One thing I will reproach you for is your use of Fraktur blackletter script in the still image for this video to represent “dark” or “fascist“. Blackletter script was used in Europe way before the second world war and has a variety of different forms. It was the script used for science and literature in many Germanic and Nordic countries up until the mid 20th century. Your use of it in this context is akin to using a flag in the manner against which you are advocating.
@@passatboi I was wondering if anybody would catch that. It’s not exactly the same script, but paradoxically it is evocative of national socialism, for Americans, at least, despite having been actually done away by Hitler. Of course, it was largely perceived as Germanic, as opposed to having the Jewish influence ascribed (incorrectly) to Antiqua. All of those associations, though, are 20th century developments. Unfortunately, especially with thumbnails, I always have to make a choice about what will get people’s interest. I actually resisted the urge to have an explanatory footnote, but perhaps I should put one in my description after all! For anyone else reading this and curious to know more, here’s a good starting point:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_dispute?wprov=sfti1
It's also worth pointing out that despite their association with Fraktur today, the NSDAP took a stance against Fraktur (albeit not until late in their rule), which was associated with the Monarchist right like the DNVP. Pretty sure both were described by ultranationalists as "Jewish" or whatever at some point.
It goes even further than that. The Nazis HATED blackletter / gothic script / Fraktur. Here's what had to say about it, and I quote: "It is wrong to regard or describe the so-called Gothic script as a German script. In reality, the so-called Gothic script consists of Schwabach Jewish letters." ("Die ſogenannte gotiſche Schrift als eine deutſche Schrift anzuſehen oder zu bezeichnen iſt falſch. In Wirklichkeit beſteht die ſogenannte gotiſche Schrift aus Schwabacher Judenlettern."; Schwabacher is a type of blackletter script). Hitler himself said the following about blackletter, which I will not translate but if you're interested you can do so yourself: "Eure vermeintliche gotiſche Verinnerlichung paſſt ſchlecht in das Zeitalter von Stahl und Eiſen, Glas und Beton, von Frauenſchönheit und Männerkraft, von hochgehobenem Haupt und trotzigem Sinn … Unſere Sprache wird in hundert Jahren die europäiſche Sprache ſein. Die Länder des Oſtens, des Nordens wie des Weſtens werden, um ſich mit uns verſtändigen zu können, unſere Sprache lernen. Die Vorausſetzung dafür: An die Stelle der gotiſch genannten Schrift tritt die Schrift, welche wir bisher die lateiniſche nannten."
Meanwhile the Language Simp is never using the expected flags to symbolize the language he's talking about. While being a joke it is an unironically a good practice
The "native speaker" thing is a problem in other industries too. I teach English in Asia, and I can't tell you the number of times I've seen individuals who are highly skilled and well qualified teachers and highly proficient users of English, but who happen to not come from a "native speaker country" lose out of job opportunities to someone from the Big Five who barely understands the basic linguistic details of their L1. Or worse, I've seen those same highly skilled "non-native" teachers get hired and massively underpaid and overworked because they're now technically working illegally and the employers have them over a barrel. Thankfully the skin colour bias is changing, finally, and some nations outside the Big Five are being added to the "native countries" list, but that doesn't really change anything for the true L2 speakers.
That doesn't even touch on the bias against actual native speakers who don't have the right native speaker "look," like a native english speaker with east asian genetics. It's an odd business, when you can find yourself discriminated against for not standing out from the crowd.
That's so terrible and completely wrong. So few native English speakers understand the grammar and mechanics of English because it's super complicated. Being able to speak English doesn't make you a good language teacher either. I would rather have a teacher who understands the language than someone who happened to be born in a particular place or whose parents spoke a particular language.
as a Canadian i never understood language flags because we have many languages two of which are official and when we pick English the flag us either the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack, or in the post Brexit EU, Ireland; which is weird on a whole other level Then there’s Quebec French, New Brunswick French, and other French pockets Last but not least the tapestry of indigenous languages not even recognised
Maybe they ought to use the flag of England for the English language. Fun fact about the USA: We have more Spanish speakers than the entire population of Spain.
@@joe_z oh my god! I came here to mention Celeste using the Canadian flag for English but it never clicked that the French flag should also be that lol
The canadian flags and associations with language and culture etc. is a very political topic and the conflict is fought exactly the way he explains in the video. After all, Quebec's flag was clandestinely installed illegally, to begin with, as a form of protest. But also to directly associate the language, culture and flag as the same thing... and for the creators of the flag to dictate what those are.
In South Africa, we refer to it as your "home language". "Native language" and "mother tongue" are rarely used. That introduces a new problem, since it implies that it is the language in which you are most fluent, when almost everyone has formal education in English.
I didn't know that. This makes me like Language Jones recommendation to take the time to explain our relation to the language even. I can't think of a term like "native language" or "home language" that doesn't create similar problems.
Home language is quite a good term though it poses the next question, what if you have multiple languages spoken in your home by different family members or multilingual family members in different situations? But I still think speaking of home language(s) and maybe school/education language(s) would be a better distinction than native and/or first/second/third language
My wife teaches English "Home Language" in a South African private school. You can also learn a language at "First Additional Language" level. The assumption is that if a student takes English Home Language he or she has skills in that language comparable to those of mother-tongue speakers. It is also assumed that students are familiar with elements of English culture which most mother-tongue speakers would be familiar with, e.g. nursery rhymes, songs, legends and folk tales. This presents a problem in the South African context, as you often fine that couples from different language background raise their children as English, and speak English at home. The problem is that the language is only spoken at a conversational level. I can completely identify with the problem of using flags to denote languages. I've seen the new South African flag used online to represent Afrikaans, when we have 12 official languages. Also, this smells like Afrikaner nationalism and the former government policy of teaching Black students in Afrikaans (which resulted in the Soweto riots in 1976, but this a seperate issue.)
As another South African, I always interpreted “native language” and “home language” in different ways. Your native language is the language(s) you started speaking as a child without formally learning it, and your home language(s) is the language you speak at home with your family. The one stays the same all your life, but the other can change.
As an English teacher of color, I don't know how many times I've been passed up in different countries for not looking native, e.g. white. Even though I was born in California, for some reason they think I can't speak English. I hate it.
@@CoryPchajek I doubt it. Where can I find some of these accounts? And I don't mean someone bitching about not getting the job and attributing it to the racism of Koreans, I mean _proof._
@@JimBarcelona I just had a Tawaiinese friend tell me this happens in Tawain often because parents want white teachers to teach their children English. It happens A LOT. I'm sorry you experience it.
@DanSmith-j8y yes, because people are so open about admitting their racism and xenophobia etc. It happens and the fact that you want to tell people who've experienced it that they're making it up or they need to "prove" themselves to you (a complete stranger) is part of the whole problem.
YESS thankyou i absolutely hate this especially due to being an indian. I've even seen tamizh being represented with sri lankan flag despite yk the majority of tamizh speakers being from tamizh nadu! and not to mention how it absolutely feeds into the wrong hypernational hindi crowd. the problem could be somewhat alleviated if each state had their own flags but that goes out the window considering there are languages that don't have their own states either(like tulu!)
as a serb myself i always felt quite uncomfortable when languages were represented by country flags but I couldn't really coherently voice why, so this video literally felt like it came from my subconsciousness, thank you language jones for refreshing takes
This "native speaker" thing... rant incoming 😅 : I'm Swiss - from the "German part". Linguists argue if Swissgerman is a language or a dialect. In my opinion it is a language (especially since I had to transcribe a 4h Interview in Swissgerman to German for uni). We learn German in kindergarden and are forced to use it in school. Everything we write (except chatting with friends) has to be in German. However, I'd never think in German and sometimes I use words or syntax that isn't actually German. But if I use apps (HelloTalk etc.) I have to choose "native German" and feel like a fraud. I'm a "native German" but at the same time I'm absolutely not, depending on the context.
as someone from germany but near Konstanz my slang is very similar to swissgerman, although not the same of course, and while i don't really feel like a fraud, it is funny to see how much germans from different regions struggle to understand me when i either write or talk this slang german to them. (er ist die treppe hinunter gefallen vs. der isch d'stäge nah keit). if it is different to a point where "native speakers" of the language, like germans from northern regions like hamburg for example, cannot understand you whatsoever you could probably classify it as a language and not a slang. in my case Alemannisch is even its own language on wikipedia. so i would argue you are right. swiss german is it's own language too and i always saw it as such personally.
for me it is a dialect but yeah i can relate the transcription thing... If it was an own language, i guess i'd have issues with standard german but i absolutely don't. i see a lot of swiss guys do indeed have very big issues especially with spoken standard german. btw i'm from liechtenstein, maybe my heart is born too close to austria so i am very considerate about using my language and always compare the dialect to standard german to make sure i am not using weird swiss terms german customers or austrian family don't understand like for example "das system verhebt"
I'm 100% with you (also Swiss german). Luckily I'm old enough, that I could speak Swiss German in all school subject except for German, French or English. The standard German requirement for all subjects and all stages came a few years later. My German is decent, but with a hefty accent (which I also cultivate a bit ;-)). But standard German feels foreign. It feels weird to click the flag of the "big canton" to select a language. But hey, it could be worse, if we would have to select the Habsburg flag instead 😂
@@TimeConvolutionHas some truth, but I think there are also some linguistic factors. I grew up on the border of highest alemanic and high alemanic dialects. The grammar I use when speaking is highest alemanic, pronounciation is a mixture of highest and high alemanic and the vocabulary is all over the place with a lot of french influences, germanisms and anglicisms. I would say my native language is Alemanic. But this option is rarely present.
They do. The thing is that they don't tell you what regional spanish you are learning.😆 I'm a native Spanish speaker. I think they just took the more "neutral spanish" from all the Spanish speaking countries and choose the more recognised ones.
It's the same for Norwegian. I learned it on babble before I went to Bergen and realized, that Norwegian is not a homogeneous language throughout the country. I had to relearn a lot, even the grammar is a bit different. These apps give you Oslo Norwegian and that's it. For everything else you would need to speak the language and search inside Norway to get some learning material
On the topic of "learning from native speakers" - I once had a language exchange partner whose goal was to learn Indian English. He lived in India, and American English (my native dialect) was not useful to him. I helped him through his (Indian) English courses, and it was a really interesting experience, especially whenever his textbooks disagreed with me.
I used to teach middle school in NM, and boy did attempts to impose "native speaker" as a categorization real fail there. The public school system classified any kid who reported speaking a language other than English at home as ESL, even if they had been speaking english their whole life (alongside spanish). Sure most of them did have language proficiency issues, but that was more a systemic failure of the education system to keep everyone on grade level than being 'non-native.' I'm sure you'd have a "fun" time looking into the history of language ed in NM.
Yes, this. As a (former) MLL teacher, I know for certain that many, many "native" English-speaking students would not test out of the program were they required to do so. I still have MLL students in my world language classes who speak English as well or better than their "native" peers but still haven't tested out. Something is a bit awry, and most of it has to do with structural prejudice and bureaucracy. For what it's worth: it's not just NM.
Classifying kids who didn't speak English at home as potentially ESL makes sense, but yeah obviously you'd want to check the levels of the kid before making that designation.
Oh goddd this reminds me of how I got classified as an ESL student (despite only speaking English) for about 4-5 years, because my dad speaks Mandinka, alongside English and other languages (he's from Sierra Leone), but I don't even speak Mandinka (only know a few words and stuff). I'm in Texas tho, so my case has nothing to do with NM's education system.
Fun small anecdote about flags and nationality. Latin is very near and dear to my heart as a philologist, having studied it since I was 12 and been involved in spoken Latin much of my early adult life. I wanted to get a shirt to represent that and had a choice between an SPQR shirt and one with the Vatican flag. I went with the Vatican flag because I use ecclesiastical pronunciation when speaking Latin. When moving back to Northern Ireland I was moving into an AirBnB, and forgot that the shirt I'd put on back in England before getting on the plane, was that Vatican flag shirt...and my host lived in a Protestant neighbourhood. Got a couple of weird looks for that one as I walked in with my bags 😂
As a Catholic American living next to a Protestant church who has (playfully, but earnestly because I want to rep my faith) considered buying a Vatican flag for my flagpole (but I actually don't because I wouldn't want to actually offend/alienate them; they are lovely people for the most part), this is especially hilarious to me. I hope they ultimately took it in good fun, as much as possible.
People might actually recognize what it is in Belfast (unlike most places outside Italy). Maybe. But it isn't one of the most politicized symbols of the Troubles. And thankfully, things are much quieter than they used to be with the conflict. Also, it's worth saying ... People in Belfast have a way of just staring down anyone looking even slightly unfamiliar or out-of-place, regardless.
A friend of mine who studied at Queen's University Belfast was fond of telling the (no doubt apocryphal) story of the somewhat unworldly German philologist and Celtic expert who arrived to take up a senior teaching position there (in the 1950s?), confident that he would be able to purchase everything he required in the shops of that city using the Irish language.
You managed to completely avoid the most hilarious flag as language: it's so common you completely overlook it, but it's everywhere. Is English a union jack, a stars and stripes, maybe a red maple leaf or some variant of a southern cross flag. It's so common to see a website which can represent a localization choice with one or many of these variants for English. I've even seen cross of st george on occasion..
@@Whiskers4169 There's a lot debate to have over THAT: is the colony language that preserved elements of 18th Century rural/lower-class England better than modern England English's most-known "British accent", "just" a dialect, or the original? (Of note: the same phenomenon happened with Quebec as a French colony spot: the joual and patois we've got smattered around here? They're preserving nearly-lost rural french dialects-- Abitibi's joual dialect is translating nearly 1:1 to a very thick rural (provencal, I think? can't recall the village's name augh) french dialect that modern French speakers can't really parse as French, meanwhile my joual is mutually understandable with that village's dying dialect. In both cases, the "colony" dialects are usually born from rural/lower-classes dialects, while what we perceive as the "modern French/English"... That's a linguistic shift toward the higher-class dialects spoken in the big cities, IIRC. Basically the colony versions are just people who collectively went "ah fuckit I'm too broke to GAF about sounding like a posh from the old world and this works fine".)
As someone who has been learning Spanish for years, the use of 🇪🇸 confuses me when using some tools to learn, because I’m trying to learn Latin American Spanish. Then I have to do more research to see if they are of the “vosotros” crowd. 😂 As far as the term “native speaker,” it’s just simpler to use that term, instead of saying “a person who started learning as a child and has a pretty good handle on the language.” Where I have the issue is when some of these tools claim to help you “speak like a native,” which is something that 99% of people will never achieve, and it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The goal should be to speak to be understood, period.
Foreign-language instruction in the US had been Eurocentric for over a century. I mean, Latin was in the standard curriculum in the US until the... 1980s(?).
I'd learn real Spanish first, then learn the variations in Latin American Spanish - since I've been told by Colombians, Cubans, and Mexicans about the differences in vocabulary and meaning, etc., between those.
@@DanSmith-j8y the fact that you’re saying “real” Spanish seems like the point of the video was missed. Does one need to learn British English before they speak to an American, Australian, or Indian? There will be variations in any language.
@@foodforinsomnia7026 Say "original" then if it bothers you. It's not equivalent to learning American English, Australia, etc., or British, because we're not talking about differences in slang, in pronunciation, etc. I thought I was pretty clear that it's about differences in vocabulary of ordinary words, not slang, and not about pronunciation, between places like Colombia, Mexico, Cuba - so, better to learn the Spanish of Spain, _then_ learn regional variations. I thought that was pretty clear, but I guess not.
Thank you. It makes sense of China talking about Chinese rather than Mandarin and Cantonese. It's been bugging me as to why something that I'd always understood as the ignorant thing to say is now encouraged.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I would assume the OP doesn't, but it does bring up a point that the CCP actively suppresses knowledge of the other languages spoken in the region. There are a lot of them, but usually usually only Mandarin, the one they choose as their "official" language is encouraged to be learned by foreigners.
I wish that it was easier to find out more Chinese languages exist, because I don’t know any names of the languages besides those two, which are the most commonly spoken language in the world and the language you would most likely actually encounter as “Chinese” amongst diaspora people.
I can't put into words the relief I felt when I saw you brought up this topics. I am Catalan and not only do I have to worry about the active and open attempts of cultural genocide in the country I was born but now also all these "lang youtubers" who are devoid of any deep knowledge and appreciation for languages. (Not the topic here, but how do these guys manage to learn 29 languages and all of them happen to be colonialist-state languages. Their concept of languages are just medals. They don't speak languages, they consume them. The whole thing itself writes poems about their unlimited white-ass privilege. They really make you think if "globalization", the way we understand it, is neo-colonization.) Not big on flags either. Here's some context though.The Catalan flag is way older than the Spanish flag (which is famously based on the Catalan one). Don't really care. But you should feel the irony in having Amazon and most other companies putting a Spanish flag (which is a remix of ours) to refer to the colonialist language that has been imposed to us catalans; with the added cherry on top: the website is never available in Catalan. But check this out: since now they are woke, you have a different translation for Latin-American Spanish (because we won't put the speakers through the trauma of reading a different dialect). Still no money to translate into Catalan though (with 10 million speakers, same as European Portuguese). I'm tired of writing complaints to these companies, just getting an automated reply. Duolingo is, in my opinion, the biggest perpetrator of these lang-youtuber-esque train of thought. At least the one with the most influence. You can learn Klingon now! (and 3 more invented "languages"). But you can't learn Catalan, Basque or Galician unless you *drumroll* ... already speak Spanish. These languages were considered to be so useless(†) that nobody outside Spain could bother to learn them, so they are available only taught in Spanish. With this kind of policy, who wouldn't expect these brainless youtubers to come out (this was 6 or 7 years ago; just checked and it's _still_ the same). *Globalization without diversity is just colonization.* (†) You should make a video talking about the ill-formed concept of the _uselessness of a language_ that every time it is used to devalue minority/minoritized languages and promote the colonialist ones.
In the online language learning community there are people advocating for grammar, people advising against learning grammar, people swearing by flash cards, others saying you have to watch Netflix in your target language, people saying give me comprehensible input or give me death, not to mention endless arguments over the efficacy of language learning apps. The problem is that it all kinda works, more or less, and people on UA-cam especially act like there’s only one way up the proverbial mountain. I’d recommend the video “Cooking internet and lifting internet have the same problem” by Andy Ragusea which highlights a similar problem in other communities.
You're absolutely correct!! I've had my share of online discussions because of this issue, back when I let myself got tangled in such nonsense. I'll check the video* you recommend, Tnx a lot
I was going to post a similar comment, but you said it better than I could have. The comprehensible input community has become cult. As you said, this problem exists in many other subjects (fitness, nutrition, et.)
@@theymademepickaname1248 I don't think it's just about comprehensible input. Its detractors are guilty of exactly the same thing. The video by Andy Ragusea that @davo_v quotes explains the phenomenon pretty well
Don't forget the ones that say you should focus on learning only one language at a time and not start with another until you're at fluency with the first one... and the ones who say you can and should learn multiple languages at the same time.
Breton here. I unfortunately never learned the language, and few are the students that do and use it regularly. Decades later, the policies' effects are still felt, but I hope the language can still survive
Policies aren’t everything. Low prestige and too small language areas can also lead to voluntarily giving up, with parents trying to teach their children a language that gives them more opportunities.
If the term "native speaker" isn't scientific and isn't useful in linguistics, how should we say "a language is defined by the way native speakers speak it" or something similar? How can we know how, for example, a verb conjugation is supposed to be done in a particular language if we can't observe how a "native speaker" does it?
"A language is defined by how the majority of it's speakers (including those who learned it as their second language) uses it." Let's be honest, in the age of the internet, it doesn't really matter if someone is a "native speaker" or not. Also, the concept of a language being "defined" is already a vague concept that doesn't really work that well. Language is fluid.
hmm - usage implies a community of language speakers. People already distinguish between different communities of speakers to specify different dialects (you get "British English", "American English", "Australian English", "Indian English" etc.), so surely specifying which community's speech standards and rules you are talking about would be the fix here - you don't need to define language in terms of "native speaker", just be more specific about which community of language speakers you are talking about.
The problem is, there is no "native speaker" there are many speaking a language and they all use variants and also a language naturaly changes over time, as young generations just change it. Usually that what is taught as "native" is a political descision. For example in germany (or famously in france) there are boards set up by the goverment that define what is the "correct" & "native" language. The Swiss and Austrians don't adhere to these rules in the case of german and the Belgians and Swiss in the case of french also don't adhere to those rules. But even in Germany and France: Go and Speak to a Bavarian, Saxon, Provencal, Breton "native speaker" - you will find out that observing them is something very different than what is taught as "native languge".
There are many language apps that proudly talk about how you can interact with "native speakers" through their platform. I think it sounds good on the cover, but I'm now wondering if a "native speaker" is the best person to learn a language from. English is my first language, and I'm probably a bad person to talk to about how it works... I've never really had to think about it too hard. Probably more helpful to learn from someone with an outside perspective on learning the language.
An average native speaker is not a great resource for grammar advice. A professional teacher or book will help you there. But if you want to have a conversation in the target language, having conversations with people who are literally experts in having conversations in that language is quite helpful.
Yes, the average native speaker is probably NOT the best, since they probably can't remember learning it and were never taught to teach it. There is also something to be said that learners make some of the best teachers, they know what a learner is going to struggle with! I know a lot of native English speakers who couldn't answer a grammar question to save their lives.
A native speaker who has also learned another language (more specifically "yours") will be extremely helpful in learning they understand the pain points. like Santiago said you learn a lot about your first language learning another. A professionally trained teacher is always gonna be better but having friends to discuss the language with on a more casual level won't be a detriment.
I’ve been thinking about the native speaker thing a lot. I grew up in belgium in a fully dutch-speaking family but consumed so much english-language media as a child that I basically spoke perfect english when I was 12. I think in a mixture of both, often dependent on the context (e.g. when I am with other english speakers, my thoughts are also all in english, but when I am alone, my internal monologue is about 60% english, 40% dutch). people in the uk also consistently identify me as a native speaker. I’m not really sure what that makes me
I feel like this video does a good job of describing the experience of "historical Anglophones" in Quebec without meaning to. You can have been living here for generations, but without the language as a signifier, you're often not accepted as "part of the nation" - and some will even say so out loud: you are not "a real Quebecer" without descending from the culture that the language represents. The idea that culture, nation, and language are inextricably tied is just a given here.
