"native" - a meaning not in every dictionary?

Post by Stefan Ram
All dictionaries acknowledge that "native" can be a noun,
but in no dictionary did I find the apparent meaning
|You know you're back in your native Canada when…

There it is an adjective, and the meaning is well documented in any
dictionary.

Here is NOAD and ODE (identical entries)

1 associated with the place or circumstances of a person's birth: he's a
native New Yorker | her native country.

Post by Stefan Ram
|Much of your work engages with the political situation in
|your native USA, has spending two years in Scotland changed
|your perspective at all?
|How did you first hear jazz in your native Germany?
|The EDM explosion has seen you gigging across the globe, but
|how do you rate the scene in your native France at the moment?
|Your family took refuge from the war in your native England
|in 1986, where you eventually got ...
|Tell us about your native China.
|You're better known in Britain than your native America, does
|that bother you?
. So, "native" can be short for "native country". Did I guess
this correctly?

It is not short for anything, it is what the word means.

--
You too will get old. And when you do you'll fantasize that when you
were young prices where reasonable, politicians were noble, and
children respected their elders. Respect your elders.

Paul Carmichael

2021-01-31 18:08:00 UTC

Post by Stefan Ram
All dictionaries acknowledge that "native" can be a noun,
but in no dictionary did I find the apparent meaning
|You know you're back in your native Canada when…

There it is an adjective, and the meaning is well documented in any
dictionary.
Here is NOAD and ODE (identical entries)
1 associated with the place or circumstances of a person's birth: he's a
native New Yorker | her native country.

It is not short for anything, it is what the word means.

"It was my first Austin Mini" - the "first" is not short for "first car".

--
Paul.

https://paulc.es/elpatio

s***@my-deja.com

2021-02-09 17:13:45 UTC

Post by Stefan Ram
All dictionaries acknowledge that "native" can be a noun,
but in no dictionary did I find the apparent meaning

Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

Quinn C

2021-02-09 18:29:05 UTC

Post by Stefan Ram
All dictionaries acknowledge that "native" can be a noun,
but in no dictionary did I find the apparent meaning

Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used, much less "native
language", which is now usually treated as a synonym for "first
language" (of which you can have multiple.)

--
Manche Dinge sind vorgeschrieben, weil man sie braucht, andere
braucht man nur, weil sie vorgeschrieben sind.
-- Helmut Richter in de.etc.sprache.deutsch

s***@my-deja.com

2021-02-09 23:23:34 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

Quinn C

2021-02-10 00:10:22 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

You made it incomprehensible by deleting the sentence I was referring
to.

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Let's be clear that "mother tongue" is an informal, not a technical
term, so has no strict definition.

In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.

Making it strictly the language coming only from the mother - as your
description suggested - is folk etymology, and leaves many people
without a mother tongue.

--
For spirits when they please
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure,
-- Milton, Paradise Lost

s***@my-deja.com

2021-02-10 01:29:01 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

You made it incomprehensible by deleting the sentence I was referring to.

That was to indicate that it was "mother tongue" and not "first language" that I was referring to.

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Let's be clear that "mother tongue" is an informal, not a technical
term, so has no strict definition.
In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.
Making it strictly the language coming only from the mother - as your
description suggested - is folk etymology, and leaves many people
without a mother tongue.

O.K. Thanks for that. The object of my post was to separate "native" from "country". The
children born to migrants come to mind.

Quinn C

2021-02-10 04:52:30 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

You made it incomprehensible by deleting the sentence I was referring to.

That was to indicate that it was "mother tongue" and not "first language" that I was referring to.

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Let's be clear that "mother tongue" is an informal, not a technical
term, so has no strict definition.
In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.
Making it strictly the language coming only from the mother - as your
description suggested - is folk etymology, and leaves many people
without a mother tongue.

O.K. Thanks for that. The object of my post was to separate "native"
from "country". The children born to migrants come to mind.

