
mskeggs on 23/03/2014 - 22:55
Poll Options
- 170English Only
- 52Mandarin
- 47Cantonese
- 7Bahasa Melayu
- 37Bahasa Indonesia
- 4Thai
- 7French
- 7German
- 5Italian
- 59Vietnamese
- 6Greek
- 11Arabic
- 9Spanish
- 134Other (tell us in the comments)
Comments
I'm pretty sure your first language is whatever language you're most comfortable with. Is it not?
I thought it was the one that you learnt at birth or at like the most critical stage of when you're learning to speak?
Not really. I know most (or all) people from SE Asia, such as Singapore or Malaysia who don't really particularly identify themselves as speaking a certain language… they may speak Mandarin at home for example, but they may be educated using an English-based curriculum when they start primary school.
So the 'first' language would be Mandarin, right?
Yay Malaysians!
Not always true. I learnt how to speak Cantonese first because that is what my parent spoke at home but I know infinitely more English than Cantonese and I am definitely more comfortable speaking English. My Cantonese is quite bad, I sometimes find it hard to communicate with my parent even thought that was the first language I learnt.
I guess you really have to define learnt.
David?
Who is this…
Linh?
I'd recognize that penguin anywhere!
Small world! :P Did you get my text? Or has your number changed?
Heya, no… vodafail fails me, I have been receiving 1/10 texts the past month or so, so it's a pain! I'll be swapping over to optus/telstra soonish
Sent you 10 messages to test your theory :P
… I still haven't received anything… lol…
Haha
I have committed the sin of quoting Wikipedia:
A first language (also native language, mother tongue, arterial language, or L1) is the language(s) a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity.
So sounds like both are correct, although conflicting. Especially in Australia where many are second generation migrations. They would have been born in the family speaking a language other than English, but once you get to school English would usually become one's most fluent language.
to me "first" language would be what you first spoke. "primary" language is what you usually speak. i think OP means primary rather than first in this?
my first and primary is "stralyan"
English only.
Gujarati
I speak bargain.
So you speak et my language?
So Hebrew or Yiddish?
Binary first then Fortran later.
Basic for me…
I started off with C++… x_x
I started with C : P
Pascal
Basic for me
I started with VIC-20 BASIC then moved onto qwbasic — those you prefix your lines with a line number :)
Binary first
There are 10 kinds of people in this world…
There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who dont.
but then i lernt octal.. and it all seemed less funny..
It was a robot joke….
English. I'm pretty bad when it comes to my mother tongue…don't remember much of it.
Hindi, I can speak it and verbally understand it. Just not read or write in Hindi!
Ditto!
Hindi-Speak, read, write and understand it
Don't know which one is my first language. Was taught Indonesian and Hokkian ( one of many dialects of Chinese) language) around the same time. Though these days I am able to articulate myself better in English.
i am in the same boat
What happens when your third language becomes better than your first language?
some asians has been called 'sellouts' for not acquainting themselves better with their supposedly true and original culture which language is a part of .
Fortunately most Asians have never been caught up with that Neo Nationalistic attitude that unfortunately still instills them in some current Eastern Euro, I truely feel sorry for Jelena/Tomic.
Romulan…
Armenian :D
pic please… interesting faces
Just because we all speak English doesn't mean English is everyone's native language… For many people English is a second or third language, yet they can still communicate on ozBargain no problem :)
Body or money.
Half Turkish Half English
Comfortable with bothI think that the sterotype of Asian people being tigharses is showing… :P
meh people from poorer backgrounds would be the more accurate description I'd say.
I'm half Indian and half Chinese
Born in NZ, now in Melbourne.
I only know English, even though between my parents they know Hindi, Punjabi, Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien and of course English.
Sad I know.
Nice mix!
Add some cheese
Just curious, mate, do you look more Indian or Chinese?
Don't be sad, i have a friend who is half german and half shepherd and didn't learn any language, this is how he looks : bestfriend
a friend who is half german and half shepherd
am i doing some sort of racial stereotyping caus i knew exactly what your friend was going to look like before i clicked the link? i mean lets face it, they all look the same….