There is also the pervasive notion in Québec that "bilingual" means either "speaks French and English specifically" or "speaks French and some other language". I know multiple people who expressed that they were bilingual while in Québec, but because they spoke (e.g.) Spanish and English or English and Mandarin, they were told that they "didn't count as bilingual". Québec is so afraid to lose its cultural/linguistic heritage and identity that they are sometimes quite chauvinist and discriminatory toward others. The CAQ's agenda is of course the ultimate example, wherein the word "pasta" becomes forbidden (you have to say "pâtes").
Of course there's some good and some bad that comes out of it. There are a lot of French language classes available for cheap or free, through the government, through employers, etc. - and I think that's a perfectly good way to promote the language and culture. I'm in one of those classes. But then you also get the stripping away of previously existing English communication channels for anything official or from the government, and anxiety that you might, for example, be refused health services in a language you can understand in a moment where it really matters.
@@_oaktree_ Well, English and French are the only two official languages, so that makes sense. It'd be odd to add Mandarin and Spanish to the list in a country with so few speakers. Personally I figure we should just have one official language, English, especially since Quebec has all these laws to keep English off of street signs and store signs, etc., but the rest of Canada (with so few French speakers relative to the number of English speakers) have all this bilingual packaging and other stuff.
@@_oaktree_ _Pâtes_ is both the correct and the usual word in European French too. Even though _pasta_ is (of course) originally Italian, its use in French is, effectively, an Anglicism, if not an outright Americanism.
Isn't this all an exercise in the etymological fallacy? We talk about ancillary protocols, but just because the word "ancillary" has its roots in Roman slavery doesn't mean anyone using the word is supporting slavery. Just because someone uses the word "native speaker" doesn't mean they're supporting an ultranationalist agenda (and I would bet that most people are unaware of this connection anyhow). The alternative to calling someone a "native speaker" is to give what is functionally a biography for them, and it'll start breaking down once you refer to more than one such person. Less direct information also means more room to confuse and confound. Someone could be "an Irish speaker for 20 years!" but neglect to mention that, from the perspective of those who grew up using Irish Gaelic as a daily community language (and see how many more words that is than "are Irish Gaelic native speakers"?), they have completely failed to master the phonology and speak in a completely unintelligible manner, and have only learned the language through formal education, which is notably of extremely poor quality. If they claim to be "a native speaker" but turn out not to be able to even distinguish its phonemes, then there's a specific section you can point to where they lied. I won't comment much on the flag thing, since I mostly agree. My major critique is the same as the last one: What would you replace it with? Ultimately this is all like proposing an English spelling reform. What we have is, for better or worse, already entrenched. I don't see it disappearing anytime soon.
_We talk about ancillary protocols, but just because the word "ancillary" has its roots in Roman slavery doesn't mean anyone using the word is supporting slavery._ Lots of good points, but that's basically what it boils down to.
You replace the flags with what wikipedia does for languages: you write the name of the language its own language. Anyone looking for their language would see it. As for how to convey it on UA-cam, you do the same and put in (parenthesis) the name of it in the primary language of your audience (or the language you use to tell people to 'like and subscribe' and for intros and outros.)
Agree with your points, but re "native speaker" your solution is a nonstarter. Asking people to replace their 2-syllable shorthand term with a cumbersome explanatory phrase, are you kidding? See "mormon".
Very interesting discussion. What has bugged me for many years is the apparent disdain a lot of "native" speakers give to "non-native" speakers. Example, my wife immigrated to the US. Often people treat her as inferior due to her accent and manner of speech even though she speaks US English better and more grammatically correct than most locals where we live.
I agree what you rea syaing in spirit, but the word "native speaker" is a really useful term that quickly and clearly communicates the idea of "someone who grew up speaking this langague as their primary language, and has a strong intuitive understanding of that language". Most people either clearly fit or clearly do not fit this idea. Even if their are a lot of people who blur the lines.
I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with what you say here exactly. But as you acknowledge, although ‘most’ people fit, ‘a lot’ do not. So… it’s not actually a great descriptor and maybe we could do better?
"Everyone supports candidate X", as I saw in a news report not long ago..., "except minorities, women, hispanics, and young people." This quote clearly communicates the intended message: that "everyone who matters" means old white men. "Native Speaker" is used to communicate the exact same concept, often in exactly the same way. One very clear example is using the flag of South Africa to represent Afrikaans. "Most people" in South Africa speak Zulu or Xhosa. Only about 13% of the population speaks Afrikaans. But it's the old white men who carry the flag.
Duolingo is also pretty inconsistent in how they use the flags. Some languages are represented by the flag of the country where the language originated or is perceived to have originated (ex: Spanish flag for Spain), but others are represented by the flag of the country with the most speakers today (ex: USA flag for English, Brazilian flag for Portuguese). Never mind that Mexico alone has almost 3x as many people that speak Spanish as Spain does, and that most of the user-base of the app almost certainly has more interactions with Latin Americans than Spaniards.
Can't speak for the other languages you mentioned, but the Brazilian flag on Duolingo makes perfect sense. They are teaching Brazilian Portuguese, rather than any other version of the language, it makes a difference.
And the fact that they use US English to teach Mexican Spanish. Since I lived for 10 years in LA, I can deal with that, many other Brits will find it confusing or annoying
In fairness, wouldn't they be using the Spanish flag to signify Castillan Spanish which is pretty much the default even in Latin America. With Portuguese Brazilian and European varieties are quite different from each other being just a few words and pronunciation. There are grammatical differences as well in Portuguese
@@mikeball6182 They don't teach Mexican Spanish. It's a complete grab bag of vocabulary. The only way it's "Mexican" is the lack of vosotros or voseo, that's it.
eh, language as a tool of *cultural* identity can be just as radicalizable as when it is used as a tool of *national* identity. So, no matter what you replace the flags with, unless you teach some kind of culture-agnostic language continuum (which would arguably be harder to communicate in), you'll still expose ways to divide people along its lines. No matter how we slice humanity, it inevitably turns into an us vs. them situation. It's too useful an exploit.
I don’t think that Language Jones advocates that we separate language users through their cultural identity. He said this while explaining what people usually mean when they say “native speaker”, and then describes how that is also problematic. He actually advocates “saying what we actually mean” i.e. taking the extra time to describe the speaker's relationship to the language. This won’t get rid of the human tendency to tribalism, but it lets us speak more clearly and avoid the various problematic elements of identifying languages through flags.
Language is of course inextricable with the cultures of those who use it. I think one point that's trying to be put forward is not to replace national symbols with cultural symbols to represent language - see his critiques of proposed Yiddish flags - but rather the appropriation of symbols already unified by other elements for the representation of language. While it is of course useful to represent languages with symbols, the issue with the symbols is when those symbols already unite a community through other factors beyond 'speaker of the language'. However, I think most would acknowledge that our current use of flags and cultural symbols to represent language is unlikely to change. Nonetheless, it's our responsibility to be mindful of which symbols are chosen, why they have been chosen, and the implications of those choices.
@@jaetwee hahaha yeah I don’t think it’s going to change anytime soon. But I could see a world where people become more aware of those nuances and push back against the use of flags or at least hesitate to use them. We can try to stop unknowing support of nationalistic ideals.
I think you'll find that language tends to be more naturally divisive than other aspects of culture - excluding that other divisive aspect of culture: religion (though not all religions in equal measure.) No matter. The real crux of the issue is that human beings are a social species with fairly strong in-group /out-group tendencies. There's enough evidence to say that it even seems to be an evolutionary trait it's best to accept that reality - we like to divide into groups that become cultures (with distinct languages, religious views and other cultural traits) and then guard against the "Other". Then we can engineer a way to mitigate those instincts. That's pretty much what we've been trying to do anyways with various political solutions in Late modernity.
The moment you said "flag" I figured out where this was going and got really excited. I've decided awhile back that I personally dislike the term native speaker, and this is entirely due to my own experience with languages. I acquired, to varying degrees of fluency (as you do), four languages as a kid (and continue to speak them, with different but still varying degrees of fluency), but have never felt like I could confidently claim to be a native speaker in any of them on the international stage. As you mentioned, the term seems to have more of a social definition than anything. For three of these languages I speak, I don't know enough about the culture and nuances typically associated with them because I don't come from any of the countries typically associated with them (the way a "native speaker" of English is typically expected to be from the UK or US or Aus/NZ). My pronouciation and word choices are occasionally not "native" either because I grew up with the local variant of the languages, which has undergone the inevitable localisation. The one language I could argue to have the background and culture for......I don't really, and definitely do not speak it fluently. This is the official language of the country I come from, and growing up I predominantly only used it for official business such as interacting with the government. I don't speak it with the "correct" accent, so to speak, either, though I suppose you can argue the variant I speak is one of the variants available in the country. As such, the terms "first language", "mother tongue" and "national language" all refer to different languages to me. Currently, I've settled with gibberish as my native tongue, seeing as that's what I spout when surprised or confused =P
On flags, I somewhat disagree. Sometimes it's important to have a symbol to represent a language, and a flag seems to be the most obvious such symbol. I do think that sometimes flags are problematic, but frankly they are the best solution I could come up with
Off the top of my head, in the translation industry we often use 2-letter abbreviations instead, like DE for German, EN for English, and then specify further if needed, like American English if they want the dates to be MM/DD/YY rather than DD/MM/YY and they don't want "favor" spelled "favour."
I think it being the easiest solution atm isn’t a good reason to change the system imo. Like yeah it’s useful shorthand, but the shorthand is propagating ideas we don’t condone. Trying to change the system might not work because the flags are just that good at communicating the idea, but it doesn’t hurt to try right? It costs practically nothing to advocate for and use a new system on a personal level
I'm a native speaker of swahili, my mother is tanzania. I cannot hold a conversation in swahili for my life does that make me not a native speaker? Swahili was the first language i spoke thats the problem with linguistics, its all one step forward six back.
You are not a native speaker of Swahili, and you shouldn't go around saying that you are one. Your post is an obvious example of the Straw Man Fallacy.
@CameronNewland I disagree that it is an obvious straw man argument. I could conceive of a genuine argument that "native language" is the first language you were exposed to and that that language was spoken by your ancestors. Furthermore, I'm not sure that being able to currently speak the language is necessary to be a native speaker of the language. In which case, following those rules, @AmaniElArnab creates a valid situation that is very hard to accept. You can change the definition of “native speaker”, but that’s his point, it’s not a scientific term, it’s a socially understood one without a clear definition that creates confusing situations.
@@Gorg1122 "Native speaker" does have a clear definition, and no, it's not possible for a native speaker to not be able to converse in, or understand, that language. You're trying too hard, but you are simply running in circles and embarrassing yourself.
Just returned from a trip down the Danube (sorta) visiting Prague, Linz, Vienna and Budapest, where the impact of what you’re talking about couldn’t be more relevant. Pretty much every tour involved some discussion of the (bad) impact of the differences between language communities and nation states. As an American I’d never learned much about it - very eye-opening. I think you’re spot on with this one. Also, as a UX professional, I think icons like flags generally suck in terms of usability. Think about how often you need the tool tip to figure out what the icons mean - that’s why we have alphabets in the first place.
I think if you go on a witchhunt - you're probably going to find witches. I did write an even longer post but I always wonder if there is any value in it. Flags are visual shorthand. They're useful. If you don't have a good flag - don't use one. But for some languages it's easy because the language is named after the country or the people and huge % of the speakers are there. And it's just obtuse to pretend they're not related. Native speakers know things they don't even know they know. A book isn't the language. A dictionary isn't the language. The spoken language precedes and supersedes it. It's a reaction to a time where people were told they were 'wrong' in the way they spoke because it didn't match some old textbook someone decided to write. And that's just in the same language! "you can't use a double negative" "what about quadruple negatives?" *head explodes* Part of growing up was realising the neat little borders on the map were actually a lot less neat in real life. Then growing up a bit more is realising we still use terms even if they're fuzzier than we thought they were because it still communicates what we want to say. And at the end of the day... that's the point. Oh, and no matter what, someone is always going to take what you say the wrong way! So no, you're not 'feeding into' whatever. Most of the time. Probably.
Thank you for making this video. As an Indian, this has been bugging me for a long time. I'm bilingual in Tamil and English, and I would say that English is my preferred language of communication, although I do speak my native (lol ironic) quite well. My schooling was entirely in English, I speak to my friends in English, and almost the entirety of my reading, both online and offline, is in English. Also, I've had to learn English myself, so wouldn't I be in a better position to teach someone English? A native speaker has had the neurological pathways built in naturally, so things have just always made intuitive sense to them. They didn't have to think about rules, their exceptions and things that don't make sense and things that simply have to be learnt lol. I also speak Hindi, though less ably, and the native speaker thing doesn't seem to bother them as much. I'm not exactly sure why, though.
Oh man, as someone living in Ukraine and who learned Ukrainian, this is such an interesting video. Did you ever hear of Ivan Dziuba’s “Internationalism or Russification”? It’s about culture as a whole but language is a part of it. Saying that the uniformity of the USSR is done to “uniting the people”, but it’s all Russian focused and the languages and cultures of the other countries (especially Ukrainian) were given a complete second class status, a ripple effect you can sadly see today. When I first moved in 2017, so many similar stories from people who mainly grew up speaking Ukrainian, that when they went to a more Russian speaking city (like Kyiv at a time) there would be an assumption that they were less educated or from a village. A big talking point by pro-Russian voices is “well people in those eastern territories speak russian, so it seems pretty right that they should be a part of russia” (and the assumption about language isn’t really true either when you remember that Surzhyk is a thing). While inside the country there is a movement towards speaking Ukrainian more often, I never run into people who would say that those who still speak russian are not Ukrainian (even if they don’t like hearing russian constantly on the street)
Oh yeah and I should bring up that Ivan Dziuba wrote it in the 1960s and it destroyed his career and sent him to prison since it was considered anti-soviet
Well Ukraine is a pretty fascist country when it comes to minority languages' rights, Poroshenko's slogan was "Army, Language, Church" lmao but they're still playing the victim card. Ukrainian was an official language during the Soviet era, even all non-Ukranians had to learn it, so in a way USSR was more liberal than modern Ukraine when it comes to language policy, soviets never banned the use of minority languages like Ukraine does now
@@popkinbobkin saying “playing the victim card” about a country currently defending itself from a genocide tells me everything I need to know about how serious I should take any opinion you have, not to mention the factual inaccuracies in all your other statements.
Semantics. 🤷🏽♀️ I don't think the flag thing or calling people native/non-native speakers are big deals at all. There are more important things to do... like actually learn more languages. I struggle enough with that. 😅
@@jamieemerson2741 Where is it a thing? Incidentally, as a Brit who lived for 10 years in the US, I can name you a number of countries whose mother tongues are not English, but where a native English speaker would have no chance of obtaining a position as an English teacher, as they prefer their own.
@@mikeball6182you realize you just described discrimination, right? do you think british english is more "native" than botswanan english or nigerian english? what's goin on in ur noggin
@@Isaac-LizardKing I said "native English speaker" I made no mention of nationality, but yes, as the people who first developed the language, we English do have prior claim.
I’d like to see more regional languages get the resources and recognition that they deserve. Although a majority of people may not want to study those languages, there are enthusiasts like us who will happily dive headfirst into those rabbit holes.
I actually, no lie, started thinking deeply about this as a child. I was 12 when I learned it's called, "Spanish," and not, "Mexican." I was already a history nerd who read books in class instead of paying attention, but yeah this topic is what really threw me into the world of learning and appreciating cultures. Great thought provoking video. I'm not sure how long it's been since I thought about this. Its really important. I think it has something to do with the way Latin American immigrants are treated. It adds to the idea that they're savages that use what the "Holy Race is gracious enough to build them." Thank you for sharing.
I just realized a funny irony. Latin American people are looked down on for using European languages, yet we're exactly the same for speaking English instead of American lol
The most egregious case of flag usage I’ve seen was in Canada. At a provincial park, they had brochures in English and French. For English, they used the Canadian flag 🇨🇦. For French they used the France flag 🇫🇷. As a proud bilingual Canadian myself, I don’t even know where to begin on how stupid this was.
@@stephenspackman5573 I would say stupidity. I would be very surprised to see French represented by the French flag here in Canada; it would be much more common to see it represented by the Québec flag. (Undoubtedly this would annoy many francophones from New Brunswick, Ontario, or Manitoba, whose French is no less French than that of the Québecois, but, well.)
If they want to use foreign flags, use England for English and France for French, because those terms are related. Otherwise, use Québec and British Columbia?
It should have been UK and France, if they really wanted to be clear. The Canadian flag means nothing linguistically since Canada is an officially bilingual country
8:03 "Does it matter what language they think in?". Do people usually think in a fixed language? I find I usually think in my most recently used language, even if I'm not fluent in it.
@@ClayChiarelott I am not really trying to make that kind of claim at all. I know two languages fluently(Norwegian and English), and the one I think in is the one I recently used, and this seems anecdotally to be the case in many of my friends and acquaintances too. I am also learning Chinese(am married to a Chinese and lived there for a while), and if I have been using Chinese a lot I find myself thinking in it, and substituting English/Norwegian words or images where I come short. I am not lying about it, or trying to be special, my comment about it was because I thought that was the default mode of operations. I find it a bit unpleasant of you to insinuate I am lying for attention. Looking at forums this seems to be a relatively common experience among language learners[1,2], guess they are also all very special. I couldn't dig up any research on the topic(though notably that doesn't mean it doesn't exist), but I found a forum of researchers, some of whom are being suspiciously special[3]. It definitely doesn't seem my experience is anything out of the ordinary, you wouldn't be monolingual or at the very least English native by any chance? I'd imagine that would make it far more difficult to become immersed in different languages, and finding yourself thinking in them. [1] - www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/br2arp/those_that_are_fluent_in_2_or_more_languages_do/ [2] - www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3lpmea/do_you_always_think_in_your_first_language/ [3] - www.researchgate.net/post/In-which-language-do-you-think
Being native just means it was your primary language(s) you grew up learning subconsciously which can be multiple languages. Plenty of Spanish Americans are perfectly fluent in English and Spanish because they grew up with both languages. @@iverbrnstad791 If you had to actually sit down and learn a language, you're not a native speaker. A 3 year old is not studying a text book or using an app or hiring a tutor.
I almost always think in English. Especially when I'm normally speaking Telugu to my family, I still do deep thought in English, but I formulate in Telugu before speaking. I find that while thoughts may enter my head in Telugu when I've been speaking Telugu, it's still usually "translated" into English for the remainder of my thought process. When speaking French however I do find i start thinking in French and even some of my deeper thought levels are in French, but when I get nervous it immediately switches to English and formulating in French. There are times when I'm speaking French or Telugu normally, and then have to switch to English for a friend or my partner and I accidentally don't switch/assume that person understood what was said and just wait for them to respond... Meanwhile they don't know what's going on in French/Telugu. I learned English as a first language, and was the language for the majority of my academic endeavors. I also studied French for a decade, through the university level. Telugu however was taught to me informally at home or with family. I think this academic vs. Informal dichotomy I have with these languages are probably why I can engage in deeper thought in French or English but not Telugu. I don't think I have the vocab or grammar for Telugu that I do for English or French. Being multilingual is a fun, lifelong thought experiment.
I agree on the flag thing, it is indeed kinda annoying. but I think the term 'native' has a precise meaning that the language is acquired in childhood, not learned at any point later in life (although it is true that at some point the person might get less eloquent in their native language than they are in the learned one). Therefore the term 'native level' would mean that the majority of the other speakers of the language will hardly pick up on the fact the the language is learned as a second one.
Isn't what you are describing rather the term "mother tongue" than "native speaker"? To me at least, native speaker describes how other people perceive your speech, not necessarily at what point you started learning that language. In most situations this coincides, but it doesn't have to.
One thing I learned from lurking on the "English Language Learners" forum on Stack Exchange is that there are a lot of mostly unspoken, unwritten language rules that a native speaker will intuitively pick up without realizing it, and what often differentiates a non-native speaker from a native one is that they won't follow those rules.
English is spoken by multiple countries so of course apps or anything else that wants to quickly use a visual representation will have to exclude all the other countries that also speak the same language. Usually they choose England or America. A lot of the time it's England I've seen and it feels like a small slight to me because I'm a native English speaker but I have never been to England. But I can deal. It's mostly for practicality and I get that. And technically England was the first country to speak English. If you have an alternative to flags please suggest it though. If you write the name of the language then suddenly you're not speaking a universal language but the one you're writing in. Flags are just really practical. Most of the time the term "native speaker" is pretty clear cut. The majority of people don't grow up wondering what their native language is. Sure you get some exceptions but I don't see any issues with the term and I don't find it confusing. The exception I can think of would be people that started growing up in one country but then got uprooted and moved to another country. But if someone says they consider themselves to be a native English speaker I generally just go with it. They know better than me - they are them after all. Again, if we didn't say native speaker what else would we say? I guess you could define the term in every video if you want to be clear to make sure everyone is on the same page.
I consider myself a native speaker of English and Spanish. I grew up in the US, did my formal education there, but spoke Spanish outside of school. But I've had people both in the US and Mexico tell me i am wrong. Why? Because i grew up in the US, therefore i cannot be a native Spanish speaker. Or, my mother tongue is Spanish, so I can't be a native English speaker. I also have a different accent when i speak English since i haven't spoken it on a regular basis since march 2020. One thing i am sure of though, Spanish is my only mother tongue. It is the only language i speak every single day without fail, since the day i could talk. No language will ever equal that, no matter how good i get at it.
I suppose the main thing that bugs me in the prioritization of modern/living languages over "dead" languages and of speaking over reading. I do speak many languages when I can but I read a whole lot more languages than I speak. I studied philology and have used those skills to learn many related languages, principally for reading. Of course I try to talk whenever I can. Yet I've had people tell me I don't "really" know a language when I can read novels and textbooks in it comfortably but I struggle to have a conversation in it.
