Can you speak your own language?

Question

Your "mother tongue"....whatever culture/heritage you are from. If not, how do you feel about it & why?

Answer 1

To an extent, and it depends on the heritage, I'm a bit of a mutt. I am mostly Armenian, but my ancestors didn't even speak armenian, they spoke Turkish, neither I know how to say a single word in. From there the rest of me is mostly Cuban, and I know a good amount of Spanish, but not yet fluent, yet I am tryign to progress to be. I am a tiny bit French but don't know really any French, though I believe I'll probably take it up as a third language once I am fluent in Spanish. My heritage is very important to me, but I still keep my individuality and dont' let my heritage become all of who I am. Of all of my heritages, I feel Cuban the most, mostly because of being raised talkign Spanish here and there at home and goign to Cuban restaurants and listenign to Cuban music, and chekcing lately to see if Caestro's dead yet. I aim to be fluent in Spanish because I connect greatest as a Cuban in my heritage and would love to visit Cuba (when the blasted embargo ends or if I become a citizen of another country) and other Spanish speaking countries just to quench some thirst for more connection to my heritage.

Wonderful question by the way.

Answer 2

I don't know for sure which one is my own language. By my mother tongue is Sundanese, which I speak quite fluently. My father spoke in Dutch when I was small, and I can say I can speak pretty well in that language. My national language is Indonesian, which I can do extremely well, and of course English is the language I used the most since I was in year 10, which was 50 years ago.
I think that everybody should be able to speak at least two languages fluently. The more the better. I can communicate quite fluently in 8 different languages and feel very grateful for that ability. I have helped by people from different countries because of my ability to communicate in their languages. Studying more languages open your horizon and chance of meeting and making new friends all over the world, besides increasing your capacity to memorize things, as well as postponing your being affected by dimentia or Alzheimers' disease.

Answer 3

Half of my family originated from the netherlands; however, I cannot speak Dutch and never plan too. I understand that some people are really involved in their heritage, and yes, I do think that it is a beautiful culture, I just never had that much interest in it, and never quite heard the same beauty in their language as I tasted in their food.

Answer 4

My mother tongue is Cantonese and I was born and brought up in Hong Kong, I like my language (enjoy reading Chinese books and poems) and heritage very much and am proud of it too! I enjoy watching Hong Kong movies especially the comedies. My father was also born in Hong Kong and speaks only Cantonese & a little bit English, but my grandmother spoken "Shun Tak" dialect which my dad and I can only understand a few phrases. My mom was born in a little village near Jiangmen, Guang Dong, she speaks a dialect which I totally don't understand. She speaks "Hall Tong" diatect with her sisters (my aunts), I always am curious of what they're talking about and to me, the Hall Tong diatect sounds funny.

I also speak Mandarin, English, Japanese and a little bit of French.

Answer 5

I would say that my "mother tongue" is English since I was born in NYC and so were my parents.
I can speak Spanish, which is the language of all 4 grandparents (who were born in Puerto Rico). I also speak some German - acquired in school for the fun of it.
I have my eye on Japanese for my next language. ;-)

I must say the further removed you are from your origin the tougher it is to hang on to a language.

Answer 6

Well I'm a gypsy and I can only speak a little bite of the language. I understand more then I can speak. But I would like to speak it more and understand more but I really don't try to I don't know why. It's just easier to speak American.

Answer 7

My mother-tongue is Punjabi. The official languages where I'm from: Urdu and English. I can fluently speak punjabi, urdu, english and hindi. and a bit of arabic and frasi. So proud of myself... =)

Answer 8

I'm belizean and i speak creole ,Spanish and English off-course my first language i learned was creole! Oh and by the way Belize is in Central America.

Answer 9

Yes..I live in my mother tongue's country..I'm lucky for that I think..Becuase sometimes I can't say the things that I want to in English..I love Turkish and Turkey! :-)

Answer 10

of course i do! it's very useful to be multi-lingual.

i use spanish at home, english at school, and french, german or mandarin depending where i am.

i very often speak mandarin at the market and speak french and german when i'm in Europe.

i've found that i've been treated better when I've spoken a different langauge

It's actually somewhat interesting