In this video, Andrew, who is Australian, shares his story about a transitional period in which he experienced a big shift in his mother tongue from Cantonese to English.
Thank you Andrew and Atsu for this great video! I am 36 years old and my wife is 35 years old, we both still are not good at English, and now we live in Iceland with our children (1 and 4 years old). When I first came here, I had very little knowledge of Icelandic. So I was very encouraged by Andrew's words, how he respects his parents, while giving the example of moving to Iceland! (In fact, you can live so well even if you only speak English because people here speak English very well, though. Plus there is Deloitte office that is the tallest building in Iceland, I guess) As a parent raising children, Andrew's story is very interesting and helpful because we are always concerned about how our children are feeling now and how they adapt to the environment.
I have a similar story to him. I grew up speaking Cantonese with my parents, and English everywhere else. I don’t think English was ever a “foreign language” to me, but I was probably better at Cantonese than English before I entered school. 私はAndrewと同じような物語がある。子供の頃、両親とはカントン語で、それ以外は英語で喋った。英語は外国語だったと思わないんだけど、学校入る前には多分英語よりカントン語の方が上手だった。 ps Andrew has a cool voice 😎
Thank you for uploading. His English speaking is very similar to that of my Cantonese-speaking Chinese friend. It took me time to get used to listening to that English.
What Andrew talked about reminds me of Kazuo Ishigro. He was born in Japan and when he was five, he went to England. His mother tongue is, as you know well, English now. Actually, he got Nobel prize for literature. Thanks for such an interesting story.
As a linguist, I would like to point out that it’s not your mother tongue that changes but your first language which the two are very different concepts. Mother tongue describes the language you first acquire to speak as a child, and you may be a native speaker of a language having a different language as your mother tongue!
hey atsu, nice video. while its cool that you're diving into all this nitty-gritty stuff about native language acquisition, i'm not sure if even andrew himself knows what he was doing at 3-4 years old. babies and young children learn languages through magic, not learning grammar or intentionally doing anything that adults would do to learn a language. honestly, andrew's story of transitioning from a non-native speaker to native speaker is extremely common in immigrant children all across the world. even here on youtube, bilingirl chika, which i'm sure japanese english learners on youtube probably all know, wasn't originally a native speaker of english. she moved from japan to the states at the age of 5. however, after a while, though magic, she became native just like the other kids that were her age at the time. (honestly i consider her more american than japanese tbh. she lived in the states from the age of 5 up until her 20s) so, all in all, great video but the phenomenon isn't as unique as some people might think.
Granted, his story may be quite common, but the purpose of this video is just to add another opportunity to be aware of the common, typical story. Anyway, I’m glad you still thought this was a great video. Thanks!
This dude had the same experience as me as a kid. I only spoke Spanish until I was 5 and the only English I got was from watching American tv. I went to school and could more or less understand what was going on around me but my speech was limited and I couldn't read. I was also enrolled in ESL at school but midway during my second grade they basically told me they didn't think I needed ESL anymore since my English was great.
ディクテーションしてみました。集中してディクテーションできるのは３分半が限界だったけど。今はThat's all you need to know about me.が聞き取れないレベル。英語学習を続けていたらこれがまるっと聞き取れるようになるのかなぁ。 ネイティブとATSUさんの会話、ディクテーション教材として活用したいです。３分ぐらいの長さで字幕付きの動画、リクエストします。