I saw a question in a personality test asking whether I'd pick a dead or living language if I could magically learn one. I answered that I'd rather learn a dead language with that power. Why? Because you can always learn living languages normally unlike with dead ones.
I'm really glad to see that someone else finds the Yiddish flags suspect. Moreover, I'm glad this is getting attention. I grew up speaking a German dialect for which the only reasonable flag is 🇺🇸 (but the understanding is that this stands for English…), and I hold an Austrian passport, so I've always felt a lot of confusion around the shorthand of using flags to represent languages. You said it best in reference to France's now-former policies surrounding Metropolitan French. It's absolutely a form of cultural genocide.
What's been bugging me in the language learning space are what I call "method purists". People who have glommed onto some particular strategy for language learning and then claim that it is THE way to learn language, and everybody else are morons, or are irrevocably ruining their ability to reach native-level fluency (see what I did there?) or will somehow "fossilize" early-stage errors into their brains or whatever. My experience with different methods is admittedly broad but not deep--classroom pedagogy, linguistics-informed study, mix-media casual (Duolingo), and comprehensible input--but in my experience these methods *build* on one another. They all have weaknesses that the other ones compensate for. E.g. CI is great and all, but boy is it frustrating to recognize some new word but not *quite* be able to intuit the meaning from context. Isn't it better to just look up the word? Why *not* take advantage of dictionaries and strategic interrogation of google translate to figure out meanings more quickly, so I can then not be stuck on that one word for who knows how long? But no, if you do that, then you have the CI brojobs say "No! Don't look it up! Then you're just learning the language, not acquiring it!" With an implied "you beta cuck" on the end. The pedagogic method of just looking something up in a reference work compensates for one of the weaknesses of CI. Likewise, pedagogic learning is great for literal use of a language, but kinda terrible for gaining facility with non-literal idioms. But CI is fabulous for getting exposure to idioms! They build on each other. They compensate for each other's weaknesses. And *every* method I've used has contributed something that the other methods didn't, and has increased my ability to make connections, deduce meanings, etc. The method purists can have fun in their little sandboxes, but they'll never convince me that their sand is absolutely better than anybody else's sand. Meanwhile, I'm gonna have even more fun playing in *all* the sandboxes.
Haha, really like your sandbox reference. It also pains me when I don't get a new word from context while reading. Similar happens when I understand all words, but do not get a specific grammar concept (for example the usage of 'ce' in italian sometimes). I just have to look it up. Could never be a CI purist or my head would explode 😅
I feel like this is more of an issue for larger countries which encompass multiple cultures, less so for smaller countries which are formed around a single identity everyone feels drawn to.
Yes. I am thinking that England has had a history of colonisation. Therefore they have been in conflict with the poeple trying to protect themselves by forming nation states. Their ruthless opression of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, African, Native-American, Indian, Indonesian cultures. Bigger countries want to preserve their power, therefore the idea of a nation state is dangerous, and the people that define it. I think that this cultural undertow can explain American foreign policy.
French forces protecting their homeland during WW1 where nationalists. Nationalism in Poland was an important factor in separationg them from Sovjet. Ghandi was an "Indian nationalist", and spendt a lot of time trying to construct an Indian identity. sfbe
In my experience when you dig a little deeper in the countries that claim to be formed around one identity and their "natural" territory you find skeletones in the closets. Most of them if not all of them will have minorites in them that has been or still are repressed because of the single identity you talk about. Just look to Japan and the Nordic countries. These are countries that are often portrayed as being formed around single national identities, but Japan has the Ainu and the Nordics have the Sami. Both being minority populations which has as long an history in areas that make up these countries as the main population. These minorites have faced horrible discrimination. Never trust a nation state that claimes to be homogeneous.
I used to use the flags thing as a conversation starter on dating apps all the time. if you know your familial history, you're pretty much guaranteed to trip over an ancestor who would never in a million years identify with the flag you boost, despite living on the territories they claim to represent.
Id argue you dont need a nation state to have a flag. Ukrainians had national flags long before statehood and the Indigenous Metis Nation in Canada has its own flags but was never a nation state and is actually older than the Canadian nation state.
@@languagejones6784 And I'd argue that's both a good thing (eg indigenous and national rights) and it is a bad thing (eg fascism). It's a double edged sword. Having the Ukrainian flag associated with Ukrainian as a language is part of Ukrainian self-determination, and many of us would view divorcing it as an attack on our independence. But in another context, Mandarin Chinese being associated with communist China as opposed to Taiwan sends a message about who is really considered valid. So my point is that there is potential for this to buttress fascism or linguistic imperialism but also potential to buttress linguistic ANTI-imperialism - indigenous and minority language rights and the rights of nations to have their own nation states vis-a-vis imperialist nations trying to repress them.
@@MasiukAYES! Thanks for expressing exactly what I wanted to comment to Dr Jones. It really seems to me like flags and languages and nationalities, like everything else on Earth, can be healthful or harmful or both, depending on how seriously you take them and what you do with them
"Is actually older than the Canadian nation state" is a meaningless and ludicrous statement. It's also funny how a group of invaders can interbreed with an indigenous people and somehow be considered part of "First Nations".
This video is utterly insane, and people cheering on are like what, unable to disagree with a youtuber? Flags are racist? Native speaker is a racist term? Pure, unadulterated insanity. - Adûnâi
What symbols to use instead of flags so that users find their way around? What word to use instead of "native speaker" to signify the meant skill level?
Doesn't this ignore, that people, or communities, always have an urge to find common grounds and will define their borders by them? Languages will therefore often be a part of the same borders a culture will find itself in.
I think, "native" is so convenient, because its so fuzzy. You can use it to collectively refer to many different things. And as an aspirational goal it is more useful then "i want to be able to speak the language like someone who lived there since he was two years old".
Flags are used as symbols for languages on UA-cam, because this is also customary on ATMs and elsewhere in public. Of course this is problematic when a country has more than one language or one language is spoken in more than one country. (In Austria the German version is marked with the Austrian flag.) But it is convenient and, in my opinion, not harmful. Which symbols do you propose instead?
What a wonderful conversation! As an Australian, I'll tolerate using the Union Jack to represent English. We still have it in our flag (and this commemorating of our colonial bloody past is a contentious issue in Australia for many) so it's been normalised to a certain degree, just like you discussed in the video. Seeing the stars and stripes to represent the language that I speak makes me want to flip a table. We spell differently, we speak differently, even some grammar is different (I will NEVER understand the phrase "I'll write her", where's the 'to'!???). Semantics matter.
What are thoughts on "mother tongue"? I think it's a good way to describe what you spoke at home growing up, but I've also heard it used as something a person maybe never learned, but belongs to their heritage. Like, if you never really had the opportunity or were maybe discouraged from learning your parents' language(s).
it's an interesting question especially for bilingual families. My cousins grew up speaking with their father in Armenian and with their mother in Hungarian....
Yeah, it goes both ways. Some survive in spite of being inside a country with an official language, and some survive because of it. Languages like Welsh, Scottish, and Irish would have probably died out years ago without their local governments helping to keep them spoken by the younger generations.
One could argue, however, that such defensive nationalism is only born in response to offensive nationalism. Reaching admittedly further, reactive nationalism has everything it needs to become aggressive when conditions change.
As a Québecois, this is a pretty sensitive topic for me too. We want to protect our language and culture despite the omnipresent english supremacy. We cannot compete with the production value of american movie and TV series and we live in an english country. Most of us are not separatists, but neither do we identify much with our english neighbors and their americanized culture.
@MrOvipare there is also a issue that is kinda unique to colonized places like the Americas and Africa, by elevating one old language of thr colonial power, one risks destroying the already versatile and possibly dying language of the Native people
@@codymoon7552 nobody here is denying the wrongs of colonialism, two different things can be both important. However, equating Québec’s language and culture as the language of France is dismissive and ignorant at best.
What alternatives are there to represent a language in a visual medium? You could say the written name of the language, but on a list of language names, it gets hard to make them stand out and if you go ahead and, say, use a font like Fraktur for German, then you're back to where you started. As for "native speaker" is it better to use "L1" ?
The first two written symbols of the language's name, in that language. EN - English DE - German 日本 - Japanese 官话 - Mandarin 广东 - Cantonese Arabic - عَرَ سَوَ - Swahili
Not going to lie, before I watched this, based solely on the title and thumbnail, I admittedly judged it and thought this was going to be stupid. Just ten minutes of unfiltered idiocy. . . . . . . . . . . . . I was right!
What about the names of languages? I speak English though I have no affiliation with the nation of England. Names of nation states and their languages are intimately intertwined in many cases
Yeah, I think we’re overthinking this one and pouring all sorts of meaning into flags for languages. Right wing? They’re just flags. Is it possible you may be seeing things through a leftwing lens? Maybe? A little?
Watch even a few of his videos and his political lens comes though quite quickly 😁 But hey, at least he’s straightforward about what he believes. I can always respect that even if I don’t always agree with his POV.
The use of Fraktur as visual shorthand for "fascism" or "dark ideology" is extremely problematic, since blackletter type was abolished during the NS regime for being "Schwabacher Jew letters", with Antiqua being favoured for its imperial heritage I strongly urge you to change the thumbnail, and maybe you could even make a video explaining why it's wrong. Schwabacher and Fraktur are an important part of Central European typographic tradition, and shouldn't be falsely politicized like this
🤷 It's not like the NSDAP is the only definer of the far right, neofascists and neonazis have used the script alot in the past 60 years. It's literally one of the hints that can be used to look into a page or group further to look for far right dog whistles, and you'll find them.
🤷 It's not like the NSDAP is the only definer of the far right, neofascists and neonazis have used the script alot in the past 60 years. It's literally one of the hints that can be used to look into a page or group further to look for far right dog whistles, and you'll find them.
You are committing the same sin you denounce, O DoppelpunktDDD, but if the end of your username is accurate, there might be no good reason to rebuke you over it.
Yeah, you have a point, Hebrew is my mother tongue but if I will make a video on Hebrew with the Israeli flag, it would be a big nationalist statement and I wouldn’t like to do it.
At the same time, Israel is the only country where Modern Hebrew is the default spoken language. So the fact that using the flag to denote the language is a political statement is really not the fault of the language at all, but more the fault of people who over-politicize everything about Israeli and/or Jewish culture.
I didn't think i could disagree with you from both sides, @@rapramix, but apparently i can! @_oaktree_ is very correct that there's a massive (and massively harmful and/or hateful) movement to politicize every thing having to do with Jews and Israelis. This is how you get so many "progressive" people who think it's ok to discriminate against someone because of their nationality, as long as it's Israeli, or because of their religion, as long as it's mainstream Judaism. How many other people can't use the flag of their country as a simple signifier of their origin/identity without being accused of every perversion & crime in the book? And at the same time, the resurrection of Hebrew in the modern era as a spoken vernacular definitely had serious political elements. The success of Modern Hebrew was considered one of the greatest victories of the Return to Zion movement by its adherents, both for the love of the ancestral tongue itself and also because they thought any functional nation-state (like the one they were building) needs a language.
To me, it just says that's where most Hebrew speakers live. I noticed that this video acts as if there's an implication that Hebrew is the only language spoken there? I don't understand how we even got there.
@@MRed0135 no, also Palestinian Arabic . The thing is that the Israeli flag represents a political statement while the Hebrew language isn’t political per se. Although , I wouldn’t be shocked if Eliezer Ben Yehuda was a Zionist . Nonetheless, you can speak Hebrew from age 10 months like me and also oppose Zionism
I'm in the "you're overthinking it" camp here, but appreciate the thoughtful video. I am learning portuguese and like the flag on duolingo since it clearly signals "this is the variant of Portuguese spoken in Brazil and so you should probably try a different app". I don't know the Spanish course but presumably if yiu were going to live in Puerto Rico it would be useful to see at a glance that the course you were learning used the specific grammar, accent etc of Madrid so you could decide if that was really what you wanted. I don't think the flag signifies my endorsement of the constitution of that country, just tells me what to expect. More to the point, what else would you use as a visual icon for the language? Native speaker is a bit more problematic - I can see situations where a person who speaks a language to the same standard loses out because it's their second language, but it's a decent shorthand. The more complicated versions you described are difficult to parse snd don't tell me whether the teacher I'm about to hire really knows what they're talking about or is going to lead me astray with half-arsed ideas of the language. I'd describe myself as fluent in portuguese but I make a lot of mistakes that a native speaker wouldn't. And native just means you learned it from birth not that you are a member of the indigenous people of that country - so a native speaker of American English isn't implying they're a native American or that English is the language that has always been spoken in America or whatever (native and indigenous are two words that could usefully be teased apart to reduce some of the friction around this imho) So I think you've made some good points, and it's all food for thought, but I'm not really convinced.
Really interesting stuff, and very relevant to English. The world seems to divide into those that use The Stars and Stripes and those that use the Union Flag to represent English. To say the very least of it, both carry connotations, to peoples around the world, that go well beyond the linguistic. Are we to expect a speaker of English from, say, Drogheda to embrace the use of the Butcher's Apron to represent his or her language? And here in the UK, we have bedded-down, ancient language communities that speak Scots, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, and Belfast is one of the centres of a major revival in Irish; and that's not to mention our speakers of Subcontinental and African languages, Caribbean creoles, Yiddish, etc (my home borough is, according to some measures, the most linguistically diverse neighbourhood in the whole of Europe, and includes Europe's largest Yiddish-speaking community). The situation is scarcely less complex Stateside! We are not English, in other words, and English is not us. When, as a Limey tourist, I visited the Smithsonian in the 90s, and was wondering whether to get a guide, I remember noticing that Spanish was represented by the flag of Spain, but Portuguese by the flags of both Portugal and Brazil. English was Old Glory; and that alone. I probably noticed the inconsistency because I'm a non-American Anglophone, but actually you could argue it's Portuguese that throws the issue most starkly into relief. If you're referencing Portugal and Brazil, Smithsonian, why aren't you referencing Mozambique and Angola? And why include Brazil (the most populous Lusaphone nation) but not Mexico, whose population is two-and-a-half times that of Spain AND WHICH IS YOUR NEIGHBOUR TO THE SOUTH? I'm not sure there are answers that any of us could really defend.
The representating Spanish with the Spanish flag instead of the Mexican one is for a simple reason. They don't teach the Mexican dialect in schools. I didn't take Spanish in high school because, even though I was a 6 hour drive from Mexico, they taught Castilian! Being taught the dialect of his colonizers by a brown guy (RIP Mr Murillo) was too much for me.
@@overlordnat I can't remember whether it was an audio guide or a written one, but either way, good point. I find myself wondering, now, what they do in Ireland; if I'd had my wits about me I'd have checked when I went to Kilmainham Gaol a couple of years ago. My guess is that they just use the word "English".
I wonder about the logic of reviving Scots Gaelic considering they came from Ireland and committed cultural and linguistic genocide on the Picts and then named the country after themselves. That doesn't make what the English did to the Scots right, but it does make reviving Scots Gaelic kind of illogical.
@@DanSmith-j8y I don't see the illogic, I have to say. Gaelic culture in the Highlands and Islands may have resulted from conquest, but that doesn't mean that its decline isn't to be mourned, or that its final extinction, were that to happen, wouldn't be an irreparable loss. Incidentally, the suppression of Gaelic culture following the Second Jacobite Rising was most zealously pursued by Scottish Lowlanders, though of course with the backing of Hanoverian England (but not, I assume, of Jacobite England). A simple Mel-Gibson-style English-v-Scots narrative doesn't really work in the 17th and 18th centuries, because (a) Jacobite and Hanoverian factions cut across national boundaries, and (b) Scotland was divided against itself ethnically in a particularly bitter way. The discovery and celebration of the Gaels by the Lowlanders, long after their defeat and eclipse, was a product of 19th century Romanticism.
The Spain flag for Duolingo Spanish is very misleading given that the Spanish taught on that app is clearly Latin American in both pronunciation and grammar (e.g. no vosotros verb forms).
Heh! I'm Swiss. So how am I to represent my Swiss German with a flag? Localised websites often combine two flags or add a "D", "F" or "I" to the Swiss flag. I have never come across localisation for Rumantsch...
Dude. Spain - Spanish Germany - German France - French In Luxembourg, they speak Luxembourgish. Like... it's in the word. You're constructing a problem here
That's a funny point actually. I was half expecting him to bitch about language NAMES, like "ohh, it's called 'Spanish' but that name doesn't represent all the other peoples worldwide who speak it that aren't from Spain" or conversely "it's called 'Spanish' but there are many Spanish people who speak other local languages, this is ERASURE" I could go on.
Definitely not a ultranationalist or even a nationalist at all, but if linguistic nativism is a "Napoleon" move I feel tempted to do it just for the sake of Napoleon
This feels to me analogous to how social and grammatical gender are different but we unfortunately use the same words to represent them, leading us to associate them directly with one another when in fact their actual association isn't as strong. Similarly, e.g. France and French are different but we unfortunately use the same flags (and words, I suppose, perhaps unavoidably) to represent them, again leading to a mental association that's stronger than their actual association is.
The flag thing has bothered me for some time now. I'm a non-native Mandarin speaker. What flag do they use? Usually, the flag of the PRC. This is a political flag, not even a national flag, FAR from being a linguistic flag. So we can use the flag of Taiwan, right? Well, that's a political flag, too, and in both of those countries, there are other very widely-used languages. The native speaker thing, I have to give some thought to, but a related topic came up with me in a group on social media. It was a perfectly respectful discussion, which turns out to not be as unusual as some people might say, but that's beside the point. The discussion was about learning Guarani for immigrants to Paraguay. Now, if you want to go to Paraguay, Spanish is the first go-to language, BUT Guarani is used every bit as much. And that brought us to using Javanese on Java, even if you speak Indonesian. Or Cantonese in southern China, or Nahuatl in Oaxaca. In all of those cases, the *dominant* language will get you by just fine, day to day, but a lot of the people in those places - I would argue, the cool ones - code-switch, and knowing some of the *local* language opens up a whole new world that you would not have access to without at least some well-placed words in the local language. And those local languages bear NO similarity to the colonial language imposed on them, but the locals meld them seamlessly. And, as you pointed out, the flag of Spain, used to represent the Spanish language, gives just a LITTLE BIT of power to people who want Catalán or Euskara to disappear. Not much power, but it's the wrong message. Entirely by the way of vexillology, for China, I'm a big fan of the Five-Colored flag. That is the only non-political flag that China ever had, as far as I know. They should go back to that...but it still doesn't represent Mandarin Chinese. Nothing does. The Five-Colored flag represents speakers of five different languages (all of which are featured on PRC folding money, weirdly).
As a Brazilian I'm all in favor of keeping using flags because they use the Brazilian flag and that makes the Portuguese angry and the Portuguese MUST be angry. Keep the good job, guys!
Sorry if I'm just slow, but I've had to break the video down for myself in this comment, in an attempt to understand what the hell your point is. This video was very frustrating to listen to for me, and that despite the fact that I was very intrigued by its subject. I found the video extremely difficult to follow and felt like I was left with almost nothing of real substance in the end. "Problems" identified: - use of flags as symbols of languages - use of the term "native speaker" Why are they problems? - they have roots in (ultra)nationalist and/or fascist ideologies - continued usage today normalized their original meanings You hear the shape of this argument all the time, especially when speaking about languages and their use, and I don't like it. I won't get too deep into the why, but by analogy, I don't like learning languages by memorizing rules and nervously applying them mid conversation, and I especially would rather not speak my own native language this way, and much less *think about concepts* with such restrictions in place. Just convince me with your arguments for why a thing is bad, please, not why it used to be bad, and I'll acquire that knowledge and know what to do. I am a thinking human, able to be convinced. That paragraph aside, I was prepared to hear you out, like you asked. But unfortunately, it felt like you were trying to shake me off your train of thought, rather than lead me to your destination. 3:24 "I'm just trying to go into this with a clear picture of the results here." I first had written here a longer description of my frustrations, but I'll be brief and say that I don't think the 30 preceding seconds were very clear. 4:36 "So in this case one language was imposed as a way of cultivating good citizens of a nation state and imposing that national identity." And then, paraphrasing, in the germanic case a common-ish shared language clued people together into one folk and state. Here we're talking about fascism, alright. But then you go off into tangents along a thread that I'm really struggling to follow. Each sentence in isolation makes sense, but I don't get the story you're trying to tell. Yes, you point out problems with using flags to represent languages, problems that have been pointed out before by many people, but none of these address the claim you made at the start of the video. Where fascism? 6:51 Now for the term "native speaker" 7:36 "And that last bit is the rub" Thanks, there we go. I think it's difficult to talk about language levels in general. I'll hear someone talking up a friend of theirs who speaks a certain language so well, only to meet this individual and have it turn out that they basically only speak enough to order at a restaurant. It doesn't matter what terms were used specifically to describe this person's language level. The simple fact is just that my bar for speaking a language well is different than the one who was describing their friend. Even more rigorous scales, like the A1-C2 system or whatever, are flawed, because one grade is not enough to describe your performance across multiple axes like writing, speaking, listening, or reading, as well as in all situations and topics. Any real attempt at describing someone's level of mastery of a language will need to describe their history with it, when and how they learned it, and what they've used it for. But do you notice, even in the context of such a detailed description of a person's history, the term "native speaker" might be useful! Especially with followup information to specify what you mean by the term! From one thing to another, I thought you would bring up Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as an example where language-flag conflation can be used for fascistic purposes, attempting to justify the invasion using an argument like "The people there are clearly Russian, just listen to how they talk!" But then you maybe also would have to mention Russian-speaking Ukrainians these days embracing the Ukrainian language in order to distance themselves from Russia. The thing goes both ways. Anything that can be used for unification, I suppose, can also end up excluding those not united. We Norwegians used our cultural heritage and language as a way to find our own identity and distance ourselves from Denmark, and our flag and the formalization of our multiple official languages were a very large part of that process. And it worked! We became a country and felt like it! But then today, immigrants that don't learn the language will end up on the outside. Those that want to become residents or citizens need to prove their proficiency in it. But should I then not call anyone a "native speaker" so as not to shine a light on the fact that immigrants and refugees have it hard in their host countries linguistically speaking? I'll end my rambling, ranting response on a question, just in case anyone even bothers to read what I've written: If flags are problematic as symbols, are the names we use for different languages that much better? Would you rather see the symbols "Spanish" rather than the symbol "🇪🇸"? How about "Castillano"?
"Even more rigorous scales, like the A1-C2 system or whatever, are flawed, because one grade is not enough to describe your performance across multiple axes like writing, speaking, listening, or reading, as well as in all situations and topics. " - have you ever tried to pass exam at C2 level?
@@marikothecheetah9342 Pass an exam? No, and I hope I'll never have to. "Goodhart's law", and all that. But I have been asked to complete a test to assess my level on that scale, so as to be placed in the right language class, to be grouped together with students of approximately the same level. Needless to say, for a small sized language school, attempting to group students so coarsely is bound to lead to frustrations.
@@frodethorsenbrseth5014 well, as a person who did attend such exam I can tell you - your little assessment isn't even remotely close to the actual exam. The C2 exam is pretty different than up to C1 and is based on long reading, long listening, long writing and all this requires a native like a bit of specialist language knowledge around college level knowledge and the knowledge gap is even bigger than between B2 and C1. You basically work WITH every possible way of communication in the language and don't choose any answer - you give that answer yourself. The same with speaking, of course. And yeah, I'd easily count people who hold C1 level exam as the native level (sometimes even an academic level, since natives can have low communications skills as well). I wouldn't discredit the highest level of the language exams (well, maybe JLPT, because then you are at the level of a middle schooler :P) but for example HSK has now new levels and you can reach skills equal to people who GRADUATED from university. If that's not native level - I don't know what is. :/
@@marikothecheetah9342 my point is not to say that passing a C2 exam is worthless, rather that the scale is not granular enough to tell you much about a person's language level. Much like how someone may be a "native speaker" while illiterate, you could also be able to read and listen at a B2 level without being able to speak at all. I should know, 'cause I've been there!
I once got into an unexpectedly heated fight with a friend over the very concept of "native" speakers and of some language being objectively better -- more skilled, more effective at communicating its point -- than other. This was all about English (not ranking different languages against each other), and it turned out my friend had some severe trauma over the thought of having their language usage (writing) be judged in any way, so ultimately we had to agree just not to discuss it anymore, because the topic was hurting them. But to me it *had* seemed obvious that there was a clear answer. Native speakers exist, since we can rather easily pick up on people whose language is weirdly off (like the Uncanny Valley effect), and maybe the lines aren't quite where I'd expect them to be, but those lines still *exist* -- right? And a skilled writer (or orator) can use language in a way that clearly and unambiguously communicates their point using word choice and phrasing appropriate to the listeners and the environment, whereas a child hasn't yet developed the skill to say what they mean how they mean using words that don't muddle the attempt at communication. So clearly there's a way to rank language usage, like saying that the Mona Lisa was drawn more skillfully than a child's stick-figure attempt at drawing their family -- even if there's also value to that stick figure. (And I never intended to assert that ranking skillfullness somehow implied that the stick figure was... negative, in some way? Or that the end goal of every language user "should be" to get to the Mona Lisa level -- that's ridiculous. One can always improve, but one is not required to improve. One can always decide that the level they're at is fine for their needs and that they'll devote their energy to improving other skills instead.) You've made me see that the concept of native speakers is fuzzier than I had anticipated. I'm not sure what to do with that data point. And I'm not sure what, if anything, it implies about my assertion that language usage is rankable.
P.S. This is the metric I've developed over the years, the existence of which led to the fight: There are different stages of art (including the art of language) that we can grow through: 0. Doodler 1. Amateur 2. Sophomore 3. Apprentice 4. Master 5. Artisan ...I've messed around with the terms over the years and I'm not quite happy with them, but they amount to the following concepts: 0. I don't even yet have the conception that I'm working toward a goal; I'm just developing proto-skills 1. My skill is rudimentary but at least I have some goal in mind; also, because I haven't yet internalized any rules, I can create things that higher levels literally lose the ability to create 2. I have learned some Rules and now I'm stuck in that mindset, that there are Rules and that those who don't follow the Rules are somehow doing something wrong 3. I have learned that Rules are really more like Guidelines, and started to branch out a bit, exploring the new freedom to "break" the Rules and see where that leads me 4. I have mastered the craft enough that I can use the skill however I like. I understand the purpose of the "Rules" / Best Practices, and I know when and how to break those guidelines for effect. 5. I have so immersed myself in the medium that I no longer consciously think about the "Rules" or breaking them, I just Do and it comes together the way I intend or a way that transcends my intentions That's how I started thinking about levels of skill, whether writing or art or skating or pottery or whatever. It seems like a useful framework. Doesn't mean that everyone needs to move toward mastery, or that people whose skill is or remains at the lower levels should feel inferior; there's reason for all the levels to exist. Some of my favorite fan art came from a rather amateur artist and it delights me because of how energetic and distinctive it is -- it could never be drawn by an artist who'd learned how shoulders attach to the body.
The discussion of flags had me thinking back to a coupe of decades ago when I was a preschool teacher. We had a visiting tutor that would come in a few times a week to introduce Spanish language lessons to our class of mostly non-Spanish-speaking students. In our weekly newsletter home to families, I added a little box with that week's Spanish vocabulary with Anglo-friendly pronunciation guides so that families could engage their kids at home. Unthinkingly, I snagged a clip art of the Spanish flag to use as a visual marker for that little corner of the newsletter. Even though I wasn't yet totally awakened to the pervasive ways colonization still plays out in our contemporary world, I did have a moment of realization where I thought, "Huh, none of the kids in our class who speak Spanish are from Spain - does this graphic really reflect our classroom culture?" Not yet knowing the concept of "many Englishes" or "many Spanishes" I nonetheless also eventually reasoned that using a single flag to reflect one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world was semiotically inadequate. I eventually swapped out the single Spanish flag icon for a little border around that part of the page, consisting of flags from several (maybe all? Definitely at least a collection that covered our classroom) Spanish-speaking countries, which felt more appropriate and pluralistic.
Case for flags for languages: situation is the same as using name of peoples or countries for naming the language. Is it fine to call English language English, even if spoken by person from Nigeria or the USA? If we can call it English, then we can use flag of England, UK, USA, etc. to talk about the language in pictures. What is the alternative for identifying the English language?
Counterpoint, by way of example. As long as hispanophones continue to use the word "español" (which, by and large - and contrary to what we're often told as learners- they do, in preference to "Castellano") then IMO it's reasonable to continue to use the Spanish flag to represent that language. It's not causing confusion, or offense, or anything like that. It's just... an effective and universally understood symbol. Same with French outside France, same with English outside England. I agree on the meaningless of "native level" though. For example, some "native" speakers truly butcher their own language. By which I mean that their mastery is sufficiently lacking that they struggle to effectively communicate as well as, say, an educated language learner does. It's entirely possible to learn a language (and, indeed, the culture associated with that language) to a level where you are more proficient than the average "native" speaker. Just don't ever think you're "done". That's what bugs me the most in the language learning space: the obsession with fluency. As though every language were a level in your own personal video game which you must (and possibly could) "complete". It's the same nerve that twitches when, as people talk about their travel plans, they announce "Oh, last year we did Thailand and Vietnam. Next year we're doing New Zealand". "DID". As in, completed, done, check. Next.
The español vs castellano thing varies by region, Argentines for example tend to use castellano. I don't know if it's really a sensitive topic in Spain or not - I've heard Spaniards use both - but outside of Spain anyway the norm just depends on where someone is from and using one over another is not really a matter of etiquette.
I'm french, I'm also watching a french linguist youtuber called Linguisticae who fight regularly with the "Académie Française" on those kind of subject. Like the "purity" of the french language, how young people can't speak or read french anymore, how we are invaded by English everyday, etc. So I kinda understand that and how there are some people that try to "normalize" the language through a kinda of "nationalistic ideal" of the language. And even when it not people, it could also be some kind of social phenomenon that don't always start from an intention of normalizing the language (like the use of "native speaker"). On one end, I'm sometimes annoyed by that but on the other, it's also just a normal phenomenon. You could also say that we need to have common word and grammar to still be able to communicate. And that's somewhat necessary. The only problem is when it's too much and it's start to erase the diversity inside a language. I don't remember when it was but it happen in french at some point to normalize the language because people could not really communicate (something maybe in the 18th century, I forgot). And it was useful. But here and there, it also destroy dialect. Fortunately, it changed a bit now and you can learn some dialect in school from what I remember. You can even be evaluated on those for the "baccalauréat" (important french diploma at the end of high school). So while, it's a constant fight, I'm a bit more distant on that now. I'm a bit distant because I'm also more interested on the educative side now (also, I'm done on the politic side for now, don't want to think too much about that). And I hate the idea of "native speaker" or "native level". Seriously, that just doesn't exist and it's just harmful to learners. "Native speaker" are clone of each other, they are diversified. While it's true that, for exemple, some common word are necessary, you don't need to learn 24k most common words in newspapers. That kinda like "model citizen" ideal that should be able to read everything. But just NO. People have different jobs, different interests, they didn't had identical lives either and they didn't develop identical "language". I'm not even talking ability. That's just pure knowledge/exposure through their life. Like I can't read/understand law text or economic text in french and really understand them. Same for slang for younger people. It's also like you can't understand a joke without the ref. You can as good as you want, mastered all the grammar, learn all the word, you won't understand it. I extending that to other aspect but I pretty sure if we were able to extract the data directly from the brain of people, we will find tons of big frequency list that are all different. And I'm talking mainly word but besides that, I'm sure it would be more less true for other aspect the language. The idea of "native speaker" or "native level" erase all of that. Same when we talk about the same language in different country (I don't have the word, it's not dialect but the same things at that level). And just also for foreign learner, that's exist too. You don't need to learn everything depending on your situation. I mean, I learn some common word in English but I forgot a lot of them since I don't live in an English country. Like curtain. I don't have curtain, I have some "rideaux" because I didn't use it in more than 10 years. Like I don't particularly like small talk and since I don't live in an English country, it just didn't stick. Same for half of the word in my house. But in the same, I would probably lost some "native speaker" on math, informatics, etc. Like, I'm both "better" and "worse" than that freaking "native speaker" which doesn't mean anything. And it's not just knowledge, like I did study those subject. Part of that is "pure" language. Like word, expression, etc. And even maybe grammar in some case (whatever grammar mean here and that may also define roughly as "rules of usage"). And also, it's just more "fun" to learn what you like or just talk about you first, who you are and also talk to people that are similar to you (and also have a similar "sub-language" in that other language that you're learning). Instead of trying to be that tasteless monstrosity that doesn't mean anything and doesn't even exist called "native speaker". Anyway, I talk too much x). So, I wouldn't say "dark ideology" because that's necessary to have some "unity" at some degree (trying to be neutral here) but when it erase everything, it's not good either. It kinda does on the internet like a lot of other things but that's also just partially a social phenomenon rather than an ill-will ideology in my opinion (even I want to get angry too sometimes :v). Well partially, there's probably some equivalent of the "académie française" at those level too. Also, it's kinda useful as reference for learners too at the beginning but after that it's just a hindrance in my opinion. That is costly for some people (can't speak about themselves or what they like even at "high" level). Anyway, interesting topic but it's also kinda connect with too much things x). I need to stop here xD PS: If you have the motivation one day, please create a discord, would be a lot of fun to have the community there too. Also more useful to be ping for the new video (rather than UA-cam notification) PPS: sorry if I made too much english mistake, it's kinda late here and I can't spot the mistakes at this hour (I hope I didn't skip too much word too, tend to do that sometimes x) )
Using a flag to represent a language is like using the Prime Minister/President to represent the people of a country. Sort of sensible in most contexts? I guess so. Really useful in a small number of specific contexts? Absolutely. Offensive to a lot of people? Yeah it would be. Really problematic in a lot of cases? Yeah that too.
Totally agreed about flags from the first second, it's became obvious when working with languages spoken in the Africa.... Then,. it became to me obvious very generally
I definitely agree with the flags parts, although I am less concerned about with the nationalism/fascism part and more with the ambiguities that can arise for using them. I am a language weirdo who also know way to much about computers, so I use the unambiguous ISO language codes (e.g. EN = English, FR = French, TG = Tagalog, etc.) when making short references to various languages. I am a bit weary about getting rid of the term 'native speaker', as I do think it is quite useful and does point to something based on reality.
@@ViperMantisBut a "proficient speaker" who grew up in a culture where the language is spoken, went to school in that language, is the same as a "proficient speaker" who grew up in a culture or country where the main language is another, grew up using primarily other language and went to school in that other language? You literally can see the difference of kids born and raised in latam, with kids born and raised in the us from parents who's native language is other and teach their kids that language.
@@livavapa I'm not contesting those things being important, I'm saying that you can get those things without being tied to a geographic location, and even being tied to a geographic location with those things is not guaranteed to make someone proficient or highly proficient. It's a semantic shortcut, which is why it works colloquially. It just isn't all that accurate as people would like it to be.
All nice and dandy, but is there a simpler and less nationalist way of iconifying a language? Aren't the names of the languages themselves a bit, well, nationalist? English, Deutsch, Japanese, French... they all carry the nation state in their name. I do get your point but at the same time, I don't see an easy fix.
I think it makes sense to represent a language by nation state flag in some cases. Take for example Lithuania, modern republic of Lithuania was explicitly founded by Lithuanian speakers in resistance to occupation and russification. The country of Lithuania to this day puts national language preservation as a priority in laws etc as that is directly linked with continued existence of nation state. That is to say every person speaking Lithuanian one hundred percent would identify themselves with Lithuanian tricolour as nationhood as such first arose from linguistically determined basis. Such manner of representation of course wouldn't work with countries who have colonial origins and language doesn't determine nationality.
People do not use language to describe idiosyncrasies at the margins unless that is necessary. quite frankly it takes way more mental energy. Language requires energy to convey concepts, we cannot caveat every single thing we say every single time. A term like native-speaker works in the vast majority of cases and anchors like that are necessary when learning a new language. You have to have a general consensus on where the language is spoken and who speaks it. just my $.02
Don't care about the flag point, so sure. Change it. Whatever floats your boat there. As far as "native speaker" being a problem, just no. It just means that's the language you learned when you were first learning to speak. A person can certainly have Spanish as theor native language but have been born in the US. Same with any other language/nation of birth combination. I'm not throwing 3+ extra words into a sentence to beat around the bush, when i can just say "native language" and have 100% of the people know what I'm saying and what I mean 100% of the time. Clarity in communication is key.
The problem there has been mentioned by others in this conversation. What about people who learned more than one language when they were first learning to speak? Plus, the term is, unfortunately, often used as a form of gatekeeping in official situations.
My "native language" by your definition is not English, but I've been speaking English for decades and speak it so well that I'm far better at English than I am at my "native language."
The concept of native speaker as a level of proficiency is silly and harmful. It places a 3rd grader from UK at a higher level than Chinua Achebe or Arundhoti Roy, just because these authors are skilled in other languages too!
In casual conversation? Sure. But I think the point is being made more about situations in which it's taken as important. Like being denied a job opportunity because you're not a "native X speaker" and then have that position be given to someone who's unironically worse at X language than you are but who were born at the correct country.
@@Zancibar I've had that kind of experience. I speak excellent English-better than many people I know-but when I looked into getting a job teaching English overseas I discovered I was ineligible. I needed to either have English as my first language, or to have completed 12 years of schooling in English. Unfortunately I learnt English after I moved countries as a child, and completed my first three years of schooling in my birth country.
I don't know, man. this seems a bit too much. Ultranationalists can make a sandwich into an ultranationalist symbol, doesn't make a sandwich anymore multidimensional than bread with stuffing. Same with flags with me. I don't care which flags English, French, or Spanish are represented by, as long as the language is spoken in that country in day to day life and at home. Yes, nation-states are political entities, doesn't mean that simply referring to a flag that carries a political value equals agreeing with said political value. It's simply the flag of a country that primarily speaks that language as a primary means of communication. regardless of why, when, or how they speak it, or started speaking it. Iranian flag? Who cares? Iranians speak Farsi, that's all I care about. Yes, other languages and ethnicities exist, yes other varieties of Persian exist in other countries, but who cares about that nuance when the primary requirement is met- this language being the day to day means of communication within those political borders.
Thanks for the morning yoga. It's been a while since I had this much of a stretch. As a quick counterpoint, taking Spanish as an example, not everyone is familiar with, say, the flag of Guatemala or Ecuador. So let's say a tourist from Madrid )or Mexico City, so as to not be Spain specific)is visiting Petra in Jordan and is looking at a row of tour guides trying to find a Spanish guide, but using your separationist 'light' ideology, the two guides who DO speak Spanish and are eager to earn their daily dinars are both wearing pins of their nations. Our family from Mexico City, sadly, are not as avid a fan of vexillology as you are and therefore pass over our hungry tour guides in search of the ubiquitous earthbound yet universal symbol of Spanish, the Spanish flag. Neither the family nor the guides are much into ultra-nationalism or the historical breakdown of nation states and colonial powers, and yet both shall pass like ships in the night because of your neo-nationalist ideals. Flags are but a symbol and a tool, and only carry the weight with which you afford them. No borders, no nations. No gods, no masters.
I’m originally from Crimea, Ukraine. As many know, people in Ukraine primarily speak two languages: Ukrainian and Russian. I completely agree with you about the flags, as the Russian flag has now become a triggering symbol for many war victims in Ukraine, even though they may speak Russian.
One thing I will reproach you for is your use of Fraktur blackletter script in the still image for this video to represent “dark” or “fascist“. Blackletter script was used in Europe way before the second world war and has a variety of different forms. It was the script used for science and literature in many Germanic and Nordic countries up until the mid 20th century. Your use of it in this context is akin to using a flag in the manner against which you are advocating.
@@passatboi I was wondering if anybody would catch that. It’s not exactly the same script, but paradoxically it is evocative of national socialism, for Americans, at least, despite having been actually done away by Hitler. Of course, it was largely perceived as Germanic, as opposed to having the Jewish influence ascribed (incorrectly) to Antiqua. All of those associations, though, are 20th century developments. Unfortunately, especially with thumbnails, I always have to make a choice about what will get people’s interest. I actually resisted the urge to have an explanatory footnote, but perhaps I should put one in my description after all! For anyone else reading this and curious to know more, here’s a good starting point:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_dispute?wprov=sfti1
@@languagejones6784 Well - at least there were no long s or ligature errors in the text 😂
For me the red, black, and white colour scheme was bigger signal.
It's also worth pointing out that despite their association with Fraktur today, the NSDAP took a stance against Fraktur (albeit not until late in their rule), which was associated with the Monarchist right like the DNVP.
Pretty sure both were described by ultranationalists as "Jewish" or whatever at some point.
It goes even further than that. The Nazis HATED blackletter / gothic script / Fraktur. Here's what had to say about it, and I quote: "It is wrong to regard or describe the so-called Gothic script as a German script. In reality, the so-called Gothic script consists of Schwabach Jewish letters." ("Die ſogenannte gotiſche Schrift als eine deutſche Schrift anzuſehen oder zu bezeichnen iſt falſch. In Wirklichkeit beſteht die ſogenannte gotiſche Schrift aus Schwabacher Judenlettern."; Schwabacher is a type of blackletter script).
Hitler himself said the following about blackletter, which I will not translate but if you're interested you can do so yourself: "Eure vermeintliche gotiſche Verinnerlichung paſſt ſchlecht in das Zeitalter von Stahl und Eiſen, Glas und Beton, von Frauenſchönheit und Männerkraft, von hochgehobenem Haupt und trotzigem Sinn … Unſere Sprache wird in hundert Jahren die europäiſche Sprache ſein. Die Länder des Oſtens, des Nordens wie des Weſtens werden, um ſich mit uns verſtändigen zu können, unſere Sprache lernen. Die Vorausſetzung dafür: An die Stelle der gotiſch genannten Schrift tritt die Schrift, welche wir bisher die lateiniſche nannten."
Meanwhile the Language Simp is never using the expected flags to symbolize the language he's talking about. While being a joke it is an unironically a good practice
And calls English American every single time.
I heard he does that
@@LanguageSimp omg you've seen the language simp's stuff as well? I'm glad he's starting to get some traction
@@RhapsodyinLingo I've been a Language Jones fan far longer than you've been alive, buddy
@@LanguageSimp I think he meant LanguageSimp.
The "native speaker" thing is a problem in other industries too. I teach English in Asia, and I can't tell you the number of times I've seen individuals who are highly skilled and well qualified teachers and highly proficient users of English, but who happen to not come from a "native speaker country" lose out of job opportunities to someone from the Big Five who barely understands the basic linguistic details of their L1. Or worse, I've seen those same highly skilled "non-native" teachers get hired and massively underpaid and overworked because they're now technically working illegally and the employers have them over a barrel. Thankfully the skin colour bias is changing, finally, and some nations outside the Big Five are being added to the "native countries" list, but that doesn't really change anything for the true L2 speakers.
That doesn't even touch on the bias against actual native speakers who don't have the right native speaker "look," like a native english speaker with east asian genetics. It's an odd business, when you can find yourself discriminated against for not standing out from the crowd.
That's really sad.
This this this.
Who are the five? US, UK, Canada, Australia and.... Ireland or NZ?
That's so terrible and completely wrong. So few native English speakers understand the grammar and mechanics of English because it's super complicated. Being able to speak English doesn't make you a good language teacher either. I would rather have a teacher who understands the language than someone who happened to be born in a particular place or whose parents spoke a particular language.
as a Canadian i never understood language flags because we have many languages two of which are official and when we pick English the flag us either the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack, or in the post Brexit EU, Ireland; which is weird on a whole other level
Then there’s Quebec French, New Brunswick French, and other French pockets
Last but not least the tapestry of indigenous languages not even recognised
Maybe they ought to use the flag of England for the English language.
Fun fact about the USA: We have more Spanish speakers than the entire population of Spain.