I've always understood "native language" as "language you learn from
birth", without inserting a country. The idea of a 1:1 relationship of
language and country doesn't hold up in many parts of the world anyway.

Compared to "mother tongue", the expression decenters the family as the
source of the learning.

The usual technical expression now is "first language", which can be a
bit confusing because it doesn't have to be just one, and it doesn't
have to be the one or ones you learn first, although that's normally the
case. The expression goes back to the distinction of "first language
acquisition" (naturally from your environment, mostly while young) vs.
"second language acquisition" (through formal schooling, or what happens
to most adults.)

--
Quinn C
My pronouns are they/them
(or other gender-neutral ones)

Peter T. Daniels

2021-02-10 13:35:27 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

You made it incomprehensible by deleting the sentence I was referring to.

That was to indicate that it was "mother tongue" and not "first language" that I was referring to.

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Let's be clear that "mother tongue" is an informal, not a technical
term, so has no strict definition.
In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.
Making it strictly the language coming only from the mother - as your
description suggested - is folk etymology, and leaves many people
without a mother tongue.

O.K. Thanks for that. The object of my post was to separate "native"
from "country". The children born to migrants come to mind.

I've always understood "native language" as "language you learn from
birth", without inserting a country. The idea of a 1:1 relationship of
language and country doesn't hold up in many parts of the world anyway.
Compared to "mother tongue", the expression decenters the family as the
source of the learning.
The usual technical expression now is "first language", which can be a
bit confusing because it doesn't have to be just one, and it doesn't
have to be the one or ones you learn first, although that's normally the
case. The expression goes back to the distinction of "first language
acquisition" (naturally from your environment, mostly while young) vs.
"second language acquisition" (through formal schooling, or what happens
to most adults.)

Usually "first-language(s) acquisition" vs. "second-language learning,"
because the process is different. When you learn a language by
conscious effort as an "adult" (adolescent or later), the outcome
isn't native-speaker proficiency, if only in "accent."

Lewis

2021-02-10 01:43:52 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

You made it incomprehensible by deleting the sentence I was referring
to.

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Let's be clear that "mother tongue" is an informal, not a technical
term, so has no strict definition.
In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.

"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant parents
or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not really.

Post by Quinn C
Making it strictly the language coming only from the mother - as your
description suggested - is folk etymology

I don't think it rises even to that level.

--
I presume you're mortal, and may err.

Ross Clark

2021-02-10 03:06:14 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

You made it incomprehensible by deleting the sentence I was referring
to.

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Let's be clear that "mother tongue" is an informal, not a technical
term, so has no strict definition.
In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.

"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant parents
or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not really.

Post by Quinn C
Making it strictly the language coming only from the mother - as your
description suggested - is folk etymology

I don't think it rises even to that level.

If someone were to insist that that was the only correct meaning, they
could be charged with Etymological Fallacy.

Peter T. Daniels

2021-02-10 03:53:01 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

You made it incomprehensible by deleting the sentence I was referring
to.

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Let's be clear that "mother tongue" is an informal, not a technical
term, so has no strict definition.
In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.

"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant parents
or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not really.

Post by Quinn C
Making it strictly the language coming only from the mother - as your
description suggested - is folk etymology

I don't think it rises even to that level.

If someone were to insist that that was the only correct meaning, they
could be charged with Etymological Fallacy.

One of the Yiddish names for Yiddish is Mamaloshn, which is Germanic
mama + Hebrew lashon 'language'.

Quinn C

2021-02-10 04:52:34 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

You made it incomprehensible by deleting the sentence I was referring
to.

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Let's be clear that "mother tongue" is an informal, not a technical
term, so has no strict definition.
In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.

"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant parents
or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not really.

Post by Quinn C
Making it strictly the language coming only from the mother - as your
description suggested - is folk etymology

I don't think it rises even to that level.

If someone were to insist that that was the only correct meaning, they
could be charged with Etymological Fallacy.

