Channel View Publications and Multilingual Matters


"A is a hospital patient with Alzheimer’s disease at an advanced stage who no longer understands what the doctors and nurses are saying. He reacts with nervousness and speaks back to the staff in a language nobody at the hospital understands. It turns out that the hospital staff is not even aware that A’s mother tongue is spoken in their country and that it is a distinct language which is not intelligible to the speakers of the majority language. This is what recurrently happens, for example, to speakers of Karelian in today’s Finland and Finns in today’s Sweden." 

"C and D, a young couple, wish to transmit their heritage language to their child. However, their own parents have always spoken the majority language to them: C and D have only learnt their heritage language in childhood contacts with their grandparents. Speaking the heritage language to their own child feels ‘somehow artificial’, it feels ‘like a joke’. And even when relatives and friends praise and enthusiastically support the young family’s decision, nobody can tell them what they should do to make parenting in the heritage language ‘feel right’ and they get no support in the local daycare. This we have heard from Karelian-speaking parents in Finland and Meänkieli-speaking parents in Sweden."

1 kommentti:

  1. "This we have heard from Karelian-speaking parents in Finland and Meänkieli-speaking parents in Sweden."

    Karjalan voi katsoa omaksi kielekseen, mutta meänkieli on kyllä vastaan sanomattomasti suomen murre.

    Välillä tulee kuunneltua Meänraatiota - http://sverigesradio.se/sida/default.aspx?programid=1017 - ja kyllä suomenkielinen siitä kaiken ymmärtää.

    VastaaPoista

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