The video game _Celeste_ uses the Canadian flag for English! (But not French 😂)
@@joe_z oh my god! I came here to mention Celeste using the Canadian flag for English but it never clicked that the French flag should also be that lol
The canadian flags and associations with language and culture etc. is a very political topic and the conflict is fought exactly the way he explains in the video. After all, Quebec's flag was clandestinely installed illegally, to begin with, as a form of protest. But also to directly associate the language, culture and flag as the same thing... and for the creators of the flag to dictate what those are.
@@danrobrish3664no. Use the flag of Missouri.
In South Africa, we refer to it as your "home language". "Native language" and "mother tongue" are rarely used. That introduces a new problem, since it implies that it is the language in which you are most fluent, when almost everyone has formal education in English.
I didn't know that. This makes me like Language Jones recommendation to take the time to explain our relation to the language even. I can't think of a term like "native language" or "home language" that doesn't create similar problems.
In French, it's langue maternelle, literally mother tongue.
Home language is quite a good term though it poses the next question, what if you have multiple languages spoken in your home by different family members or multilingual family members in different situations?
But I still think speaking of home language(s) and maybe school/education language(s) would be a better distinction than native and/or first/second/third language
My wife teaches English "Home Language" in a South African private school. You can also learn a language at "First Additional Language" level.
The assumption is that if a student takes English Home Language he or she has skills in that language comparable to those of mother-tongue speakers. It is also assumed that students are familiar with elements of English culture which most mother-tongue speakers would be familiar with, e.g. nursery rhymes, songs, legends and folk tales. This presents a problem in the South African context, as you often fine that couples from different language background raise their children as English, and speak English at home. The problem is that the language is only spoken at a conversational level.
I can completely identify with the problem of using flags to denote languages. I've seen the new South African flag used online to represent Afrikaans, when we have 12 official languages. Also, this smells like Afrikaner nationalism and the former government policy of teaching Black students in Afrikaans (which resulted in the Soweto riots in 1976, but this a seperate issue.)
As another South African, I always interpreted “native language” and “home language” in different ways. Your native language is the language(s) you started speaking as a child without formally learning it, and your home language(s) is the language you speak at home with your family. The one stays the same all your life, but the other can change.
As an English teacher of color, I don't know how many times I've been passed up in different countries for not looking native, e.g. white. Even though I was born in California, for some reason they think I can't speak English. I hate it.
Did they tell you that it's because you are not looking American? If not, then maybe there was a different reason.
I don't believe that's ever happened.
@@CoryPchajek I doubt it. Where can I find some of these accounts? And I don't mean someone bitching about not getting the job and attributing it to the racism of Koreans, I mean _proof._
@@JimBarcelona I just had a Tawaiinese friend tell me this happens in Tawain often because parents want white teachers to teach their children English. It happens A LOT. I'm sorry you experience it.
@DanSmith-j8y yes, because people are so open about admitting their racism and xenophobia etc. It happens and the fact that you want to tell people who've experienced it that they're making it up or they need to "prove" themselves to you (a complete stranger) is part of the whole problem.
I learn different Indian languages, the flag was already meaningless because India has so many different languages
YESS thankyou i absolutely hate this especially due to being an indian. I've even seen tamizh being represented with sri lankan flag despite yk the majority of tamizh speakers being from tamizh nadu! and not to mention how it absolutely feeds into the wrong hypernational hindi crowd. the problem could be somewhat alleviated if each state had their own flags but that goes out the window considering there are languages that don't have their own states either(like tulu!)
Its not meaningless, it tells you that this language that you are learning is spoken in India, not that it is the ONLY language of India
@@ElMona
But it still doesn’t tell you which language it is, so it might as well be meaningless.
@@ElMonaEnglish is one of those languages isn't it?
because the nationhood of India was not created around language but around religion
as a serb myself i always felt quite uncomfortable when languages were represented by country flags but I couldn't really coherently voice why, so this video literally felt like it came from my subconsciousness, thank you language jones for refreshing takes
And now tell me why?
@@SchmulKrieger Ain't nothing but a heart ache
This "native speaker" thing... rant incoming 😅 : I'm Swiss - from the "German part". Linguists argue if Swissgerman is a language or a dialect. In my opinion it is a language (especially since I had to transcribe a 4h Interview in Swissgerman to German for uni). We learn German in kindergarden and are forced to use it in school. Everything we write (except chatting with friends) has to be in German. However, I'd never think in German and sometimes I use words or syntax that isn't actually German. But if I use apps (HelloTalk etc.) I have to choose "native German" and feel like a fraud. I'm a "native German" but at the same time I'm absolutely not, depending on the context.
as someone from germany but near Konstanz my slang is very similar to swissgerman, although not the same of course, and while i don't really feel like a fraud, it is funny to see how much germans from different regions struggle to understand me when i either write or talk this slang german to them. (er ist die treppe hinunter gefallen vs. der isch d'stäge nah keit). if it is different to a point where "native speakers" of the language, like germans from northern regions like hamburg for example, cannot understand you whatsoever you could probably classify it as a language and not a slang. in my case Alemannisch is even its own language on wikipedia. so i would argue you are right. swiss german is it's own language too and i always saw it as such personally.
I have a pet theory that the difference between language and dialect is whatever the force of nation-states wills it to be
for me it is a dialect but yeah i can relate the transcription thing... If it was an own language, i guess i'd have issues with standard german but i absolutely don't. i see a lot of swiss guys do indeed have very big issues especially with spoken standard german. btw i'm from liechtenstein, maybe my heart is born too close to austria so i am very considerate about using my language and always compare the dialect to standard german to make sure i am not using weird swiss terms german customers or austrian family don't understand like for example "das system verhebt"
I'm 100% with you (also Swiss german). Luckily I'm old enough, that I could speak Swiss German in all school subject except for German, French or English. The standard German requirement for all subjects and all stages came a few years later. My German is decent, but with a hefty accent (which I also cultivate a bit ;-)). But standard German feels foreign. It feels weird to click the flag of the "big canton" to select a language. But hey, it could be worse, if we would have to select the Habsburg flag instead 😂
@@TimeConvolutionHas some truth, but I think there are also some linguistic factors. I grew up on the border of highest alemanic and high alemanic dialects. The grammar I use when speaking is highest alemanic, pronounciation is a mixture of highest and high alemanic and the vocabulary is all over the place with a lot of french influences, germanisms and anglicisms. I would say my native language is Alemanic. But this option is rarely present.
Related: I wish Duolingo (only bc it's the one I use most) would let me explore regional Spanishes.
They do.
The thing is that they don't tell you what regional spanish you are learning.😆
I'm a native Spanish speaker.
I think they just took the more "neutral spanish" from all the Spanish speaking countries and choose the more recognised ones.
@@LuDa-lf1xd”Midatlantic Spanish”
i second this but with japanese even though its extremely unlikely
I want to learn scottish english 😢
It's the same for Norwegian. I learned it on babble before I went to Bergen and realized, that Norwegian is not a homogeneous language throughout the country. I had to relearn a lot, even the grammar is a bit different. These apps give you Oslo Norwegian and that's it. For everything else you would need to speak the language and search inside Norway to get some learning material
On the topic of "learning from native speakers" - I once had a language exchange partner whose goal was to learn Indian English. He lived in India, and American English (my native dialect) was not useful to him. I helped him through his (Indian) English courses, and it was a really interesting experience, especially whenever his textbooks disagreed with me.
Is Indian English some people's first language in India? (I almost said native language there...)
I still have trouble separating the name "Indian" from a people that we now designate as "Native American".
@@Cuinn837How, paleface!
@@paulwalther5237 yes, although it's rare. A friend of mine told me that he's more proficient in English than in Hindi
@@Cuinn837 Many Native Americans call themselves Indian and have no problem with that.
I used to teach middle school in NM, and boy did attempts to impose "native speaker" as a categorization real fail there. The public school system classified any kid who reported speaking a language other than English at home as ESL, even if they had been speaking english their whole life (alongside spanish). Sure most of them did have language proficiency issues, but that was more a systemic failure of the education system to keep everyone on grade level than being 'non-native.' I'm sure you'd have a "fun" time looking into the history of language ed in NM.
For those wondering, "NM" here means "New Mexico", a state in the USA with a large number of Spanish speakers.
Yes, this. As a (former) MLL teacher, I know for certain that many, many "native" English-speaking students would not test out of the program were they required to do so. I still have MLL students in my world language classes who speak English as well or better than their "native" peers but still haven't tested out. Something is a bit awry, and most of it has to do with structural prejudice and bureaucracy. For what it's worth: it's not just NM.
Classifying kids who didn't speak English at home as potentially ESL makes sense, but yeah obviously you'd want to check the levels of the kid before making that designation.
@@CalCapone3 Note that speaking a language other than English at home doesn't prevent speaking English at home as well.
Oh goddd this reminds me of how I got classified as an ESL student (despite only speaking English) for about 4-5 years, because my dad speaks Mandinka, alongside English and other languages (he's from Sierra Leone), but I don't even speak Mandinka (only know a few words and stuff). I'm in Texas tho, so my case has nothing to do with NM's education system.
Fun small anecdote about flags and nationality. Latin is very near and dear to my heart as a philologist, having studied it since I was 12 and been involved in spoken Latin much of my early adult life. I wanted to get a shirt to represent that and had a choice between an SPQR shirt and one with the Vatican flag. I went with the Vatican flag because I use ecclesiastical pronunciation when speaking Latin.
When moving back to Northern Ireland I was moving into an AirBnB, and forgot that the shirt I'd put on back in England before getting on the plane, was that Vatican flag shirt...and my host lived in a Protestant neighbourhood. Got a couple of weird looks for that one as I walked in with my bags
😂
As a Catholic American living next to a Protestant church who has (playfully, but earnestly because I want to rep my faith) considered buying a Vatican flag for my flagpole (but I actually don't because I wouldn't want to actually offend/alienate them; they are lovely people for the most part), this is especially hilarious to me. I hope they ultimately took it in good fun, as much as possible.
I wouldn't think that most people even know what the Vatican flag looks like. I know I wouldn't recognize it if I saw it.
People might actually recognize what it is in Belfast (unlike most places outside Italy). Maybe.
But it isn't one of the most politicized symbols of the Troubles. And thankfully, things are much quieter than they used to be with the conflict.
Also, it's worth saying ... People in Belfast have a way of just staring down anyone looking even slightly unfamiliar or out-of-place, regardless.
@@BlissfulDee You'd probably recognise the papal tiara and keys... even if you don't know the flag is vertical yellow and white!
A friend of mine who studied at Queen's University Belfast was fond of telling the (no doubt apocryphal) story of the somewhat unworldly German philologist and Celtic expert who arrived to take up a senior teaching position there (in the 1950s?), confident that he would be able to purchase everything he required in the shops of that city using the Irish language.
You managed to completely avoid the most hilarious flag as language: it's so common you completely overlook it, but it's everywhere. Is English a union jack, a stars and stripes, maybe a red maple leaf or some variant of a southern cross flag. It's so common to see a website which can represent a localization choice with one or many of these variants for English. I've even seen cross of st george on occasion..
I mean if you're going to use a flag, you might as well use the flag associated with its name.... So the German flag for Dutch.
@@dog-ez2nuwhat?
Isn’t American English a dialect since it was an English colony? It’s like the local or invader debate
@@Whiskers4169 There's a lot debate to have over THAT: is the colony language that preserved elements of 18th Century rural/lower-class England better than modern England English's most-known "British accent", "just" a dialect, or the original?
(Of note: the same phenomenon happened with Quebec as a French colony spot: the joual and patois we've got smattered around here? They're preserving nearly-lost rural french dialects-- Abitibi's joual dialect is translating nearly 1:1 to a very thick rural (provencal, I think? can't recall the village's name augh) french dialect that modern French speakers can't really parse as French, meanwhile my joual is mutually understandable with that village's dying dialect.
In both cases, the "colony" dialects are usually born from rural/lower-classes dialects, while what we perceive as the "modern French/English"... That's a linguistic shift toward the higher-class dialects spoken in the big cities, IIRC.
Basically the colony versions are just people who collectively went "ah fuckit I'm too broke to GAF about sounding like a posh from the old world and this works fine".)
@@dog-ez2nuplease check what dutch (Nederlands) and German (Deutsch) Mean.
As someone who has been learning Spanish for years, the use of 🇪🇸 confuses me when using some tools to learn, because I’m trying to learn Latin American Spanish. Then I have to do more research to see if they are of the “vosotros” crowd. 😂
As far as the term “native speaker,” it’s just simpler to use that term, instead of saying “a person who started learning as a child and has a pretty good handle on the language.” Where I have the issue is when some of these tools claim to help you “speak like a native,” which is something that 99% of people will never achieve, and it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The goal should be to speak to be understood, period.
I use the Spanish flag for that exact reason, I am learning and speak the vosotros form lol.
Foreign-language instruction in the US had been Eurocentric for over a century. I mean, Latin was in the standard curriculum in the US until the... 1980s(?).
I'd learn real Spanish first, then learn the variations in Latin American Spanish - since I've been told by Colombians, Cubans, and Mexicans about the differences in vocabulary and meaning, etc., between those.
@@DanSmith-j8y the fact that you’re saying “real” Spanish seems like the point of the video was missed. Does one need to learn British English before they speak to an American, Australian, or Indian? There will be variations in any language.
@@foodforinsomnia7026 Say "original" then if it bothers you. It's not equivalent to learning American English, Australia, etc., or British, because we're not talking about differences in slang, in pronunciation, etc. I thought I was pretty clear that it's about differences in vocabulary of ordinary words, not slang, and not about pronunciation, between places like Colombia, Mexico, Cuba - so, better to learn the Spanish of Spain, _then_ learn regional variations. I thought that was pretty clear, but I guess not.
"Peasants into Frenchmen" is another wonderful book on basically the same topic
@@bradyisbeast12 I haven’t read it! I’m unreasonably excited about this
Thank you. It makes sense of China talking about Chinese rather than Mandarin and Cantonese. It's been bugging me as to why something that I'd always understood as the ignorant thing to say is now encouraged.
Do you really think Mandarin and Cantonese are the only Chinese languages?
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I would assume the OP doesn't, but it does bring up a point that the CCP actively suppresses knowledge of the other languages spoken in the region. There are a lot of them, but usually usually only Mandarin, the one they choose as their "official" language is encouraged to be learned by foreigners.
I wish that it was easier to find out more Chinese languages exist, because I don’t know any names of the languages besides those two, which are the most commonly spoken language in the world and the language you would most likely actually encounter as “Chinese” amongst diaspora people.
@@darkstarr984 Google?
@@darkstarr984 There's stuff about them on places like Wikipedia, but most are local languages that aren't widely documented.
I can't put into words the relief I felt when I saw you brought up this topics. I am Catalan and not only do I have to worry about the active and open attempts of cultural genocide in the country I was born but now also all these "lang youtubers" who are devoid of any deep knowledge and appreciation for languages. (Not the topic here, but how do these guys manage to learn 29 languages and all of them happen to be colonialist-state languages. Their concept of languages are just medals. They don't speak languages, they consume them. The whole thing itself writes poems about their unlimited white-ass privilege. They really make you think if "globalization", the way we understand it, is neo-colonization.)
Not big on flags either. Here's some context though.The Catalan flag is way older than the Spanish flag (which is famously based on the Catalan one). Don't really care. But you should feel the irony in having Amazon and most other companies putting a Spanish flag (which is a remix of ours) to refer to the colonialist language that has been imposed to us catalans; with the added cherry on top: the website is never available in Catalan. But check this out: since now they are woke, you have a different translation for Latin-American Spanish (because we won't put the speakers through the trauma of reading a different dialect). Still no money to translate into Catalan though (with 10 million speakers, same as European Portuguese).
I'm tired of writing complaints to these companies, just getting an automated reply. Duolingo is, in my opinion, the biggest perpetrator of these lang-youtuber-esque train of thought. At least the one with the most influence. You can learn Klingon now! (and 3 more invented "languages"). But you can't learn Catalan, Basque or Galician unless you *drumroll* ... already speak Spanish. These languages were considered to be so useless(†) that nobody outside Spain could bother to learn them, so they are available only taught in Spanish. With this kind of policy, who wouldn't expect these brainless youtubers to come out (this was 6 or 7 years ago; just checked and it's _still_ the same).
*Globalization without diversity is just colonization.*
(†) You should make a video talking about the ill-formed concept of the _uselessness of a language_ that every time it is used to devalue minority/minoritized languages and promote the colonialist ones.
And how is Castilian pride less dignified than Catalan pride? The terms you reason in could make us condemn all of culture as colonialist.
"globalization without diversity is just colonization" ✨✨✨🔥🔥🔥
off topic, but last time i looked they were having problems with the klingon because the algorithm didn't know how to deal with a comma as a letter
"They don't speak languages, they consume them." That's chillingly accurate.
He actually said monolingual beta.
I have fun on the channel. If you say it three times, language simp shows up in the comments!
@@languagejones6784can there please be a collab between my two favorite language daddies? I have no idea how to make it work, but I want to see it.
@@languagejones6784 monolingual beta monolingual beta monolingual beta
@@languagejones6784 Hello
is this like compared to multilingual alpha
i feel this too is problematic
In the online language learning community there are people advocating for grammar, people advising against learning grammar, people swearing by flash cards, others saying you have to watch Netflix in your target language, people saying give me comprehensible input or give me death, not to mention endless arguments over the efficacy of language learning apps. The problem is that it all kinda works, more or less, and people on UA-cam especially act like there’s only one way up the proverbial mountain.
I’d recommend the video “Cooking internet and lifting internet have the same problem” by Andy Ragusea which highlights a similar problem in other communities.
You're absolutely correct!! I've had my share of online discussions because of this issue, back when I let myself got tangled in such nonsense. I'll check the video* you recommend, Tnx a lot
I was going to post a similar comment, but you said it better than I could have. The comprehensible input community has become cult. As you said, this problem exists in many other subjects (fitness, nutrition, et.)
@@theymademepickaname1248 I don't think it's just about comprehensible input. Its detractors are guilty of exactly the same thing. The video by Andy Ragusea that @davo_v quotes explains the phenomenon pretty well
Fully agree. Also it's Adam Ragusea btw
Don't forget the ones that say you should focus on learning only one language at a time and not start with another until you're at fluency with the first one... and the ones who say you can and should learn multiple languages at the same time.
Breton here. I unfortunately never learned the language, and few are the students that do and use it regularly. Decades later, the policies' effects are still felt, but I hope the language can still survive
They seem to backing off on bilingual schooling, unfortunately, in pays bigouden sud. But the Breton flag is everywhere.
you mean "patois" 🤣
You can start now 😉
Policies aren’t everything. Low prestige and too small language areas can also lead to voluntarily giving up, with parents trying to teach their children a language that gives them more opportunities.
@@D4BASCHT why is the prestige low and the language area so small though? these are a direct result of the policies in question
If the term "native speaker" isn't scientific and isn't useful in linguistics, how should we say "a language is defined by the way native speakers speak it" or something similar? How can we know how, for example, a verb conjugation is supposed to be done in a particular language if we can't observe how a "native speaker" does it?
I think you're not doing descriptivism if you define "correct language" based off of a subset of speakers (and a small one at that for English)
"A language is defined by how the majority of it's speakers (including those who learned it as their second language) uses it."
Let's be honest, in the age of the internet, it doesn't really matter if someone is a "native speaker" or not.
Also, the concept of a language being "defined" is already a vague concept that doesn't really work that well. Language is fluid.
hmm - usage implies a community of language speakers. People already distinguish between different communities of speakers to specify different dialects (you get "British English", "American English", "Australian English", "Indian English" etc.), so surely specifying which community's speech standards and rules you are talking about would be the fix here - you don't need to define language in terms of "native speaker", just be more specific about which community of language speakers you are talking about.
The problem is, there is no "native speaker" there are many speaking a language and they all use variants and also a language naturaly changes over time, as young generations just change it. Usually that what is taught as "native" is a political descision.
For example in germany (or famously in france) there are boards set up by the goverment that define what is the "correct" & "native" language. The Swiss and Austrians don't adhere to these rules in the case of german and the Belgians and Swiss in the case of french also don't adhere to those rules.
But even in Germany and France: Go and Speak to a Bavarian, Saxon, Provencal, Breton "native speaker" - you will find out that observing them is something very different than what is taught as "native languge".
@@Hidrobyte Duck it, I am the only native speaker of my language, dialect, sociolect, and ideolect!
There are many language apps that proudly talk about how you can interact with "native speakers" through their platform. I think it sounds good on the cover, but I'm now wondering if a "native speaker" is the best person to learn a language from. English is my first language, and I'm probably a bad person to talk to about how it works... I've never really had to think about it too hard. Probably more helpful to learn from someone with an outside perspective on learning the language.
English is my first language and tbh, I didn't get a lot of things until I had to learn them in my second (French).
An average native speaker is not a great resource for grammar advice. A professional teacher or book will help you there.
But if you want to have a conversation in the target language, having conversations with people who are literally experts in having conversations in that language is quite helpful.
Yes, the average native speaker is probably NOT the best, since they probably can't remember learning it and were never taught to teach it. There is also something to be said that learners make some of the best teachers, they know what a learner is going to struggle with! I know a lot of native English speakers who couldn't answer a grammar question to save their lives.
A native speaker who has also learned another language (more specifically "yours") will be extremely helpful in learning they understand the pain points. like Santiago said you learn a lot about your first language learning another. A professionally trained teacher is always gonna be better but having friends to discuss the language with on a more casual level won't be a detriment.
High level L2 speakers are good to learn from since they can explain how they learnt the language
I’ve been thinking about the native speaker thing a lot. I grew up in belgium in a fully dutch-speaking family but consumed so much english-language media as a child that I basically spoke perfect english when I was 12. I think in a mixture of both, often dependent on the context (e.g. when I am with other english speakers, my thoughts are also all in english, but when I am alone, my internal monologue is about 60% english, 40% dutch). people in the uk also consistently identify me as a native speaker. I’m not really sure what that makes me
I feel like this video does a good job of describing the experience of "historical Anglophones" in Quebec without meaning to. You can have been living here for generations, but without the language as a signifier, you're often not accepted as "part of the nation" - and some will even say so out loud: you are not "a real Quebecer" without descending from the culture that the language represents. The idea that culture, nation, and language are inextricably tied is just a given here.
