Loading ...Cynthia Cheng
Statistic Canada (Statscan) defines “mother tongue” as “first language learned at home.” But is it accurate? Or, are they trying to inflate the number of Canadians who speak a non-official (English or French) language? Why am I asking this? Because plenty of people who learned an ancestral language prior to starting school grow up not speaking it well. Most retain understanding, but the default language they think in is an official one. To get a more accurate view, Statscan must redefine the question to better reflect the truth.
It’s interesting that the current question includes people who spoke an ancestral language as young children, but have sinced lost proficiency – the official definition describes “mother tongue” as the language spoken at home most often prior to the start of school (but doesn’t include anything about languages spoken AFTER school starts. There are plenty of people who speak English to their family, even if the famiy members speak the ancestral language back. What about them?) This very same government will never consider someone who is only semi-proficient in one of the official languages, while a “native speaker” of the other, bilingual. It seems to me that the government wants the country to look as linguistically diverse as possible. Of course, there could be other reasons.
It is very likely (maybe even obvious) that people who come up with these questions are either multi-generation Canadians who only speak one or both official languages or new Canadians looking to increase their linguistic presense in the country. This makes it very difficult for people who still have ancestral ties, yet are not proficient in the language or languages to decide what to put. Technically, neither English nor French is their mother tongue, since they learned something else prior to the start of school. However, if the individual is more comfortable speaking an official language or has, perhaps lost spoken proficiency, can they still consider it a mother tongue? Why doesn’t Statscan further ask people what language they’re most comfortable speaking? Don’t they want an accurate picture?
2011 is a census year in Canada, so there may still be some time for Statscan to make changes. It’s better for the country and better for people to understand immigration patterns and integration rates if results are more accurate.
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This is a fantastic issue. Having an English-only kindergartner in a bilingual (Spanish) immersion program, this issue at the fore. He has one friend whose mother is Argentine, father was also Spanish-first speaking, but they spoke English in the house. He speaks Spanish all right, but supposedly with an American accent. Another child, where English was the first language, but the (non-Latino) parents both speak Spanish fluently, came into the class bi-lingual. If my son stays with the program, will he be counted as bi-lingual? What if his Spanish becomes stronger than his English (not likely), because of the number of Spanish-speaking friends he hangs around with and the classes?
In Cosmopolitan areas (I’m in NYC), this issue isn’t just a statistical one. A friend of mine was from Moscow and spoke Russian and English, but was of Mongolian descent. She first moved to Chinatown, where Chinese speakers were angry at her for not speaking Chinese (thinking she was a kid who’d “lost” the mother tongue, when her Russian ethnic group had been in Moscow for 500 years). She then moved to Brighton Beach (Russian area), where white Russians would speak disparagingly of her (she’s gorgeous), not knowing she speaks Russian. Her English was perfect. What the hell is *her* mother tongue?
Thanks for bringing up this issue – with both the U.S. and Canadian censuses, and our evolving cultural landscape, it’s only going to become more and more important in the 21st century.