Do you speak the language where you live very well, and if so, can I ask you something?

[Quintessing]

There seem to be MNetters living in many different locations, so I would love to pick your brains a little.

Could you please tell me where you live, and what language is spoken there?
Do the locals speak one language officially, such as administrative center/Council, Church, Uni/school, or the workplace, and a different in the local community, their home, with their families and social groups? Even dialects of the same? How many such languages are there?

For example, I am currently in Norway (where I grew up). Norway has bokmål and nynorsk as two norwegian standard languages, sami as a native language (which again has multiple variations), and I speak tromsøværing with my friends and family which is a lower form of the standard.

Whats it like where you are?

Hokkien is colloquially referred to in English and Mandarin as "Taiwanese Language"

That's incorrect.

The literal translation of 福建話 is Fujianese, commonly known in English as Hokkien.

Gweimui - there is a difference between 'colloquially' and 'literally'. It is correct to say that many people in Taiwan and elsewhere refer to the Hokkien dialect used in Taiwan as Taiwanese (or Taiwanhua, as well as Minnanhua and other variations), even if the official term for the language is Hokkien.

Obviously, the use of the term Taiwanese for anything is politically charged in some places. For example, I found that some mainland Chinese students I was in a seminar with (in the UK) got very angry when informed that the majority of young people living in Taiwan these days view themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese (see this article, for example), and have no desire at all for reunification with the mainland - but getting angry about it or saying it is factually incorrect does not change the reality.

expat The language your flatmates argued in was 福建話 (Fujianese), correct?

The term 台灣話 (Taiwanese) is a political invention, introduced to encourage just the sort of separatism you've described.

I live in Spain and speak fluent Spanish. Here the local language is Valencian, which is almost the same language as the Catalan spoken in Barcelona give or take a few different words. It's taught in schools and in some neighbourhoods of the city it's almost exclusively spoken, although everyone can speak Spanish too and the majority of the population speaks better Spanish than they do Valencian. That said, there are a lot of people who live in the villages who struggle in Spanish and end up switching back to Valencian. I understand it perfectly - a lot of it is like Spanish, and what isn't like Spanish is like Italian or French - and have picked up enough to be able to speak bits, much to the amazement of my friends who would never expect a foreigner to know Valencian.

Gweimui - you may not like the fact that people use the term Taiwanese to describe the language, but the reality is that they do use it.

Are you from mainland China, by any chance? In my experience, people from Taiwan and people from mainland China see the issue of Taiwanese identity from such completely different perspectives that there is zero chance of them ever understanding each other's feelings.

I am not ethnically Chinese, but have spent a lot of time studying Chinese language, history, politics etc, so I can have sympathy for both sides without being directly affected or needing to pick one side over the other. However, I don't think this thread is really the place to start a debate on the political status of Taiwan in relation to mainland China - it is meant to be a friendly and informative discussion of how multilingual people in various countries around the world use their various languages in different situations.

(You seem to have joined Mumsnet (or name-changed?) purely to argue with my use of a commonly-used term for one particular Chinese dialect, which I find a bit odd.)

"Comparing English (a language tohmm ) spoken in England to a dialect is ridiculous Gwen as you must be aware"

No, I don't necessarily agree. There is no official boundary between language and dialect and there are many whose status is hotly debated.

"the parallel to Bayrish is something like West Country dialect or Cockney"

I wasn't aware of that, however. As far as I knew Bavarian might be more different from the standard, perhaps more like Yorkshire dialect or Scots.

"people miss vital information, plan integration and enrichment activities for a vulnerable group and you purposely exclude part of the group"

This would be the same whether you use a local language or a local dialect, wouldn't it?

"A lot of French dialects have died out although Breton is still spoken"

The wording here could give the wrong impression that Breton is a French dialect. It is a separate language from the Brittonic branch of the Celtic languages, closely related to Welsh and Cornish.

I have lived in Indonesia and Kazakhstan.

In Indonesia most people speak Indonesian as a communal language. I learnt that and spoke it everywhere. But that is rarely people's mother tongue. There are over 200 different people groups in Indonesia and many of them have their own language. I was on Java and the majority of the population was Javanese and spoke Javanese. But there were also Chinese (I assume form different parts of China and therefore speaking different Chinese dialects) also Madurese, Balinese, etc etc.