There is also the pervasive notion in Québec that "bilingual" means either "speaks French and English specifically" or "speaks French and some other language". I know multiple people who expressed that they were bilingual while in Québec, but because they spoke (e.g.) Spanish and English or English and Mandarin, they were told that they "didn't count as bilingual". Québec is so afraid to lose its cultural/linguistic heritage and identity that they are sometimes quite chauvinist and discriminatory toward others. The CAQ's agenda is of course the ultimate example, wherein the word "pasta" becomes forbidden (you have to say "pâtes").
Of course there's some good and some bad that comes out of it. There are a lot of French language classes available for cheap or free, through the government, through employers, etc. - and I think that's a perfectly good way to promote the language and culture. I'm in one of those classes. But then you also get the stripping away of previously existing English communication channels for anything official or from the government, and anxiety that you might, for example, be refused health services in a language you can understand in a moment where it really matters.
That's because they are. It's silly to pretend otherwise
@@_oaktree_ Well, English and French are the only two official languages, so that makes sense. It'd be odd to add Mandarin and Spanish to the list in a country with so few speakers. Personally I figure we should just have one official language, English, especially since Quebec has all these laws to keep English off of street signs and store signs, etc., but the rest of Canada (with so few French speakers relative to the number of English speakers) have all this bilingual packaging and other stuff.
@@_oaktree_ _Pâtes_ is both the correct and the usual word in European French too. Even though _pasta_ is (of course) originally Italian, its use in French is, effectively, an Anglicism, if not an outright Americanism.
As we all know all language learners are secretly Norwegian nationalists
@@NeichoKijimura the runes should have alerted us
Bad company in the yt comments section holy
@@yvetteday5656 yeah, seem to have struck a nerve
[Insert Norwegian sentence] 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴
Bokmal or Nynorsk?
Isn't this all an exercise in the etymological fallacy? We talk about ancillary protocols, but just because the word "ancillary" has its roots in Roman slavery doesn't mean anyone using the word is supporting slavery. Just because someone uses the word "native speaker" doesn't mean they're supporting an ultranationalist agenda (and I would bet that most people are unaware of this connection anyhow). The alternative to calling someone a "native speaker" is to give what is functionally a biography for them, and it'll start breaking down once you refer to more than one such person.
Less direct information also means more room to confuse and confound. Someone could be "an Irish speaker for 20 years!" but neglect to mention that, from the perspective of those who grew up using Irish Gaelic as a daily community language (and see how many more words that is than "are Irish Gaelic native speakers"?), they have completely failed to master the phonology and speak in a completely unintelligible manner, and have only learned the language through formal education, which is notably of extremely poor quality. If they claim to be "a native speaker" but turn out not to be able to even distinguish its phonemes, then there's a specific section you can point to where they lied.
I won't comment much on the flag thing, since I mostly agree. My major critique is the same as the last one: What would you replace it with?
Ultimately this is all like proposing an English spelling reform. What we have is, for better or worse, already entrenched. I don't see it disappearing anytime soon.
_We talk about ancillary protocols, but just because the word "ancillary" has its roots in Roman slavery doesn't mean anyone using the word is supporting slavery._ Lots of good points, but that's basically what it boils down to.
/bump/
What's the 'native' language of Australia?
Not so convenient now, eh?
You replace the flags with what wikipedia does for languages: you write the name of the language its own language. Anyone looking for their language would see it.
As for how to convey it on UA-cam, you do the same and put in (parenthesis) the name of it in the primary language of your audience (or the language you use to tell people to 'like and subscribe' and for intros and outros.)
@@chuzzbot”Native speaker of a language” and “native language of a country” are not related concepts, and pretending that they are is disingenuous.
Agree with your points, but re "native speaker" your solution is a nonstarter. Asking people to replace their 2-syllable shorthand term with a cumbersome explanatory phrase, are you kidding? See "mormon".
Very interesting discussion. What has bugged me for many years is the apparent disdain a lot of "native" speakers give to "non-native" speakers. Example, my wife immigrated to the US. Often people treat her as inferior due to her accent and manner of speech even though she speaks US English better and more grammatically correct than most locals where we live.
I agree what you rea syaing in spirit, but the word "native speaker" is a really useful term that quickly and clearly communicates the idea of "someone who grew up speaking this langague as their primary language, and has a strong intuitive understanding of that language". Most people either clearly fit or clearly do not fit this idea. Even if their are a lot of people who blur the lines.
I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with what you say here exactly. But as you acknowledge, although ‘most’ people fit, ‘a lot’ do not. So… it’s not actually a great descriptor and maybe we could do better?
@@ghotay3 but could we really?
"Everyone supports candidate X", as I saw in a news report not long ago..., "except minorities, women, hispanics, and young people."
This quote clearly communicates the intended message: that "everyone who matters" means old white men. "Native Speaker" is used to communicate the exact same concept, often in exactly the same way.
One very clear example is using the flag of South Africa to represent Afrikaans. "Most people" in South Africa speak Zulu or Xhosa. Only about 13% of the population speaks Afrikaans. But it's the old white men who carry the flag.
It only looks like "most people fit" if you're looking at a few very specific parts of the world.
@@andyarken7906 Guess you have a limited imagination… /shrug
Duolingo is also pretty inconsistent in how they use the flags. Some languages are represented by the flag of the country where the language originated or is perceived to have originated (ex: Spanish flag for Spain), but others are represented by the flag of the country with the most speakers today (ex: USA flag for English, Brazilian flag for Portuguese). Never mind that Mexico alone has almost 3x as many people that speak Spanish as Spain does, and that most of the user-base of the app almost certainly has more interactions with Latin Americans than Spaniards.
Can't speak for the other languages you mentioned, but the Brazilian flag on Duolingo makes perfect sense. They are teaching Brazilian Portuguese, rather than any other version of the language, it makes a difference.
And the fact that they use US English to teach Mexican Spanish. Since I lived for 10 years in LA, I can deal with that, many other Brits will find it confusing or annoying
In fairness, wouldn't they be using the Spanish flag to signify Castillan Spanish which is pretty much the default even in Latin America.
With Portuguese Brazilian and European varieties are quite different from each other being just a few words and pronunciation. There are grammatical differences as well in Portuguese
@@mikeball6182 They don't teach Mexican Spanish. It's a complete grab bag of vocabulary. The only way it's "Mexican" is the lack of vosotros or voseo, that's it.
eh, language as a tool of *cultural* identity can be just as radicalizable as when it is used as a tool of *national* identity. So, no matter what you replace the flags with, unless you teach some kind of culture-agnostic language continuum (which would arguably be harder to communicate in), you'll still expose ways to divide people along its lines. No matter how we slice humanity, it inevitably turns into an us vs. them situation. It's too useful an exploit.
I don’t think that Language Jones advocates that we separate language users through their cultural identity. He said this while explaining what people usually mean when they say “native speaker”, and then describes how that is also problematic. He actually advocates “saying what we actually mean” i.e. taking the extra time to describe the speaker's relationship to the language. This won’t get rid of the human tendency to tribalism, but it lets us speak more clearly and avoid the various problematic elements of identifying languages through flags.
@@Gorg1122I find the term problematic to be problematic.
Language is of course inextricable with the cultures of those who use it. I think one point that's trying to be put forward is not to replace national symbols with cultural symbols to represent language - see his critiques of proposed Yiddish flags - but rather the appropriation of symbols already unified by other elements for the representation of language.
While it is of course useful to represent languages with symbols, the issue with the symbols is when those symbols already unite a community through other factors beyond 'speaker of the language'.
However, I think most would acknowledge that our current use of flags and cultural symbols to represent language is unlikely to change. Nonetheless, it's our responsibility to be mindful of which symbols are chosen, why they have been chosen, and the implications of those choices.
@@jaetwee hahaha yeah I don’t think it’s going to change anytime soon. But I could see a world where people become more aware of those nuances and push back against the use of flags or at least hesitate to use them. We can try to stop unknowing support of nationalistic ideals.
I think you'll find that language tends to be more naturally divisive than other aspects of culture - excluding that other divisive aspect of culture: religion (though not all religions in equal measure.)
No matter. The real crux of the issue is that human beings are a social species with fairly strong in-group /out-group tendencies. There's enough evidence to say that it even seems to be an evolutionary trait it's best to accept that reality - we like to divide into groups that become cultures (with distinct languages, religious views and other cultural traits) and then guard against the "Other". Then we can engineer a way to mitigate those instincts.
That's pretty much what we've been trying to do anyways with various political solutions in Late modernity.
The moment you said "flag" I figured out where this was going and got really excited. I've decided awhile back that I personally dislike the term native speaker, and this is entirely due to my own experience with languages. I acquired, to varying degrees of fluency (as you do), four languages as a kid (and continue to speak them, with different but still varying degrees of fluency), but have never felt like I could confidently claim to be a native speaker in any of them on the international stage. As you mentioned, the term seems to have more of a social definition than anything. For three of these languages I speak, I don't know enough about the culture and nuances typically associated with them because I don't come from any of the countries typically associated with them (the way a "native speaker" of English is typically expected to be from the UK or US or Aus/NZ). My pronouciation and word choices are occasionally not "native" either because I grew up with the local variant of the languages, which has undergone the inevitable localisation. The one language I could argue to have the background and culture for......I don't really, and definitely do not speak it fluently. This is the official language of the country I come from, and growing up I predominantly only used it for official business such as interacting with the government. I don't speak it with the "correct" accent, so to speak, either, though I suppose you can argue the variant I speak is one of the variants available in the country. As such, the terms "first language", "mother tongue" and "national language" all refer to different languages to me. Currently, I've settled with gibberish as my native tongue, seeing as that's what I spout when surprised or confused =P
On flags, I somewhat disagree. Sometimes it's important to have a symbol to represent a language, and a flag seems to be the most obvious such symbol. I do think that sometimes flags are problematic, but frankly they are the best solution I could come up with
Off the top of my head, in the translation industry we often use 2-letter abbreviations instead, like DE for German, EN for English, and then specify further if needed, like American English if they want the dates to be MM/DD/YY rather than DD/MM/YY and they don't want "favor" spelled "favour."
I think it being the easiest solution atm isn’t a good reason to change the system imo. Like yeah it’s useful shorthand, but the shorthand is propagating ideas we don’t condone. Trying to change the system might not work because the flags are just that good at communicating the idea, but it doesn’t hurt to try right? It costs practically nothing to advocate for and use a new system on a personal level
@@ancientromewithamyThis does not solve it completely. Some country codes, like NL, are for both a nation-state and language.
Having the US flag to represent English is an atrocity, culturally, linguistically, historically, emotionally and aesthetically. Man is not wrong.
I'm a native speaker of swahili, my mother is tanzania. I cannot hold a conversation in swahili for my life does that make me not a native speaker? Swahili was the first language i spoke thats the problem with linguistics, its all one step forward six back.
That’s a really good characterization of linguists
You are not a native speaker of Swahili, and you shouldn't go around saying that you are one. Your post is an obvious example of the Straw Man Fallacy.
@CameronNewland I disagree that it is an obvious straw man argument. I could conceive of a genuine argument that "native language" is the first language you were exposed to and that that language was spoken by your ancestors. Furthermore, I'm not sure that being able to currently speak the language is necessary to be a native speaker of the language. In which case, following those rules, @AmaniElArnab creates a valid situation that is very hard to accept. You can change the definition of “native speaker”, but that’s his point, it’s not a scientific term, it’s a socially understood one without a clear definition that creates confusing situations.
@@CameronNewland this is what i would say if i learned what "strawman" means recently and I needed to test it out on someone.
@@Gorg1122 "Native speaker" does have a clear definition, and no, it's not possible for a native speaker to not be able to converse in, or understand, that language. You're trying too hard, but you are simply running in circles and embarrassing yourself.
Just returned from a trip down the Danube (sorta) visiting Prague, Linz, Vienna and Budapest, where the impact of what you’re talking about couldn’t be more relevant. Pretty much every tour involved some discussion of the (bad) impact of the differences between language communities and nation states. As an American I’d never learned much about it - very eye-opening. I think you’re spot on with this one. Also, as a UX professional, I think icons like flags generally suck in terms of usability. Think about how often you need the tool tip to figure out what the icons mean - that’s why we have alphabets in the first place.
I think if you go on a witchhunt - you're probably going to find witches.
I did write an even longer post but I always wonder if there is any value in it.
Flags are visual shorthand. They're useful. If you don't have a good flag - don't use one. But for some languages it's easy because the language is named after the country or the people and huge % of the speakers are there. And it's just obtuse to pretend they're not related.
Native speakers know things they don't even know they know. A book isn't the language. A dictionary isn't the language. The spoken language precedes and supersedes it. It's a reaction to a time where people were told they were 'wrong' in the way they spoke because it didn't match some old textbook someone decided to write. And that's just in the same language!
"you can't use a double negative"
"what about quadruple negatives?"
*head explodes*
Part of growing up was realising the neat little borders on the map were actually a lot less neat in real life. Then growing up a bit more is realising we still use terms even if they're fuzzier than we thought they were because it still communicates what we want to say. And at the end of the day... that's the point.
Oh, and no matter what, someone is always going to take what you say the wrong way! So no, you're not 'feeding into' whatever. Most of the time. Probably.
I doubt he really cares about any of this, he just needs Content.
Well no. If you learn Polish the Polishness sips into you and 1/10 of your soul is forefit to Wojtek due one year after you die.
Thank you for making this video. As an Indian, this has been bugging me for a long time. I'm bilingual in Tamil and English, and I would say that English is my preferred language of communication, although I do speak my native (lol ironic) quite well.
My schooling was entirely in English, I speak to my friends in English, and almost the entirety of my reading, both online and offline, is in English. Also, I've had to learn English myself, so wouldn't I be in a better position to teach someone English?
A native speaker has had the neurological pathways built in naturally, so things have just always made intuitive sense to them. They didn't have to think about rules, their exceptions and things that don't make sense and things that simply have to be learnt lol.
I also speak Hindi, though less ably, and the native speaker thing doesn't seem to bother them as much. I'm not exactly sure why, though.
Oh man, as someone living in Ukraine and who learned Ukrainian, this is such an interesting video.
Did you ever hear of Ivan Dziuba’s “Internationalism or Russification”? It’s about culture as a whole but language is a part of it. Saying that the uniformity of the USSR is done to “uniting the people”, but it’s all Russian focused and the languages and cultures of the other countries (especially Ukrainian) were given a complete second class status, a ripple effect you can sadly see today. When I first moved in 2017, so many similar stories from people who mainly grew up speaking Ukrainian, that when they went to a more Russian speaking city (like Kyiv at a time) there would be an assumption that they were less educated or from a village.
A big talking point by pro-Russian voices is “well people in those eastern territories speak russian, so it seems pretty right that they should be a part of russia” (and the assumption about language isn’t really true either when you remember that Surzhyk is a thing). While inside the country there is a movement towards speaking Ukrainian more often, I never run into people who would say that those who still speak russian are not Ukrainian (even if they don’t like hearing russian constantly on the street)
Oh yeah and I should bring up that Ivan Dziuba wrote it in the 1960s and it destroyed his career and sent him to prison since it was considered anti-soviet
Well Ukraine is a pretty fascist country when it comes to minority languages' rights, Poroshenko's slogan was "Army, Language, Church" lmao but they're still playing the victim card. Ukrainian was an official language during the Soviet era, even all non-Ukranians had to learn it, so in a way USSR was more liberal than modern Ukraine when it comes to language policy, soviets never banned the use of minority languages like Ukraine does now
@@popkinbobkin saying “playing the victim card” about a country currently defending itself from a genocide tells me everything I need to know about how serious I should take any opinion you have, not to mention the factual inaccuracies in all your other statements.
Yeah, and I’m sure Stepan Bandera was a great woke liberal as well who loved cultural diversity and minority rights!😂
Soviet Ukraine was far more progressive in every way than the current regime, which is a disgrace to humanity.
Semantics. 🤷🏽♀️ I don't think the flag thing or calling people native/non-native speakers are big deals at all. There are more important things to do... like actually learn more languages. I struggle enough with that. 😅
Discrimination against teachers is a thing though.
@@jamieemerson2741 Where is it a thing? Incidentally, as a Brit who lived for 10 years in the US, I can name you a number of countries whose mother tongues are not English, but where a native English speaker would have no chance of obtaining a position as an English teacher, as they prefer their own.
@@mikeball6182you realize you just described discrimination, right? do you think british english is more "native" than botswanan english or nigerian english? what's goin on in ur noggin
@@Isaac-LizardKing I said "native English speaker" I made no mention of nationality, but yes, as the people who first developed the language, we English do have prior claim.
I’d like to see more regional languages get the resources and recognition that they deserve. Although a majority of people may not want to study those languages, there are enthusiasts like us who will happily dive headfirst into those rabbit holes.
I actually, no lie, started thinking deeply about this as a child. I was 12 when I learned it's called, "Spanish," and not, "Mexican."
I was already a history nerd who read books in class instead of paying attention, but yeah this topic is what really threw me into the world of learning and appreciating cultures.
Great thought provoking video. I'm not sure how long it's been since I thought about this.
Its really important. I think it has something to do with the way Latin American immigrants are treated. It adds to the idea that they're savages that use what the "Holy Race is gracious enough to build them."
Thank you for sharing.
I just realized a funny irony. Latin American people are looked down on for using European languages, yet we're exactly the same for speaking English instead of American lol
Huh? Who looks down on them for speaking European languages? I've never heard anyone even remotely hint at that.
ua-cam.com/video/ps2luFn5iPE/v-deo.html
Yeah, this is totally overblown.
The most egregious case of flag usage I’ve seen was in Canada. At a provincial park, they had brochures in English and French. For English, they used the Canadian flag 🇨🇦. For French they used the France flag 🇫🇷. As a proud bilingual Canadian myself, I don’t even know where to begin on how stupid this was.
Was that stupidity, do you imagine, or was it a political statement?
@@stephenspackman5573 I would say stupidity. I would be very surprised to see French represented by the French flag here in Canada; it would be much more common to see it represented by the Québec flag. (Undoubtedly this would annoy many francophones from New Brunswick, Ontario, or Manitoba, whose French is no less French than that of the Québecois, but, well.)
If they want to use foreign flags, use England for English and France for French, because those terms are related. Otherwise, use Québec and British Columbia?
@@Liggliluff I think if they used England (a red cross on a white background) very few Canadians would recognise it.
It should have been UK and France, if they really wanted to be clear. The Canadian flag means nothing linguistically since Canada is an officially bilingual country
8:03 "Does it matter what language they think in?". Do people usually think in a fixed language? I find I usually think in my most recently used language, even if I'm not fluent in it.
@@ClayChiarelott I am not really trying to make that kind of claim at all. I know two languages fluently(Norwegian and English), and the one I think in is the one I recently used, and this seems anecdotally to be the case in many of my friends and acquaintances too. I am also learning Chinese(am married to a Chinese and lived there for a while), and if I have been using Chinese a lot I find myself thinking in it, and substituting English/Norwegian words or images where I come short. I am not lying about it, or trying to be special, my comment about it was because I thought that was the default mode of operations. I find it a bit unpleasant of you to insinuate I am lying for attention.
Looking at forums this seems to be a relatively common experience among language learners[1,2], guess they are also all very special. I couldn't dig up any research on the topic(though notably that doesn't mean it doesn't exist), but I found a forum of researchers, some of whom are being suspiciously special[3]. It definitely doesn't seem my experience is anything out of the ordinary, you wouldn't be monolingual or at the very least English native by any chance? I'd imagine that would make it far more difficult to become immersed in different languages, and finding yourself thinking in them.
[1] - www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/br2arp/those_that_are_fluent_in_2_or_more_languages_do/
[2] - www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3lpmea/do_you_always_think_in_your_first_language/
[3] - www.researchgate.net/post/In-which-language-do-you-think
Being native just means it was your primary language(s) you grew up learning subconsciously which can be multiple languages. Plenty of Spanish Americans are perfectly fluent in English and Spanish because they grew up with both languages. @@iverbrnstad791
If you had to actually sit down and learn a language, you're not a native speaker. A 3 year old is not studying a text book or using an app or hiring a tutor.
I almost always think in English. Especially when I'm normally speaking Telugu to my family, I still do deep thought in English, but I formulate in Telugu before speaking.
I find that while thoughts may enter my head in Telugu when I've been speaking Telugu, it's still usually "translated" into English for the remainder of my thought process.
When speaking French however I do find i start thinking in French and even some of my deeper thought levels are in French, but when I get nervous it immediately switches to English and formulating in French.
There are times when I'm speaking French or Telugu normally, and then have to switch to English for a friend or my partner and I accidentally don't switch/assume that person understood what was said and just wait for them to respond... Meanwhile they don't know what's going on in French/Telugu.
I learned English as a first language, and was the language for the majority of my academic endeavors. I also studied French for a decade, through the university level. Telugu however was taught to me informally at home or with family. I think this academic vs. Informal dichotomy I have with these languages are probably why I can engage in deeper thought in French or English but not Telugu. I don't think I have the vocab or grammar for Telugu that I do for English or French.
Being multilingual is a fun, lifelong thought experiment.
I agree on the flag thing, it is indeed kinda annoying. but I think the term 'native' has a precise meaning that the language is acquired in childhood, not learned at any point later in life (although it is true that at some point the person might get less eloquent in their native language than they are in the learned one). Therefore the term 'native level' would mean that the majority of the other speakers of the language will hardly pick up on the fact the the language is learned as a second one.
Early or childhood acquisition is sometimes used.
Isn't what you are describing rather the term "mother tongue" than "native speaker"? To me at least, native speaker describes how other people perceive your speech, not necessarily at what point you started learning that language. In most situations this coincides, but it doesn't have to.
@@Garbaz Shibboleth's gonna shibby.