What's the penalty? Loss of aue posting rights for 1 month, 3 months for
repeat offenders?

I've met several such people. The ones who insisted usually rationalized
that by claiming that a person only learns a language properly from the
mother, not the father or anyone else. So behind this benign misdemeanor
lurks the graver sin of bio-essentialism.

--
Quinn C
My pronouns are they/them
(or other gender-neutral ones)

Lewis

2021-02-10 09:26:19 UTC

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Expand please.

You made it incomprehensible by deleting the sentence I was referring
to.

Post by s***@my-deja.com
Your native language is your mother tongue.
It might be the language of your mother's home country, but not of yours

That's not even how "mother tongue" is used

Let's be clear that "mother tongue" is an informal, not a technical
term, so has no strict definition.
In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.

"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant parents
or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not really.

Post by Quinn C
Making it strictly the language coming only from the mother - as your
description suggested - is folk etymology

I don't think it rises even to that level.

If someone were to insist that that was the only correct meaning, they
could be charged with Etymological Fallacy.

Which is also absurd, but I have not heard that. Had I, I would have
laughed at the joke.

You learn the basics from your family, but you really learn it from your
peers.

Post by Quinn C
not the father or anyone else. So behind this benign misdemeanor lurks
the graver sin of bio-essentialism.

Idiotic sexism.

--
I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many
people who believe it.

Peter Moylan

2021-02-10 03:12:50 UTC

Post by Lewis
"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant
parents or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not
really.

I disagree. English is my mother tongue, and my parents weren't from
England.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW

Lewis

2021-02-10 09:48:35 UTC

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by Lewis
"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant
parents or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not
really.

I disagree. English is my mother tongue, and my parents weren't from
England.

It feels like a phrase I've mostly heard from Italians whose parents or
grandparents speak Italian and they know a bit of Italian but not enough
to, say, follow a lecture on a topic relating to their jobs that they
would have no problem following in English.

One example was a friend who always thought he was fluent in Italian who
spent a couple of weeks in Sicily and Naples a few years ago meeting
extended family members and came back with a whole knew appreciation for
how little of the language he really spoke and how much of his
understanding of Italian was limited to his parents' and grandparents'
somewhat dated Italian.

Even I, who basically lost all my Spanish at about the age of 8 or 9
when I moved to the US still think of Spanish as my native language.
I've relearned enough to get through an order at a restaurant, book a
hotel room, or rent a car, albeit with some prep. Even enough to
eventually figure out what about the rental car the police were
complaining about¹, but sometimes my native roots work against me as my
accent is pretty good, so I will say something like "Solamente hablo un
poco de español" and the person will assume I speak FAR more Spanish
than I do and can understand at a much faster wpm than I actually can.

¹ I could not understand 'sello' which they kept repeating in the hopes
that saying it often enough would force me to figure it out². One
finally said 'sello de gobierno' and then the penny dropped, the
temporary paper plate from the rental agency did not have the proper
rubber stamp. I kept hearing "siglo' which I know is "century" and
was, as they say, completely at sea.

² See, it's not just an American tourist thing.
--
There used to be such simple directions, back in the days before they
invented parallel universes - Up and Down, Right and Left,
Backward and Forward, Past and Future... But normal directions
don't work in the multiverse, which has far too many dimensions
for anyone to find their way. So new ones have to be invented so
that the way can be found. Like: East of the Sun, West of the
Moon Or: Behind the North Wind. Or: At the Back of Beyond. Or:
There and Back Again. Or: Beyond the Fields We Know. --Lords and
Ladies

Quinn C

2021-02-10 04:52:30 UTC

Post by Quinn C
In my experience, the usual understanding is that every person has a
"mother tongue", and that could be any language that an infant learns in
the family, whether it's the mother's native tongue, the father's native
tongue, or just the shared language of communication between the parents
or guardians.

"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant parents
or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not really.

