In this week's reading of Muriel Saville-Troike's text, linguistics were covered in detail. The concepts behind these various terms can be very complex, but as in my previous post, I was able to connect many of the terms with personal and real experiences. Although, English is my second language, I learned it at a very young age and speak as a native speaker. My parents however, started to learn English in their 20's. Furthermore, they did not receive any formal learning; they didn't learn the linguistics and still today, they encounters troubles because they try to form a sentence the way it is formed in Polish. For example, Saville-Troike writes of types of intereference (35-36). For my parents, it is difficult to distinguish when to use an article before a noun because articles do not exist in the Polish language.
In chapter 3, the authors writes this of social learning, "Although the capacity for the first language acquisition is inherent in the neurological makeup of every individual, no one can develop that potential without interaction with others in the society he or she grows up in" (32). This caught my attention because it is very true. Language is really based off of the culture around us. My first language is Polish, but the Polish that I use here in America differs from the Polish that I start catching onto when I am visiting Poland for a longer period of time. As the author goes onto say, the purpose of language is communication, and therefore language is always changing. These changes cannot be obtained and used unless, one is exposed to them from their culture and society. My parents are speaking the Polish that was being used in Poland's culture in the 80's. Although the proper language is still the same, pop-culture and technology have changed many aspects of the language, and since I am not living in that country and not interacting with others from that society, I am not speaking the most everyday informal Polish.
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