@@abmindprof yes, but the word native is shorter and means the same (to me)
One thing I learned from lurking on the "English Language Learners" forum on Stack Exchange is that there are a lot of mostly unspoken, unwritten language rules that a native speaker will intuitively pick up without realizing it, and what often differentiates a non-native speaker from a native one is that they won't follow those rules.
> expecting a critique of Algerian policy on the Amazigh language
> I get - generic leftist polifics
Are you stereotyping with that font you’ve used? It’s still used in German-speaking countries today…
English is spoken by multiple countries so of course apps or anything else that wants to quickly use a visual representation will have to exclude all the other countries that also speak the same language. Usually they choose England or America. A lot of the time it's England I've seen and it feels like a small slight to me because I'm a native English speaker but I have never been to England. But I can deal. It's mostly for practicality and I get that. And technically England was the first country to speak English. If you have an alternative to flags please suggest it though. If you write the name of the language then suddenly you're not speaking a universal language but the one you're writing in. Flags are just really practical.
Most of the time the term "native speaker" is pretty clear cut. The majority of people don't grow up wondering what their native language is. Sure you get some exceptions but I don't see any issues with the term and I don't find it confusing. The exception I can think of would be people that started growing up in one country but then got uprooted and moved to another country. But if someone says they consider themselves to be a native English speaker I generally just go with it. They know better than me - they are them after all. Again, if we didn't say native speaker what else would we say? I guess you could define the term in every video if you want to be clear to make sure everyone is on the same page.
I consider myself a native speaker of English and Spanish. I grew up in the US, did my formal education there, but spoke Spanish outside of school. But I've had people both in the US and Mexico tell me i am wrong. Why? Because i grew up in the US, therefore i cannot be a native Spanish speaker. Or, my mother tongue is Spanish, so I can't be a native English speaker. I also have a different accent when i speak English since i haven't spoken it on a regular basis since march 2020.
One thing i am sure of though, Spanish is my only mother tongue. It is the only language i speak every single day without fail, since the day i could talk. No language will ever equal that, no matter how good i get at it.
I suppose the main thing that bugs me in the prioritization of modern/living languages over "dead" languages and of speaking over reading. I do speak many languages when I can but I read a whole lot more languages than I speak. I studied philology and have used those skills to learn many related languages, principally for reading. Of course I try to talk whenever I can. Yet I've had people tell me I don't "really" know a language when I can read novels and textbooks in it comfortably but I struggle to have a conversation in it.
I saw a question in a personality test asking whether I'd pick a dead or living language if I could magically learn one. I answered that I'd rather learn a dead language with that power. Why? Because you can always learn living languages normally unlike with dead ones.
I'm really glad to see that someone else finds the Yiddish flags suspect.
Moreover, I'm glad this is getting attention. I grew up speaking a German dialect for which the only reasonable flag is 🇺🇸 (but the understanding is that this stands for English…), and I hold an Austrian passport, so I've always felt a lot of confusion around the shorthand of using flags to represent languages.
You said it best in reference to France's now-former policies surrounding Metropolitan French. It's absolutely a form of cultural genocide.
What's been bugging me in the language learning space are what I call "method purists". People who have glommed onto some particular strategy for language learning and then claim that it is THE way to learn language, and everybody else are morons, or are irrevocably ruining their ability to reach native-level fluency (see what I did there?) or will somehow "fossilize" early-stage errors into their brains or whatever. My experience with different methods is admittedly broad but not deep--classroom pedagogy, linguistics-informed study, mix-media casual (Duolingo), and comprehensible input--but in my experience these methods *build* on one another. They all have weaknesses that the other ones compensate for.
E.g. CI is great and all, but boy is it frustrating to recognize some new word but not *quite* be able to intuit the meaning from context. Isn't it better to just look up the word? Why *not* take advantage of dictionaries and strategic interrogation of google translate to figure out meanings more quickly, so I can then not be stuck on that one word for who knows how long? But no, if you do that, then you have the CI brojobs say "No! Don't look it up! Then you're just learning the language, not acquiring it!" With an implied "you beta cuck" on the end.
The pedagogic method of just looking something up in a reference work compensates for one of the weaknesses of CI. Likewise, pedagogic learning is great for literal use of a language, but kinda terrible for gaining facility with non-literal idioms. But CI is fabulous for getting exposure to idioms! They build on each other. They compensate for each other's weaknesses.
And *every* method I've used has contributed something that the other methods didn't, and has increased my ability to make connections, deduce meanings, etc. The method purists can have fun in their little sandboxes, but they'll never convince me that their sand is absolutely better than anybody else's sand. Meanwhile, I'm gonna have even more fun playing in *all* the sandboxes.
Haha, really like your sandbox reference.
It also pains me when I don't get a new word from context while reading. Similar happens when I understand all words, but do not get a specific grammar concept (for example the usage of 'ce' in italian sometimes). I just have to look it up. Could never be a CI purist or my head would explode 😅
exactly!
Then what symbols would you prefer ??!
🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️
I feel like this is more of an issue for larger countries which encompass multiple cultures, less so for smaller countries which are formed around a single identity everyone feels drawn to.
Yes. I am thinking that England has had a history of colonisation. Therefore they have been in conflict with the poeple trying to protect themselves by forming nation states. Their ruthless opression of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, African, Native-American, Indian, Indonesian cultures. Bigger countries want to preserve their power, therefore the idea of a nation state is dangerous, and the people that define it. I think that this cultural undertow can explain American foreign policy.
French forces protecting their homeland during WW1 where nationalists. Nationalism in Poland was an important factor in separationg them from Sovjet. Ghandi was an "Indian nationalist", and spendt a lot of time trying to construct an Indian identity. sfbe
This implies that Belgium and Switzerland are big countries. You've raised my self esteem
No. Most borders represent a useful hegemony of some group, not a natural cultural or ethnic boundary. Neat boundaries are a nationalist confabulation
In my experience when you dig a little deeper in the countries that claim to be formed around one identity and their "natural" territory you find skeletones in the closets. Most of them if not all of them will have minorites in them that has been or still are repressed because of the single identity you talk about. Just look to Japan and the Nordic countries. These are countries that are often portrayed as being formed around single national identities, but Japan has the Ainu and the Nordics have the Sami. Both being minority populations which has as long an history in areas that make up these countries as the main population. These minorites have faced horrible discrimination. Never trust a nation state that claimes to be homogeneous.
I used to use the flags thing as a conversation starter on dating apps all the time. if you know your familial history, you're pretty much guaranteed to trip over an ancestor who would never in a million years identify with the flag you boost, despite living on the territories they claim to represent.
Id argue you dont need a nation state to have a flag. Ukrainians had national flags long before statehood and the Indigenous Metis Nation in Canada has its own flags but was never a nation state and is actually older than the Canadian nation state.
Of course, but national aspirations definitely play into it most of the time
@@languagejones6784 And I'd argue that's both a good thing (eg indigenous and national rights) and it is a bad thing (eg fascism). It's a double edged sword.
Having the Ukrainian flag associated with Ukrainian as a language is part of Ukrainian self-determination, and many of us would view divorcing it as an attack on our independence. But in another context, Mandarin Chinese being associated with communist China as opposed to Taiwan sends a message about who is really considered valid.
So my point is that there is potential for this to buttress fascism or linguistic imperialism but also potential to buttress linguistic ANTI-imperialism - indigenous and minority language rights and the rights of nations to have their own nation states vis-a-vis imperialist nations trying to repress them.
@@MasiukAYES! Thanks for expressing exactly what I wanted to comment to Dr Jones. It really seems to me like flags and languages and nationalities, like everything else on Earth, can be healthful or harmful or both, depending on how seriously you take them and what you do with them
@@languagejones6784Just come out as an anarchist already 😄🏴
"Is actually older than the Canadian nation state" is a meaningless and ludicrous statement. It's also funny how a group of invaders can interbreed with an indigenous people and somehow be considered part of "First Nations".
This video is utterly insane, and people cheering on are like what, unable to disagree with a youtuber? Flags are racist? Native speaker is a racist term? Pure, unadulterated insanity.
- Adûnâi
What symbols to use instead of flags so that users find their way around?
What word to use instead of "native speaker" to signify the meant skill level?
Exactly. With these people, it's all complaints without offering a solution of their own. It just amounts to paranoid yapping.
Yes, it is overblown.
Doesn't this ignore, that people, or communities, always have an urge to find common grounds and will define their borders by them? Languages will therefore often be a part of the same borders a culture will find itself in.
I think, "native" is so convenient, because its so fuzzy. You can use it to collectively refer to many different things. And as an aspirational goal it is more useful then "i want to be able to speak the language like someone who lived there since he was two years old".
Flags are used as symbols for languages on UA-cam, because this is also customary on ATMs and elsewhere in public. Of course this is problematic when a country has more than one language or one language is spoken in more than one country. (In Austria the German version is marked with the Austrian flag.) But it is convenient and, in my opinion, not harmful. Which symbols do you propose instead?
What a wonderful conversation! As an Australian, I'll tolerate using the Union Jack to represent English. We still have it in our flag (and this commemorating of our colonial bloody past is a contentious issue in Australia for many) so it's been normalised to a certain degree, just like you discussed in the video. Seeing the stars and stripes to represent the language that I speak makes me want to flip a table. We spell differently, we speak differently, even some grammar is different (I will NEVER understand the phrase "I'll write her", where's the 'to'!???). Semantics matter.
What are thoughts on "mother tongue"? I think it's a good way to describe what you spoke at home growing up, but I've also heard it used as something a person maybe never learned, but belongs to their heritage. Like, if you never really had the opportunity or were maybe discouraged from learning your parents' language(s).
it's an interesting question especially for bilingual families. My cousins grew up speaking with their father in Armenian and with their mother in Hungarian....
As a Ukrainian, I just want to say that some languages wouldn't even exist now without nationalism and/or nation-states.
Yeah, it goes both ways. Some survive in spite of being inside a country with an official language, and some survive because of it. Languages like Welsh, Scottish, and Irish would have probably died out years ago without their local governments helping to keep them spoken by the younger generations.
One could argue, however, that such defensive nationalism is only born in response to offensive nationalism. Reaching admittedly further, reactive nationalism has everything it needs to become aggressive when conditions change.
As a Québecois, this is a pretty sensitive topic for me too. We want to protect our language and culture despite the omnipresent english supremacy. We cannot compete with the production value of american movie and TV series and we live in an english country. Most of us are not separatists, but neither do we identify much with our english neighbors and their americanized culture.
@MrOvipare there is also a issue that is kinda unique to colonized places like the Americas and Africa, by elevating one old language of thr colonial power, one risks destroying the already versatile and possibly dying language of the Native people
@@codymoon7552 nobody here is denying the wrongs of colonialism, two different things can be both important. However, equating Québec’s language and culture as the language of France is dismissive and ignorant at best.
What alternatives are there to represent a language in a visual medium? You could say the written name of the language, but on a list of language names, it gets hard to make them stand out and if you go ahead and, say, use a font like Fraktur for German, then you're back to where you started. As for "native speaker" is it better to use "L1" ?
The first two written symbols of the language's name, in that language.
EN - English
DE - German
日本 - Japanese
官话 - Mandarin
广东 - Cantonese
Arabic - عَرَ
سَوَ - Swahili
@@WoodEe-zq6qv I guess that works until you get to "Francais" and "Frysk" , or "Slovenščina" and "Slovenčina"
Not going to lie, before I watched this, based solely on the title and thumbnail, I admittedly judged it and thought this was going to be stupid. Just ten minutes of unfiltered idiocy.
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I was right!
What about the names of languages? I speak English though I have no affiliation with the nation of England. Names of nation states and their languages are intimately intertwined in many cases
Yeah, I think we’re overthinking this one and pouring all sorts of meaning into flags for languages. Right wing?
They’re just flags. Is it possible you may be seeing things through a leftwing lens? Maybe? A little?
@@claudiomonteverdi7126 Go to he🏒🏒
@@claudiomonteverdi7126 GTH
Watch even a few of his videos and his political lens comes though quite quickly 😁 But hey, at least he’s straightforward about what he believes. I can always respect that even if I don’t always agree with his POV.
Ah yes, the fascists have arrived rather quickly. The exit is there, don't let the door hit you.
@@ellenorbjornsdottir1166 "Everyone I don't like is a fascist!"
The use of Fraktur as visual shorthand for "fascism" or "dark ideology" is extremely problematic, since blackletter type was abolished during the NS regime for being "Schwabacher Jew letters", with Antiqua being favoured for its imperial heritage
I strongly urge you to change the thumbnail, and maybe you could even make a video explaining why it's wrong. Schwabacher and Fraktur are an important part of Central European typographic tradition, and shouldn't be falsely politicized like this
🤷 It's not like the NSDAP is the only definer of the far right, neofascists and neonazis have used the script alot in the past 60 years. It's literally one of the hints that can be used to look into a page or group further to look for far right dog whistles, and you'll find them.
🤷 It's not like the NSDAP is the only definer of the far right, neofascists and neonazis have used the script alot in the past 60 years. It's literally one of the hints that can be used to look into a page or group further to look for far right dog whistles, and you'll find them.
You are committing the same sin you denounce, O DoppelpunktDDD,
but if the end of your username is accurate,
there might be no good reason to rebuke you over it.
Yeah, you have a point, Hebrew is my mother tongue but if I will make a video on Hebrew with the Israeli flag, it would be a big nationalist statement and I wouldn’t like to do it.
At the same time, Israel is the only country where Modern Hebrew is the default spoken language. So the fact that using the flag to denote the language is a political statement is really not the fault of the language at all, but more the fault of people who over-politicize everything about Israeli and/or Jewish culture.
@@_oaktree_ definitely true, but the Hebrew language is not a political project. The existence of Israel as a nation state is
I didn't think i could disagree with you from both sides, @@rapramix, but apparently i can!
@_oaktree_ is very correct that there's a massive (and massively harmful and/or hateful) movement to politicize every thing having to do with Jews and Israelis. This is how you get so many "progressive" people who think it's ok to discriminate against someone because of their nationality, as long as it's Israeli, or because of their religion, as long as it's mainstream Judaism. How many other people can't use the flag of their country as a simple signifier of their origin/identity without being accused of every perversion & crime in the book?
And at the same time, the resurrection of Hebrew in the modern era as a spoken vernacular definitely had serious political elements. The success of Modern Hebrew was considered one of the greatest victories of the Return to Zion movement by its adherents, both for the love of the ancestral tongue itself and also because they thought any functional nation-state (like the one they were building) needs a language.
To me, it just says that's where most Hebrew speakers live. I noticed that this video acts as if there's an implication that Hebrew is the only language spoken there? I don't understand how we even got there.
@@MRed0135 no, also Palestinian Arabic . The thing is that the Israeli flag represents a political statement while the Hebrew language isn’t political per se. Although , I wouldn’t be shocked if Eliezer Ben Yehuda was a Zionist . Nonetheless, you can speak Hebrew from age 10 months like me and also oppose Zionism
I'm in the "you're overthinking it" camp here, but appreciate the thoughtful video. I am learning portuguese and like the flag on duolingo since it clearly signals "this is the variant of Portuguese spoken in Brazil and so you should probably try a different app". I don't know the Spanish course but presumably if yiu were going to live in Puerto Rico it would be useful to see at a glance that the course you were learning used the specific grammar, accent etc of Madrid so you could decide if that was really what you wanted. I don't think the flag signifies my endorsement of the constitution of that country, just tells me what to expect. More to the point, what else would you use as a visual icon for the language?
Native speaker is a bit more problematic - I can see situations where a person who speaks a language to the same standard loses out because it's their second language, but it's a decent shorthand. The more complicated versions you described are difficult to parse snd don't tell me whether the teacher I'm about to hire really knows what they're talking about or is going to lead me astray with half-arsed ideas of the language. I'd describe myself as fluent in portuguese but I make a lot of mistakes that a native speaker wouldn't. And native just means you learned it from birth not that you are a member of the indigenous people of that country - so a native speaker of American English isn't implying they're a native American or that English is the language that has always been spoken in America or whatever (native and indigenous are two words that could usefully be teased apart to reduce some of the friction around this imho)
So I think you've made some good points, and it's all food for thought, but I'm not really convinced.
I endorse this comment.
Really interesting stuff, and very relevant to English. The world seems to divide into those that use The Stars and Stripes and those that use the Union Flag to represent English. To say the very least of it, both carry connotations, to peoples around the world, that go well beyond the linguistic. Are we to expect a speaker of English from, say, Drogheda to embrace the use of the Butcher's Apron to represent his or her language?
And here in the UK, we have bedded-down, ancient language communities that speak Scots, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, and Belfast is one of the centres of a major revival in Irish; and that's not to mention our speakers of Subcontinental and African languages, Caribbean creoles, Yiddish, etc (my home borough is, according to some measures, the most linguistically diverse neighbourhood in the whole of Europe, and includes Europe's largest Yiddish-speaking community). The situation is scarcely less complex Stateside!
We are not English, in other words, and English is not us.
When, as a Limey tourist, I visited the Smithsonian in the 90s, and was wondering whether to get a guide, I remember noticing that Spanish was represented by the flag of Spain, but Portuguese by the flags of both Portugal and Brazil. English was Old Glory; and that alone. I probably noticed the inconsistency because I'm a non-American Anglophone, but actually you could argue it's Portuguese that throws the issue most starkly into relief. If you're referencing Portugal and Brazil, Smithsonian, why aren't you referencing Mozambique and Angola? And why include Brazil (the most populous Lusaphone nation) but not Mexico, whose population is two-and-a-half times that of Spain AND WHICH IS YOUR NEIGHBOUR TO THE SOUTH? I'm not sure there are answers that any of us could really defend.
The representating Spanish with the Spanish flag instead of the Mexican one is for a simple reason. They don't teach the Mexican dialect in schools. I didn't take Spanish in high school because, even though I was a 6 hour drive from Mexico, they taught Castilian! Being taught the dialect of his colonizers by a brown guy (RIP Mr Murillo) was too much for me.
Presumably the tour guide speaking in English would be an actual Yank though, so the American flag would be accurate in that instance?
@@overlordnat I can't remember whether it was an audio guide or a written one, but either way, good point.
I find myself wondering, now, what they do in Ireland; if I'd had my wits about me I'd have checked when I went to Kilmainham Gaol a couple of years ago. My guess is that they just use the word "English".
I wonder about the logic of reviving Scots Gaelic considering they came from Ireland and committed cultural and linguistic genocide on the Picts and then named the country after themselves. That doesn't make what the English did to the Scots right, but it does make reviving Scots Gaelic kind of illogical.
@@DanSmith-j8y I don't see the illogic, I have to say. Gaelic culture in the Highlands and Islands may have resulted from conquest, but that doesn't mean that its decline isn't to be mourned, or that its final extinction, were that to happen, wouldn't be an irreparable loss.
Incidentally, the suppression of Gaelic culture following the Second Jacobite Rising was most zealously pursued by Scottish Lowlanders, though of course with the backing of Hanoverian England (but not, I assume, of Jacobite England). A simple Mel-Gibson-style English-v-Scots narrative doesn't really work in the 17th and 18th centuries, because (a) Jacobite and Hanoverian factions cut across national boundaries, and (b) Scotland was divided against itself ethnically in a particularly bitter way. The discovery and celebration of the Gaels by the Lowlanders, long after their defeat and eclipse, was a product of 19th century Romanticism.
The Spain flag for Duolingo Spanish is very misleading given that the Spanish taught on that app is clearly Latin American in both pronunciation and grammar (e.g. no vosotros verb forms).
Heh! I'm Swiss. So how am I to represent my Swiss German with a flag? Localised websites often combine two flags or add a "D", "F" or "I" to the Swiss flag. I have never come across localisation for Rumantsch...
Dude.
Spain - Spanish
Germany - German
France - French
In Luxembourg, they speak Luxembourgish. Like... it's in the word.
You're constructing a problem here
Kio paroliĝas en Belgujo, hm?
@@ellenorbjornsdottir1166 everything
That's a funny point actually. I was half expecting him to bitch about language NAMES, like "ohh, it's called 'Spanish' but that name doesn't represent all the other peoples worldwide who speak it that aren't from Spain"
or conversely "it's called 'Spanish' but there are many Spanish people who speak other local languages, this is ERASURE"
I could go on.
Me when people use the flag of France when there's the flag of l'Organisation internationale de la francophonie:
Tabarnac.
No one would recognise it.
@@enkor9591 Maybe not right away, but if people used it, it would get known.
Definitely not a ultranationalist or even a nationalist at all, but if linguistic nativism is a "Napoleon" move I feel tempted to do it just for the sake of Napoleon
This feels to me analogous to how social and grammatical gender are different but we unfortunately use the same words to represent them, leading us to associate them directly with one another when in fact their actual association isn't as strong. Similarly, e.g. France and French are different but we unfortunately use the same flags (and words, I suppose, perhaps unavoidably) to represent them, again leading to a mental association that's stronger than their actual association is.
The flag thing has bothered me for some time now. I'm a non-native Mandarin speaker. What flag do they use? Usually, the flag of the PRC. This is a political flag, not even a national flag, FAR from being a linguistic flag. So we can use the flag of Taiwan, right? Well, that's a political flag, too, and in both of those countries, there are other very widely-used languages. The native speaker thing, I have to give some thought to, but a related topic came up with me in a group on social media. It was a perfectly respectful discussion, which turns out to not be as unusual as some people might say, but that's beside the point. The discussion was about learning Guarani for immigrants to Paraguay. Now, if you want to go to Paraguay, Spanish is the first go-to language, BUT Guarani is used every bit as much. And that brought us to using Javanese on Java, even if you speak Indonesian. Or Cantonese in southern China, or Nahuatl in Oaxaca. In all of those cases, the *dominant* language will get you by just fine, day to day, but a lot of the people in those places - I would argue, the cool ones - code-switch, and knowing some of the *local* language opens up a whole new world that you would not have access to without at least some well-placed words in the local language. And those local languages bear NO similarity to the colonial language imposed on them, but the locals meld them seamlessly. And, as you pointed out, the flag of Spain, used to represent the Spanish language, gives just a LITTLE BIT of power to people who want Catalán or Euskara to disappear. Not much power, but it's the wrong message. Entirely by the way of vexillology, for China, I'm a big fan of the Five-Colored flag. That is the only non-political flag that China ever had, as far as I know. They should go back to that...but it still doesn't represent Mandarin Chinese. Nothing does. The Five-Colored flag represents speakers of five different languages (all of which are featured on PRC folding money, weirdly).