In my native German, the idea still sticks around that "Muttersprache"
is the one language that you know perfectly, on a level apart from any
other. I guess "native speaker", "native level fluency" are more common
in English for that notion.

The languages that children from immigrant families speak only to a
degree, I like to call "kitchen Italian" etc., but "heritage language"
is a more formal designation.

--
Quinn C
My pronouns are they/them
(or other gender-neutral ones)

Peter T. Daniels

2021-02-10 13:40:14 UTC

"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant parents
or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not really.

That can only be because Germans were unaware of native bilinguals
(or more). The "nation" (which didn't exist until 1871) was so homogeneous
that they would never have encountered them (until they started trying
to get colonies in Africa and Oceania).

Post by Quinn C
The languages that children from immigrant families speak only to a
degree, I like to call "kitchen Italian" etc., but "heritage language"
is a more formal designation.

Multilingualism is the norm in far more of the world than monolingualism is.
No limit has been discovered on the number of languages a child can acquire
naturally.

Quinn C

2021-02-10 18:27:24 UTC

"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant parents
or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not really.

Like other European nations, the nation was constructed in such ideal
"purity", disregarding the nitty-gritty. Lower German and Frisian were
disparaged as lesser forms of High German. Polish/German bilingual
people didn't really count, even when they came to the coal regions in
the West to do the sweaty work. Other regions where German was part of a
multilingual mosaic didn't join the Reich, but are part of current
Switzerland, Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Romania etc.

These days, Danish, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Romani are officially
recognized minority languages in Germany, and these are not people who
arrived in Germany recently (but admittedly, not high in numbers.)

Post by Quinn C
The languages that children from immigrant families speak only to a
degree, I like to call "kitchen Italian" etc., but "heritage language"
is a more formal designation.

Multilingualism is the norm in far more of the world than monolingualism is.
No limit has been discovered on the number of languages a child can acquire
naturally.

And it's also normal in those regions that you know them at different
proficiency levels. I don't know much about how they conceptualize those
levels, but it can probably also interact with ethnic identity and such.

--
No automatic weapons for him this trip, anyway. No weapons at
all, but for his wits. They seemed a meager arsenal, just at
the moment.
-- L. McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity

Peter T. Daniels

2021-02-10 19:01:57 UTC

"Mother tongue" I thought was the language that your immigrant parents
or grandparents spoke and that you sort of speak but not really.

You interpret in purely political terms, overlooking the tendency toward
"racialization" that was eventually taken to the greatest extreme -- maybe
because there was no political, only ethnic unity?

Whereas in the other big country, France, they at least knew about
Breton and Basque (they could dismiss Provencal and Occitan
generally as just some inferior sort of French.)

And the little entities that were becoming Italy at the same time
had a linguistic situation more like that of Arabic: their own language
and a national standard (intentionally created by Dante) that no one
spoke. (Mussolini went a long way toward wiping out the local
varieties.) AIUI Martin Luther wasn't trying to create a similar standard
language, but only a written language that could be read by speakers
of the different varieties. It's not often that people set out, even unwittingly,
to create a morphophonemic orthography!

It's often said that Chinese "can be read in any of the 'dialects.'" That
may be the case for Classical Chinese -- Confucius and all that -- but
nowadays the written language is Mandarin, the majority Sinitic language,
and the writing can't be read off in Cantonese or Hakka or the other ones.

Post by Quinn C
These days, Danish, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Romani are officially
recognized minority languages in Germany, and these are not people who
arrived in Germany recently (but admittedly, not high in numbers.)

As in Russia. Lots of Uralic languages in Europe, none of significant size.

Post by Quinn C
The languages that children from immigrant families speak only to a
degree, I like to call "kitchen Italian" etc., but "heritage language"
is a more formal designation.

Multilingualism is the norm in far more of the world than monolingualism is.
No limit has been discovered on the number of languages a child can acquire
naturally.

Then by definition they're not native/first languages. If the French kids
simply have English classes in school, that doesn't make them native
speakers. (And vice versa in the rest of Canada, of course.)