Isn't that the best combination according to Russell Peters?
Black Chinese , Now I can die in peace
Cuzy Bro.
Och laddies an' lassies,
whit dae yae want tae ken that fur?
Ur ye no a' wearin yer kilt and eatin haggis???wheres the button for the english subtitles?
I believe it's the red one with a horizontal line. (I kid)
My family heritage is mostly Scottish, I'd wear the kilt, but I'm not touching the haggis voluntarily!
Haggis tastes amazing!
Then I found out what it was…
awayego ya big eejit.
I came here when I was a kid and acquired (read had beaten into me) an Australian accent at school. My mum used to get me to translate her Scottish accent for her at the shops, the checkout chicks could never understand Mum's Scottish accent.
Later, when I was in the Army we had a Scottish lad in my Squadron. He had a death in the family and got emotional wanting to apply for some bereavement leave. Boss couldn't understand a word of what he was saying, I had to translate for him even though he was speaking English but with a Glaswegian accent.
I speak and write fluent English, French, Creole and Hindi.
You're Mauritian?
my maths teacher was from Mauritius so he spoke French, English and Calculus
Does he speak morse too?
Yes i am
There's no such thing as writing fluent creole.
I write in Creole all the time when conversing with people from Mauritius and there is even several dictionaries in Creole FYI.
Have a read:
I had always assumed your first language to be what you learnt first to communicate in from birth with your parents/family. Mine is Hungarian/Magyar and I love to speak it whenever I can to another fellow speaker. It is funny how you mingle two languages together when you live in a bi-lingual family.
I grew up speaking Greek until I was starting school, and then my mother panicked and always spoke to me in English after that thinking I had to learn English. I never retained any of the Greek.. sigh!!
So not sure whether my first language is Greek or English.
Exactly what happened to my other half's Italian!
We want kids that speak Cantonese + Italian (I speak both + Mandarin, but poor kid) but I worry this would happen.
Canto is my native tongue so i went with that…
But i much rather use English since I'm better at that, i can't even write (can barely read) in canto lol
Czech! :) I guess that's pretty rare. (As there's just 10 mil of us in the world).
Mauritian creole is rarer. only 1.2 mil of us :)
Brought up with english very bad at vietnamese but forced to learn japanese while working in tokyo and with the misses now trying to learn mandarin / shanghainese for my new work.. know a tiny bit of italian learnt when i was in prep lol
Inglês is the language of choice. I also speak Portuguese, Hindi/Urdu with a wee bit of Mandarin and Spanish.
brazilian portuguese
Marathi
Cantonese was the very first language I was taught, but aside from English, Teo Chew is the language I am most comfortable with.
Sucks because I very rarely meet anyone outside of my family that actually speaks it!Teo chew is my mother tongue : P
surprised actually met some people that speak teo chew here in Melbourne recently
I mean there's some people that speaks teo chew here in melbourneI always get really excited when I hear it on the streets! I'm in Melbourne too! =D
qa qi nang ?
There's a Teo Chew community? wut.
Hardly anyone ever speaks it! I've lost most of my ability to speak it because I haven't been able to practice it unfortunately :(
That really sucks! It's the only way I can communicate with my grand parents, but a lot of my younger cousins have forgotten it completely
Finnish
Props. Countryman to one of the toughest S.O.B.s ever to walk this earth; Simo Hayha:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17019_5-real-life-soldiers-wh…
My first language is Tamil. I speak regularly in Tamil with parents and friends, and watch movies and TV shows. So the verbal part of it is fine. But for reading and writing I am infinitely more comfortable with English. It's been years and years since I wrote anything in Tamil and I am getting very rusty.
Same here..
cat
meow meow?
meeoowww?Stop calling me fat! I am just PUFFFYYYYY
I don't know. I'm one of those who are terrible at the Asian and terrible at the engrish too. How do you determine which one is your first language especially if your parents gave birth to you overseas?