Code switching presents its own problems!! I have to be especially careful in the Netherlands. I speak a little Dutch, but only a little!!
As a Brazilian I'm all in favor of keeping using flags because they use the Brazilian flag and that makes the Portuguese angry and the Portuguese MUST be angry. Keep the good job, guys!
Sorry if I'm just slow, but I've had to break the video down for myself in this comment, in an attempt to understand what the hell your point is. This video was very frustrating to listen to for me, and that despite the fact that I was very intrigued by its subject. I found the video extremely difficult to follow and felt like I was left with almost nothing of real substance in the end.
"Problems" identified:
- use of flags as symbols of languages
- use of the term "native speaker"
Why are they problems?
- they have roots in (ultra)nationalist and/or fascist ideologies
- continued usage today normalized their original meanings
You hear the shape of this argument all the time, especially when speaking about languages and their use, and I don't like it. I won't get too deep into the why, but by analogy, I don't like learning languages by memorizing rules and nervously applying them mid conversation, and I especially would rather not speak my own native language this way, and much less *think about concepts* with such restrictions in place. Just convince me with your arguments for why a thing is bad, please, not why it used to be bad, and I'll acquire that knowledge and know what to do. I am a thinking human, able to be convinced.
That paragraph aside, I was prepared to hear you out, like you asked. But unfortunately, it felt like you were trying to shake me off your train of thought, rather than lead me to your destination.
3:24 "I'm just trying to go into this with a clear picture of the results here."
I first had written here a longer description of my frustrations, but I'll be brief and say that I don't think the 30 preceding seconds were very clear.
4:36 "So in this case one language was imposed as a way of cultivating good citizens of a nation state and imposing that national identity."
And then, paraphrasing, in the germanic case a common-ish shared language clued people together into one folk and state. Here we're talking about fascism, alright. But then you go off into tangents along a thread that I'm really struggling to follow. Each sentence in isolation makes sense, but I don't get the story you're trying to tell. Yes, you point out problems with using flags to represent languages, problems that have been pointed out before by many people, but none of these address the claim you made at the start of the video. Where fascism?
6:51 Now for the term "native speaker"
7:36 "And that last bit is the rub"
Thanks, there we go. I think it's difficult to talk about language levels in general. I'll hear someone talking up a friend of theirs who speaks a certain language so well, only to meet this individual and have it turn out that they basically only speak enough to order at a restaurant. It doesn't matter what terms were used specifically to describe this person's language level. The simple fact is just that my bar for speaking a language well is different than the one who was describing their friend.
Even more rigorous scales, like the A1-C2 system or whatever, are flawed, because one grade is not enough to describe your performance across multiple axes like writing, speaking, listening, or reading, as well as in all situations and topics. Any real attempt at describing someone's level of mastery of a language will need to describe their history with it, when and how they learned it, and what they've used it for.
But do you notice, even in the context of such a detailed description of a person's history, the term "native speaker" might be useful! Especially with followup information to specify what you mean by the term!
From one thing to another, I thought you would bring up Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as an example where language-flag conflation can be used for fascistic purposes, attempting to justify the invasion using an argument like "The people there are clearly Russian, just listen to how they talk!" But then you maybe also would have to mention Russian-speaking Ukrainians these days embracing the Ukrainian language in order to distance themselves from Russia. The thing goes both ways.
Anything that can be used for unification, I suppose, can also end up excluding those not united. We Norwegians used our cultural heritage and language as a way to find our own identity and distance ourselves from Denmark, and our flag and the formalization of our multiple official languages were a very large part of that process. And it worked! We became a country and felt like it! But then today, immigrants that don't learn the language will end up on the outside. Those that want to become residents or citizens need to prove their proficiency in it. But should I then not call anyone a "native speaker" so as not to shine a light on the fact that immigrants and refugees have it hard in their host countries linguistically speaking?
I'll end my rambling, ranting response on a question, just in case anyone even bothers to read what I've written: If flags are problematic as symbols, are the names we use for different languages that much better? Would you rather see the symbols "Spanish" rather than the symbol "🇪🇸"? How about "Castillano"?
"Even more rigorous scales, like the A1-C2 system or whatever, are flawed, because one grade is not enough to describe your performance across multiple axes like writing, speaking, listening, or reading, as well as in all situations and topics. " - have you ever tried to pass exam at C2 level?
@@marikothecheetah9342 Pass an exam? No, and I hope I'll never have to. "Goodhart's law", and all that. But I have been asked to complete a test to assess my level on that scale, so as to be placed in the right language class, to be grouped together with students of approximately the same level. Needless to say, for a small sized language school, attempting to group students so coarsely is bound to lead to frustrations.
@@frodethorsenbrseth5014 well, as a person who did attend such exam I can tell you - your little assessment isn't even remotely close to the actual exam. The C2 exam is pretty different than up to C1 and is based on long reading, long listening, long writing and all this requires a native like a bit of specialist language knowledge around college level knowledge and the knowledge gap is even bigger than between B2 and C1. You basically work WITH every possible way of communication in the language and don't choose any answer - you give that answer yourself. The same with speaking, of course.
And yeah, I'd easily count people who hold C1 level exam as the native level (sometimes even an academic level, since natives can have low communications skills as well). I wouldn't discredit the highest level of the language exams (well, maybe JLPT, because then you are at the level of a middle schooler :P) but for example HSK has now new levels and you can reach skills equal to people who GRADUATED from university. If that's not native level - I don't know what is. :/
@@marikothecheetah9342 my point is not to say that passing a C2 exam is worthless, rather that the scale is not granular enough to tell you much about a person's language level. Much like how someone may be a "native speaker" while illiterate, you could also be able to read and listen at a B2 level without being able to speak at all. I should know, 'cause I've been there!
I once got into an unexpectedly heated fight with a friend over the very concept of "native" speakers and of some language being objectively better -- more skilled, more effective at communicating its point -- than other. This was all about English (not ranking different languages against each other), and it turned out my friend had some severe trauma over the thought of having their language usage (writing) be judged in any way, so ultimately we had to agree just not to discuss it anymore, because the topic was hurting them.
But to me it *had* seemed obvious that there was a clear answer. Native speakers exist, since we can rather easily pick up on people whose language is weirdly off (like the Uncanny Valley effect), and maybe the lines aren't quite where I'd expect them to be, but those lines still *exist* -- right?
And a skilled writer (or orator) can use language in a way that clearly and unambiguously communicates their point using word choice and phrasing appropriate to the listeners and the environment, whereas a child hasn't yet developed the skill to say what they mean how they mean using words that don't muddle the attempt at communication. So clearly there's a way to rank language usage, like saying that the Mona Lisa was drawn more skillfully than a child's stick-figure attempt at drawing their family -- even if there's also value to that stick figure.
(And I never intended to assert that ranking skillfullness somehow implied that the stick figure was... negative, in some way? Or that the end goal of every language user "should be" to get to the Mona Lisa level -- that's ridiculous. One can always improve, but one is not required to improve. One can always decide that the level they're at is fine for their needs and that they'll devote their energy to improving other skills instead.)
You've made me see that the concept of native speakers is fuzzier than I had anticipated. I'm not sure what to do with that data point. And I'm not sure what, if anything, it implies about my assertion that language usage is rankable.
P.S. This is the metric I've developed over the years, the existence of which led to the fight:
There are different stages of art (including the art of language) that we can grow through:
0. Doodler
1. Amateur
2. Sophomore
3. Apprentice
4. Master
5. Artisan
...I've messed around with the terms over the years and I'm not quite happy with them, but they amount to the following concepts:
0. I don't even yet have the conception that I'm working toward a goal; I'm just developing proto-skills
1. My skill is rudimentary but at least I have some goal in mind; also, because I haven't yet internalized any rules, I can create things that higher levels literally lose the ability to create
2. I have learned some Rules and now I'm stuck in that mindset, that there are Rules and that those who don't follow the Rules are somehow doing something wrong
3. I have learned that Rules are really more like Guidelines, and started to branch out a bit, exploring the new freedom to "break" the Rules and see where that leads me
4. I have mastered the craft enough that I can use the skill however I like. I understand the purpose of the "Rules" / Best Practices, and I know when and how to break those guidelines for effect.
5. I have so immersed myself in the medium that I no longer consciously think about the "Rules" or breaking them, I just Do and it comes together the way I intend or a way that transcends my intentions
That's how I started thinking about levels of skill, whether writing or art or skating or pottery or whatever. It seems like a useful framework. Doesn't mean that everyone needs to move toward mastery, or that people whose skill is or remains at the lower levels should feel inferior; there's reason for all the levels to exist. Some of my favorite fan art came from a rather amateur artist and it delights me because of how energetic and distinctive it is -- it could never be drawn by an artist who'd learned how shoulders attach to the body.
The discussion of flags had me thinking back to a coupe of decades ago when I was a preschool teacher. We had a visiting tutor that would come in a few times a week to introduce Spanish language lessons to our class of mostly non-Spanish-speaking students. In our weekly newsletter home to families, I added a little box with that week's Spanish vocabulary with Anglo-friendly pronunciation guides so that families could engage their kids at home. Unthinkingly, I snagged a clip art of the Spanish flag to use as a visual marker for that little corner of the newsletter.
Even though I wasn't yet totally awakened to the pervasive ways colonization still plays out in our contemporary world, I did have a moment of realization where I thought, "Huh, none of the kids in our class who speak Spanish are from Spain - does this graphic really reflect our classroom culture?" Not yet knowing the concept of "many Englishes" or "many Spanishes" I nonetheless also eventually reasoned that using a single flag to reflect one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world was semiotically inadequate.
I eventually swapped out the single Spanish flag icon for a little border around that part of the page, consisting of flags from several (maybe all? Definitely at least a collection that covered our classroom) Spanish-speaking countries, which felt more appropriate and pluralistic.
Case for flags for languages: situation is the same as using name of peoples or countries for naming the language. Is it fine to call English language English, even if spoken by person from Nigeria or the USA? If we can call it English, then we can use flag of England, UK, USA, etc. to talk about the language in pictures. What is the alternative for identifying the English language?
I don't know if I agree 100% with what you said, but it's a good observation and it definitely makes me think.
@@DynamicFortitude I pointed this out in another comment, and his response really shows that he doesn't understand what he's talking about.
With these kinds of people the point is to deny and erase the people that gave birth to the language
Counterpoint, by way of example. As long as hispanophones continue to use the word "español" (which, by and large - and contrary to what we're often told as learners- they do, in preference to "Castellano") then IMO it's reasonable to continue to use the Spanish flag to represent that language. It's not causing confusion, or offense, or anything like that. It's just... an effective and universally understood symbol. Same with French outside France, same with English outside England.
I agree on the meaningless of "native level" though. For example, some "native" speakers truly butcher their own language. By which I mean that their mastery is sufficiently lacking that they struggle to effectively communicate as well as, say, an educated language learner does. It's entirely possible to learn a language (and, indeed, the culture associated with that language) to a level where you are more proficient than the average "native" speaker. Just don't ever think you're "done".
That's what bugs me the most in the language learning space: the obsession with fluency. As though every language were a level in your own personal video game which you must (and possibly could) "complete". It's the same nerve that twitches when, as people talk about their travel plans, they announce "Oh, last year we did Thailand and Vietnam. Next year we're doing New Zealand".
"DID". As in, completed, done, check. Next.
The español vs castellano thing varies by region, Argentines for example tend to use castellano. I don't know if it's really a sensitive topic in Spain or not - I've heard Spaniards use both - but outside of Spain anyway the norm just depends on where someone is from and using one over another is not really a matter of etiquette.
I like "Idiomatic" better than native, since it describes the comfortability with the language rather than when or how you learned it.
I'm french, I'm also watching a french linguist youtuber called Linguisticae who fight regularly with the "Académie Française" on those kind of subject. Like the "purity" of the french language, how young people can't speak or read french anymore, how we are invaded by English everyday, etc. So I kinda understand that and how there are some people that try to "normalize" the language through a kinda of "nationalistic ideal" of the language. And even when it not people, it could also be some kind of social phenomenon that don't always start from an intention of normalizing the language (like the use of "native speaker").
On one end, I'm sometimes annoyed by that but on the other, it's also just a normal phenomenon. You could also say that we need to have common word and grammar to still be able to communicate. And that's somewhat necessary. The only problem is when it's too much and it's start to erase the diversity inside a language. I don't remember when it was but it happen in french at some point to normalize the language because people could not really communicate (something maybe in the 18th century, I forgot). And it was useful. But here and there, it also destroy dialect. Fortunately, it changed a bit now and you can learn some dialect in school from what I remember. You can even be evaluated on those for the "baccalauréat" (important french diploma at the end of high school). So while, it's a constant fight, I'm a bit more distant on that now.
I'm a bit distant because I'm also more interested on the educative side now (also, I'm done on the politic side for now, don't want to think too much about that). And I hate the idea of "native speaker" or "native level". Seriously, that just doesn't exist and it's just harmful to learners. "Native speaker" are clone of each other, they are diversified. While it's true that, for exemple, some common word are necessary, you don't need to learn 24k most common words in newspapers. That kinda like "model citizen" ideal that should be able to read everything. But just NO. People have different jobs, different interests, they didn't had identical lives either and they didn't develop identical "language". I'm not even talking ability. That's just pure knowledge/exposure through their life. Like I can't read/understand law text or economic text in french and really understand them. Same for slang for younger people. It's also like you can't understand a joke without the ref. You can as good as you want, mastered all the grammar, learn all the word, you won't understand it. I extending that to other aspect but I pretty sure if we were able to extract the data directly from the brain of people, we will find tons of big frequency list that are all different. And I'm talking mainly word but besides that, I'm sure it would be more less true for other aspect the language. The idea of "native speaker" or "native level" erase all of that. Same when we talk about the same language in different country (I don't have the word, it's not dialect but the same things at that level).
And just also for foreign learner, that's exist too. You don't need to learn everything depending on your situation. I mean, I learn some common word in English but I forgot a lot of them since I don't live in an English country. Like curtain. I don't have curtain, I have some "rideaux" because I didn't use it in more than 10 years. Like I don't particularly like small talk and since I don't live in an English country, it just didn't stick. Same for half of the word in my house. But in the same, I would probably lost some "native speaker" on math, informatics, etc. Like, I'm both "better" and "worse" than that freaking "native speaker" which doesn't mean anything. And it's not just knowledge, like I did study those subject. Part of that is "pure" language. Like word, expression, etc. And even maybe grammar in some case (whatever grammar mean here and that may also define roughly as "rules of usage"). And also, it's just more "fun" to learn what you like or just talk about you first, who you are and also talk to people that are similar to you (and also have a similar "sub-language" in that other language that you're learning). Instead of trying to be that tasteless monstrosity that doesn't mean anything and doesn't even exist called "native speaker".
Anyway, I talk too much x). So, I wouldn't say "dark ideology" because that's necessary to have some "unity" at some degree (trying to be neutral here) but when it erase everything, it's not good either. It kinda does on the internet like a lot of other things but that's also just partially a social phenomenon rather than an ill-will ideology in my opinion (even I want to get angry too sometimes :v). Well partially, there's probably some equivalent of the "académie française" at those level too. Also, it's kinda useful as reference for learners too at the beginning but after that it's just a hindrance in my opinion. That is costly for some people (can't speak about themselves or what they like even at "high" level). Anyway, interesting topic but it's also kinda connect with too much things x). I need to stop here xD
PS: If you have the motivation one day, please create a discord, would be a lot of fun to have the community there too. Also more useful to be ping for the new video (rather than UA-cam notification)
PPS: sorry if I made too much english mistake, it's kinda late here and I can't spot the mistakes at this hour (I hope I didn't skip too much word too, tend to do that sometimes x) )
Using a flag to represent a language is like using the Prime Minister/President to represent the people of a country. Sort of sensible in most contexts? I guess so. Really useful in a small number of specific contexts? Absolutely. Offensive to a lot of people? Yeah it would be. Really problematic in a lot of cases? Yeah that too.
Totally agreed about flags from the first second, it's became obvious when working with languages spoken in the Africa.... Then,. it became to me obvious very generally
I definitely agree with the flags parts, although I am less concerned about with the nationalism/fascism part and more with the ambiguities that can arise for using them. I am a language weirdo who also know way to much about computers, so I use the unambiguous ISO language codes (e.g. EN = English, FR = French, TG = Tagalog, etc.) when making short references to various languages.
I am a bit weary about getting rid of the term 'native speaker', as I do think it is quite useful and does point to something based on reality.
Too often EN equates to EN-US, not EN-GB for me
Ok, so, do we have a simple word or phrase with which we can replace ‘native speaker’?
he literally says at the end "I'm not even saying you should stop saying 'native speaker'"
proficient speaker
@@ViperMantisBut a "proficient speaker" who grew up in a culture where the language is spoken, went to school in that language, is the same as a "proficient speaker" who grew up in a culture or country where the main language is another, grew up using primarily other language and went to school in that other language?
You literally can see the difference of kids born and raised in latam, with kids born and raised in the us from parents who's native language is other and teach their kids that language.
@@livavapa I'm not contesting those things being important, I'm saying that you can get those things without being tied to a geographic location, and even being tied to a geographic location with those things is not guaranteed to make someone proficient or highly proficient. It's a semantic shortcut, which is why it works colloquially. It just isn't all that accurate as people would like it to be.
All nice and dandy, but is there a simpler and less nationalist way of iconifying a language? Aren't the names of the languages themselves a bit, well, nationalist? English, Deutsch, Japanese, French... they all carry the nation state in their name.
I do get your point but at the same time, I don't see an easy fix.
I think it makes sense to represent a language by nation state flag in some cases. Take for example Lithuania, modern republic of Lithuania was explicitly founded by Lithuanian speakers in resistance to occupation and russification. The country of Lithuania to this day puts national language preservation as a priority in laws etc as that is directly linked with continued existence of nation state. That is to say every person speaking Lithuanian one hundred percent would identify themselves with Lithuanian tricolour as nationhood as such first arose from linguistically determined basis.
Such manner of representation of course wouldn't work with countries who have colonial origins and language doesn't determine nationality.
People do not use language to describe idiosyncrasies at the margins unless that is necessary. quite frankly it takes way more mental energy. Language requires energy to convey concepts, we cannot caveat every single thing we say every single time. A term like native-speaker works in the vast majority of cases and anchors like that are necessary when learning a new language. You have to have a general consensus on where the language is spoken and who speaks it. just my $.02
Don't care about the flag point, so sure. Change it. Whatever floats your boat there. As far as "native speaker" being a problem, just no. It just means that's the language you learned when you were first learning to speak. A person can certainly have Spanish as theor native language but have been born in the US. Same with any other language/nation of birth combination.
I'm not throwing 3+ extra words into a sentence to beat around the bush, when i can just say "native language" and have 100% of the people know what I'm saying and what I mean 100% of the time. Clarity in communication is key.
The problem there has been mentioned by others in this conversation. What about people who learned more than one language when they were first learning to speak? Plus, the term is, unfortunately, often used as a form of gatekeeping in official situations.
My "native language" by your definition is not English, but I've been speaking English for decades and speak it so well that I'm far better at English than I am at my "native language."
The concept of native speaker as a level of proficiency is silly and harmful. It places a 3rd grader from UK at a higher level than Chinua Achebe or Arundhoti Roy, just because these authors are skilled in other languages too!
In casual conversation? Sure. But I think the point is being made more about situations in which it's taken as important. Like being denied a job opportunity because you're not a "native X speaker" and then have that position be given to someone who's unironically worse at X language than you are but who were born at the correct country.
@@Zancibar I've had that kind of experience. I speak excellent English-better than many people I know-but when I looked into getting a job teaching English overseas I discovered I was ineligible. I needed to either have English as my first language, or to have completed 12 years of schooling in English. Unfortunately I learnt English after I moved countries as a child, and completed my first three years of schooling in my birth country.
I don't know, man. this seems a bit too much. Ultranationalists can make a sandwich into an ultranationalist symbol, doesn't make a sandwich anymore multidimensional than bread with stuffing. Same with flags with me. I don't care which flags English, French, or Spanish are represented by, as long as the language is spoken in that country in day to day life and at home. Yes, nation-states are political entities, doesn't mean that simply referring to a flag that carries a political value equals agreeing with said political value. It's simply the flag of a country that primarily speaks that language as a primary means of communication. regardless of why, when, or how they speak it, or started speaking it.
Iranian flag? Who cares? Iranians speak Farsi, that's all I care about. Yes, other languages and ethnicities exist, yes other varieties of Persian exist in other countries, but who cares about that nuance when the primary requirement is met- this language being the day to day means of communication within those political borders.
Thanks for the morning yoga. It's been a while since I had this much of a stretch. As a quick counterpoint, taking Spanish as an example, not everyone is familiar with, say, the flag of Guatemala or Ecuador. So let's say a tourist from Madrid )or Mexico City, so as to not be Spain specific)is visiting Petra in Jordan and is looking at a row of tour guides trying to find a Spanish guide, but using your separationist 'light' ideology, the two guides who DO speak Spanish and are eager to earn their daily dinars are both wearing pins of their nations. Our family from Mexico City, sadly, are not as avid a fan of vexillology as you are and therefore pass over our hungry tour guides in search of the ubiquitous earthbound yet universal symbol of Spanish, the Spanish flag. Neither the family nor the guides are much into ultra-nationalism or the historical breakdown of nation states and colonial powers, and yet both shall pass like ships in the night because of your neo-nationalist ideals. Flags are but a symbol and a tool, and only carry the weight with which you afford them. No borders, no nations. No gods, no masters.
I’m originally from Crimea, Ukraine. As many know, people in Ukraine primarily speak two languages: Ukrainian and Russian. I completely agree with you about the flags, as the Russian flag has now become a triggering symbol for many war victims in Ukraine, even though they may speak Russian.