From: nkjrm@taxus.uib.no (Rolf Manne)
Subject: Home language - native language
Organization: University of Bergen
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:55:57 GMT

A Swedish family we know lived about 10 years in Norway and then moved back
to Sweden. Their youngest daughter was born in Norway and spoke mainly
Norwegian at that time although the other members of the family spoke only 
Swedish at home. While registering her in the local primary school in 
Sweden she was offered "home language" education in Norwegian. This was
politely refused by her parents who were in no way offended by the offer.

In some countries, e.g. in North Africa, the official language is Arabic
but a substantial part of the population speaks the Berber language (correct 
me if this spelling is incorrect).  I have been told by a person with such
a background that school education is only in Arabic, and when this fellow 
writes home to his father he does so in Arabic. Berber and Arabic are not
related linguistically. A similar situation exists for Pakistan. Most
immigrants to Norway have Punjabi as their mother tongue but have their
school education in the official Urdu language, originally the language
used in the Army and based upon the Dehli dialect (in present-day India).
There is also a written Punjabi language which I understand is used mainly
by adherents to the Sikh religion living in India. One may very well
deplore this situation but this is what the world is like.

For children with such complicated linguistic backgrounds, the distinction
between "home language" and "native language" (mother tongue) gives parents 
the opportunity to give their children education in the language they would 
get in their home countries. In addition, I am sure that parents who would 
like to have their mother tongue taught to their children, get that 
possibility. This applies e.g to Kurds from Turkey whose native language 
cannot be used in Turkish schools. Turkey uses the latin alphabet while
Kurds in Iraq and Iran use Arabic script and those in the former Soviet
Union cyrillic characters. A Kurdish "home language" teacher I once met 
thus had to teach his native language in three different alphabets.

Because of oppressive Turkish language policies there are no school-books 
available from that country for Kurds using the latin alphabet. I believe 
that I read some years ago that such books were only printed in Sweden. 

The word "home language" seems to have been constructed by some Swedish
school bureaucrats who were aware of the problems of defining the "native"
language of children from multilingual cultures. My experience is that
the Swedish school system  t o d a y  really tries to accomodate the
problems of those whose native language is different from Swedish. Whether
they succeed is a different topic. I think that all this has
been told before and that most readers of this news groups know what
the situation is like.

There are several other subtle distinctions that linguists like to make:
"Swedish (English, Finnish) as a Second Language" is Swedish (English, 
etc.) taught to those who are not native speakers of Swedish (etc..)
but who live in a Swedish-speaking community. "Swedish as a Foreign 
Language" is Swedish taught e.g. to U.S. students in the United States. 
I believe the distinction was first made when analyzing the 
learning situation of different groups learning English. Distinctions
such as "home language"-"native language" are thus quite common for
such people.

Rolf Manne
Department of Chemistry, University of Bergen
e-mail Rolf.Manne@uib.no
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic