But it does provide an added benefit.
Regardless of the fact that he has been exposed to Italian since he was a child, Nuorese is still his first language.
Anyone who becomes extremely fluent in a second language is still never capable of the understanding and information absorption that they can get with their native language -- someone whose native language is German, but speaks flawless English without an accent and has lived in an English-speaking region for 15 years, will still be able to understand something in German at a deeper level.
It's no different for minority languages than the German/English example above. A person whose first language is Navajo but is fluent in English will still have a better comprehension of texts in Navajo.
This has been shown by test scores.
I once read an article with dozens of quotes from Navajo children where even basic mathematics (ie, addition, subtraction, multiplication, even problems like "10 x 4") was confusing to them in English, yet when asked in the native language they were able to come up with the correct answer very easily. This is despite their supposed fluency in English -- they could carry on English conversations with great fluency.
Mark
On 22/07/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
A man born and raised with Nuorese Sardinian, but who at the age of 18 moved to Rome and has since lived and worked among almost exclusively non-Sardinian-speakers for the last 30 or even 50 years, his "own language" is still Nuorese.
And we should view our goal from at least two simultaneous perspectives. If we have gotten him his free encyclopedia in standard Italian, and he understands it, so that he can look up anything he's interested in, then we've succeeded at one level. If we've gotten him that *plus* the free encyclopedia in Nuorese Sardinian, then we've done something more.
I suppose whether we've done "something more" depends on your personal viewpoints on language and politics.
In this case, there is very little written in Nuorese Sardinian---most educated Sardinians will be able to read and understand standard Italian, and most of their reading (beyond perhaps a local newspaper) will be done in standard Italian. For example, if a Sardinian were interested in reading an in-depth biography of Aristotle, he would be most likely to purchase one written in standard Italian. From that perspective, providing an encyclopedia article about Aristotle in standard Italian provides the information in the language it's expected to be in. Providing it in Nuorese Sardinian may be interesting, but I'm not sure what benefits it has beyond meta-benefits like language perservation and curiosity---it certainly doesn't provide any additional benefit to the primary goal of an encyclopedia article about Aristotle, which is to convey information about Aristotle.
-Mark
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