Jerry Friedman

2021-02-01 00:10:42 UTC

Post by Stefan Ram
All dictionaries acknowledge that "native" can be a noun,
but in no dictionary did I find the apparent meaning
|You know you're back in your native Canada when…

There it is an adjective, and the meaning is well documented in any
dictionary.
Here is NOAD and ODE (identical entries)
1 associated with the place or circumstances of a person's birth: he's a
native New Yorker | her native country.

...

Likewise AHD:

"1. d. Being one's own because of the place or circumstances of one's birth:
/our native land./"

And M-W:

4: belonging to or associated with one by birth

hailed in his /native/ Sweden as an influential dramatist
— William Peden

--
Jerry Friedman

Quinn C

2021-02-01 00:41:04 UTC

Post by Jerry Friedman

Post by Stefan Ram
All dictionaries acknowledge that "native" can be a noun,
but in no dictionary did I find the apparent meaning
|You know you're back in your native Canada when…

There it is an adjective, and the meaning is well documented in any
dictionary.
Here is NOAD and ODE (identical entries)
1 associated with the place or circumstances of a person's birth: he's a
native New Yorker | her native country.

...
/our native land./"
4: belonging to or associated with one by birth
hailed in his /native/ Sweden as an influential dramatist
— William Peden

Even more generally, compound nouns with a proper noun as head are quite
unusual, so this interpretation would need particularly strong
arguments.

--
Nancy had bitten her tongue to keep from asking any questions.
She was deeply afraid that Lundy would attempt to answer them,
and then her head might actually explode.
-- Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

Ross Clark

2021-02-01 00:32:27 UTC

Post by Stefan Ram
All dictionaries acknowledge that "native" can be a noun,
but in no dictionary did I find the apparent meaning
|You know you're back in your native Canada when…
|Much of your work engages with the political situation in
|your native USA, has spending two years in Scotland changed
|your perspective at all?
|How did you first hear jazz in your native Germany?
|The EDM explosion has seen you gigging across the globe, but
|how do you rate the scene in your native France at the moment?
|Your family took refuge from the war in your native England
|in 1986, where you eventually got ...
|Tell us about your native China.
|You're better known in Britain than your native America, does
|that bother you?
. So, "native" can be short for "native country". Did I guess
this correctly?

Not exactly. You can't use it by itself in this sense (*I'm revisiting
my native.)
Others have pointed out that the word as used in your examples has
exactly the sense described in dictionaries, e.g.

OED native, adj. 9a. Of a country, region, etc.: that is the place of a
person's birth and early life; that is the place of origin of a plant or
animal.

However, if you look at the OED's examples (from Late Middle English
on), the word modified by "native" is a common noun: land, ground,
country, region, home, kingdom, place, realm, county.

What your examples show is a slightly different construction, where the
modified noun is the _name_ of a place, and "native" is always preceded
by a possessive. So "X's native Y" means "Y, where X was born".

OED does not seem to recognize this as the same (or a separate)
construction. I did a search (within the OED corpus) for "native + Place
Name", with a whole lot of cities, counties, nations, continents and got
about a dozen, mostly post-1950, but with a few earlier:

1875 G. MacDonald Malcolm I. p. viii Some of the rougher women
despised the sweet outlandish speech she had brought with her from her
native England, and accused her of mim-mou'dness.
‘
1889 Outing Feb. 452/1 By decree of the inexorable res angusta domi,
I left my native England in the last days of the year of grace 1886, for
Canada.

1911 Catholic Encycl. X. 162/1 The emperor banished Meletius to his
native Armenia... This exile was the immediate cause of a long and
deplorable schism between the Catholics of Antioch, henceforth divided
into Meletians and Eustathians.

Peter Moylan

2021-02-01 01:26:40 UTC

No. You're taking an adjective and trying to interpret it as a noun.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW

Stefan Ram

2021-02-01 14:20:34 UTC