Protect the language at all costs!!!

A few years ago I heard of a law in France designed to protect the French language. As with a lot of things, my memory of the law was a little fuzzy and the law was supposed to be a protection for the French consumer by requiring advertisements and contract to be in French. But the law was applied by some to mean no foreign language usage in media. While the law did not try to control the language in the way that I thought it did, I started thinking about what would be the effect of trying to ban the introduction of foreign words into a language, and would this even be possible.

Finegan talked about how words and expressions that are common today were not used or were used in a different way. The Gay Nineties does not refer to a time period when homosexuals enjoyed more social freedom but rather shows how the word gay has changed in usage in recent years.

As I look at items in my house I see how many of the common things I use every day are words that came from other languages. Pasta, pizza, chilies, tomales, enchiladas are just a few. Then I started thinking about common items that have been part of English language for many years. I realized that raccoon and possum are again loan words even if the river near my house is the Raccoon.

All this brings me to my question what would be the effect of trying to ban all new words of foreign origin or is it even possible to do this. This brings me to the role of loan words in language. When Europeans first came to North America they encountered many animals and plants that they had never seen before, for many of these they adopted the Native American word for the item. I still find it interestinlg that the word chocolate was a loan word that we took from Spanish which in turn was a loan word from N'ahuatl, I really don't think that it is possible to ban new foreign words in any language and why would you want to try.

Why can't they just learn English?

"If they are going to be in our country, why don't they learn English? This is a statement/question that I hear all too often. It is usually followed by a student saying "that way I won't have to learn Spanish. Most are surprised when I agree with their statement that people coming to live in this country should learn English. In fact most immigrants either speak some English, or are working to learn English.

In chapter 15 of Language: Its structure and use, Finegan covers how a second language is acquired. As a teacher of a foreign language I found this chapter very interesting and useful. I took part in an oral history study of coal miners and their families as a graduate student in Illinois and from my work with the immigrant families I saw the pattern of language acquisition follow this pattern, the children in the family quickly became fluent in English, the fathers also became fluent, sometimes at a slower rate, and the mothers in the family were more likely to have a very limited use of the language. The reason for this was in part due to exposure to the language and opportunities to use the language. The adult females in the families were more isolated from the English speaking community around them.

As a teacher of a foreign language, I was very interested in the differences in learning a first and second language. Many parts of this chapter mirrored things that I have observed in the classroom. Because teen learners have a developed language they have a different reason for acquiring a second language. Perhaps the best way to acquire a second language is the placed in that language environment and have to use the language in all situations.

Finegan states that motivation plays a large role in second language learning. In the school setting the primary motivation is to meet college entrance requirements. Finegan divides the motivation into two categories, instrumental motivation and integrative motivation. The student taking a second language only to meet a requirement will not have the same success as someone who takes a language and socially interacts in the language.

Our youngest daughter had experience with both types of second language learning. She took French as part of her school requirements, today she can remember a very little from her two years of French. When she was a junior in high school she was an exchange student in Slovakia, she returned very fluent in Slovakian and still retains her ability to read and converse.

The final thing Finegan talks about with second language learning is attitude. The learners attitude toward the language and personal motivation has a great effect on the success in learning a language. With my students, I find the ones who only want to meet a requirement are more likely not to be as successful in their learning of the language.