In Kazakzstan there were two majority languages, Kazakh and Russian. The population was roughly half and half Kazakh and Russian. But the language wasn;t as simple as that. Kazakh was banned during Soviet times, so many Kazakhs don't speak it beyond greetings. They went to school in Russian too.
But Kazakh is closely tied with nationalism. Some Kazakhs believe that you can't call yourself a 'real' Kazakh unless you speak it. Pretty much everyone speaks Russian, but learning Kazakh is a point of pride.
Kazkahs who don't speak Kazakh can be discriminated against.

I spoke Russian, but could do greetings in Kazakh. We would have interesting conversations which went:
me: hello (in Kazakh)
them: (in Russian) Oh you speak Kazakh!!
me: (in Russian) sorry no, just enough to say hello, I learnt Russian because I live here (in a Russian speaking area)
them; Oh but you should learn Kazakh, it is such a beautiful language, the language of my heart.
me: yes it is lovely. Do you speak Kazakh?
them: no - but you should learn it!
me: yes of course I will keep trying, but if I ONLY spoke Kazakh, I wouldn't be able to speak to you.....

I only speak English.
If you are fluent in more than one language, what language do you dream in, think with, tell your dc off with?
I've noticed some mums tell their children off in their other language to English.
I find being bi/multi lingual fascinating. How do children know which words belong to which language when they're really little like toddler age?

glitter - most families follow a one person one language approach. This means that you speak your language to your child and your partner speaks thweir language. So dh is dutch and when kids were little I spoke to them in English and he spoke in Dutch. So if I was to tell them off, it would be in the langugae I use with them at home.
We lived in a Russian speaking country. Ds did struggle with languages, but dd1 just spoke to each person in the language they used, so it was Russian on the street/playground, Dutch to daddy, English to mum, Russian in shops, English to American friends etc. She was tri-lingual at 4. Sadly she has lost most of it now. (we oculdn't keep it up when back in UK)

No Gwen it would not be the same.

Official communication and enrichment and support for vulnerable groups should both be available in the official language of the country. Making both available only in dialect is exclusionary. It is reasonable to expect residents to speak the official language, and if the official language is a dialect then fine - it is not fine to produce materials which can exclude sections of the population only in dialect if the official language of the country is something else and participants have not signed up for an immersive dialect experience.

Dialect is fashionable atm but that doesn't mean there are not negative aspects to pushing dialect without also providing an alternative in the form of the country's official language.

If you moved to Yorkshire from say Cornwall and put your kids into a normal state primary and then 2 years in the school switched all official communication to Yorkshire dialect those who didn't understand full blown phonetically spelt dialect and not thick skinned, confident and time rich enough to insist on having every notice and letter home translated orally into English by the head / a teacher would be unfairly stuffed. Doubly so perhaps if they were already English as a second language speakers who had made sure they spoke English in order to integrate and hadn't time or energy to learn to speak dialect just because it's currently fashionable.

glitter children associate either a person or a situation/ place with a language. Two of my children never mixed languages - the third has more trouble but I think it's because I'm working more and dumped the poor sod in full day German child care from age 4 (where he was perfectly happy but but it has negatively affected his language development).

I am in the Alsace in France. The area has a fascinating history as it has been both French and German in recent history. The official language is French but most of the older generation speak Alsacien. I hear it every day in the shops, library etc.
Unfortunately it is dying out as it is not taught in schools (Hochdeutch is the second langauge due tô proximity tô Germany and is spoke widely in the area). There is some attempt to protect it with language courses you can send your kids to and alsacian theatre but i don't think it will be enough. Many people of my generation tell me they understand it because their grandparents / parents speak it but they can't speak it. So within the next generation or 2 it will probably be almost completely gone. It's very sad.

How do children know which words belong to which language when they're really little like toddler age?

Little children can get quite angry if a parent speaks the 'wrong' language. So say mum speaks French to child and Dad speaks English. But hey live in England so when mum takes child to nursery she speaks English, but her child might have a tantrum because she is using 'Daddy's language'

This can get more complicated when one parent is deaf and uses sign language, deaf sign language users usually have deaf spouses or hearing spouses who have deaf parents.

So child might get angry with hearing parent signing, but of course deaf parent cannot hear so hearing parent is not going to speak to them, they are going to sign.

I occasionally dream in sign language, less so now, it's strange because people who don't sign IRL do in dreams.

Oh and you know how some people talk in their sleep? Deaf children sometimes sign in their sleep.

trotzdem - my impression, from observing an awful lot of bilingual/plurilingual families, is that the language of daycare and early years schooling is incredibly influential on language development. It can be hard work "recovering" the balanced, simultaneous bilingualism of emerging language and toddlerhood after spending all day every day in a majority language day care setting. I know many Anglophone families who chose French daycare and maternelle for their DC because they were anxious about settling into school and doing (very) well from the outset whose DC lag in English now. I know that choices aren't always available, however.

