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(a)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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