Dear followers, I do believe this ongoing discussion is of
high interest for many. I have reproduced it acknowledging author and origin.
You may find it in the group Instituto Cervantes in
LinkedIn. It all started by an article kindly offered by Andres Esteban HOW
IMMERSION HELPS TO LEARN A LANGUAGE, in the New York Times: It is possible
for adults to process a language the same way a native speaker does, and over
time, the processing improves even when the skill goes unused.
Although age becomes an issue as learning naturally slows
down, if motivation is high and the adult learner gets the right input and
support, a good enough level of linguistic competence can be reached. However,
there will always be grammatical interference from his/her native language that
will prevent the learner to reach native like level in the new
language. CONTRIBUTED BY ALEJANDRO OSORIO
Unfortunately in Spain, where there are several recognized
languages other than Castilian or Spanish (Galego, Euskera, Valencià, Català, a
whistling language in one of the Canary Islands and some minor languages
without the rank of co-official in their regions), most Spaniards are against
immersion programs carried on in the Catalan and Basc Autonomous Communities arguing
that there is no need to learn a language other than Spanish and that it is
detrimental for students when it comes to make sure they master the only
State-wide Spanish language. Scientific evidence is against this of course.
CONTRIBUTED BY JORDI PICAZO
With so many languages in Spain, it is no wonder that there
are those who oppose immersion, since some of the speakers of these languages
learn Spanish as a second language. Would you say, then, that Spanish is a
foreign language in some regions of Spain? Some of these languages, other than
Spanish, were spoken when the Romans introduced their language (vulgar Latin)
and culture to the Iberian Peninsula, is that not so? An example is Euskera,
which is spoken in the Basque country of Spain. Is it not, so ancient, that it
has been difficult to assign it to any specific place in Indo-European
languages. For this reason, they may be reluctant to abandon their language to
a hierarchy of languages that do not relate to theirs? I welcome any
corrections to this, as I have only had one linguistic class in my formal
education. CONTRIBUTED BY MARY JO RUIZ
Dear Mary J, you raise many points here. Let me start
somewhere, saying that a piece of data seems to be if I am not wrong that
Euskera, together with Japanese, are the two unclassified languages in the
world. Then, to continue, I don't think it would be good that the language of a
European State, even if that may be the case in some countries in Asia, was a
Second Language to some of their people. That certainly is not the case in
Spain except deep down in the countryside where some old people may find real
difficulty in expressing themselves in a language different from their mother
tongue. The language identity in many Autonomous Communities with a second language
(which are a reduced number) is very low except in the Basc Country, Galicia
and Catalonia. However, Spanish is used freely in these Autonomous Regions,
where except for Catalan the local language has still a low strength. Basc
people and Catalans are the ones with a higher National and Cultural identity
related to the language too. Public surveys show, finally, that, even if some
people are reluctant to believe it, Spanish is better known and used by
compulsory education students in Catalonia than in some of the
Castilian-speaking Autonomous Regions. My modest contribution. CONTRIBUTED BY
JORDI PICAZO
Since we have digressed to regional languages, certainly
Spain is not alone in Iberoamerica. In Mexico, there are still about 55
indigenous languages spoken (out of hundreds in existence in 1500). Due to
cultural attitudes that come from colonial times, most are now slowly dying
out, regardless of what some advocates believe. CONTRIBUTED BY JAMES MUSSELMAN
Congo DRC has over 250 languages and dialects, most
originating from a common Bantu language. What is remarkable to me is that many
Congolese are daily exposed to 3-4 oral languages and relatively fluent in all
of them (not so in the written language): an official written language
(French), a national written language (Lingala, Tshiluba, Swahili, or Kikongo),
and one or two local oral languages (village and family). My friends routinely
switch from one to another, immersed in all, happy to have a couple of
languages uniting their country politically and economically, also content to
have a language or two bonding them to a unique, local, and family identity.
Truly the brain is amazing in its ability to master languages when the learner
is immersed in many. I personally believe it is possible to promote the
national unifying languages that offer important economic, scholastic, and
political advantages while, at the same time, fostering a climate of
preservation for maintaining those dialects that reflect uniquely local
identities within the nation. While colonization led to many negative and
adverse effects on all continents, threatening the very existence of uniquely
local dialects and cultures, it should also be noted that it helped to unify
many disparate groups into regional and national forces. CONTRIBUTED BY DALE
GARSIDE