Bobo there is probably something in that, though it is a matter of balance - when I used to mix more in ex pat circles children who mixed only with other English speaking children and families in the afternoons and at weekends (even though they attended German kindergarten) did struggle right the way though German Grundschule and fail to get into gymnasium or Realschule despite their parents being positive they should have... Those kids then ended up going to private English speaking secondary school, so I guess the German never took properly...

By fluke (more by accident than design) I think we got it right with our older 2 by doing minority language (English) at home with the children home full time milage 3 (but German parent-toddler groups) and community language for half day kindergarten (8:30 - 12) and school and (actually essentially IMO) lots of socialising with their local German friends and only meeting up with English speakers once per month or so.

The older 2 never had any problems with mixing and speak both languages indistinguishably from monolingual peers.

DC3 was also home with me til he was 3 and I also only speak English to him but he heard more German at home because DH had started slipping into German with the older kids, he (unlike his older siblings) cottoned on early that I spoke German (to be fair when Dc1 was small I really didn't speak German, I learnt alongside her), and I couldn't be bothered with seeking out occasional English playmates for him and although he started kindergarten half days we had to up it to 7am - 3pm because I went back to work. As a result he mixes and slides between languages My fault. It hasn't meant his German is any better, just that his English is worse. His grammar and his accent in both languages are thankfully fine, he does switch grammatical construction appropriately, it is just a vocabulary issue so I remain hopeful that it will rectify itself - it would feel like a more deep seated problem if he used German grammar in English, which I have also heard "native English speaker" children who have actually had more German input than English do.

It's a tricky balance to get and I think we got it right with DC1 and 2 but have failed DC3 a bit

As you say, getting the balance right is very tricky and each successive child in a family is born into a different language equation so you have to rethink your strategy with each new arrival and for each child. I suspect it's harder to manage in Germany than in France because the DC have fewer years of school in Germany before selection kicks in and so there is a lot more pressure on parents. At least in France there are 12 years of non-selective schooling to play around with.

English medium Kindergarten was never an option for us (we would have had to move house or drive a minimum of an hour each way to the nearest option, which would also have been multiple times the price of state kindergarten and meant he was socially isolated in our actual community). I think minority language only at home til age 3 then short half days in community language Kindergarten with lots socialising with community language friends but minority language only at home was just right - it is easy to do for a pfb but bloody hard to sustain by DC3 and I didn't realise at the time the impact the blurring of linguistic boundaries at home (slipping more towards 1 parent one language and away from 100% minority language at home) and increase in hours at German childcare would have.

Bobo yes that sounds far better - I absolutely hate selection happening during year 4 of primary - it is insane and inaccurate and just wrong on every level

Almost all families seem to have a harder time avoiding majority language takeover with later DC. I think it's an interesting reflection on how parental input tends to be the greatest for first-borns!

Yes, early selection very much works against DC who have spent their energies developing skills that are not measured by the selection process. At my DD's bilingual primary there was one class (out of five parallel classes) in the first year of primary for DC who could already read in French. Some parents were so desperate for their DC to be in that class that they forgot about English entirely. It was all really silly because, by the end of primary, no one knew or cared who had been in the reading class in first year and many of those who had were terrible at English.

Anyone bringing up children to speak more than one language is giving their child an amazing skill. I am a native English speaker and have learned two European languages and one Asian language. It's hard - especially the Asian language which does not have an alphabet. I envy toddlers who can effortlessly switch between languages.

Yes bobo- my BIL (pfb) was trilingual, French, English, Italian when tiny, as school took up more and more of his time, Italian, then English were dropped. When DH came along 10 years later, he only learned French, because most communication in the home was now in French.

My closest friend is Taiwanese, living in UK, and is raising her child trilingually. Using one adult, one language, with her PIL providing third language. It has been interesting to see how English has become more prevalent in their child's speech now they're at school. When they spent 6 months in Taiwan, and he went to a Mandarin medium nursery, he found it difficult to remember his English when he came back, but as the underlying structures were already in his brain, it came back very rapidly.

parental input tends to be the greatest for first-borns

Bobo, does the majority language not become dominant with DC because they influence each other? Children speak the language of their peers.

Siblings tend to adopt one language between them and that is often (though by no means always) the majority language. Obviously the language siblings speak between themselves gives greater weight within the family to that language and may drown out one of two parental languages.

But it is by no means a given that the language of peers will dominate.