Nations Reluctantly speak English

Ben said :**Yes, Mike. We all know that. It is nothing new. So are you trying to make a point or are you just rehashing some hackneyed anecdote which has been repeated ad nauseam?**

Well, a month a go when I first found this site, I made a point on what you called the “hackneyed anecdote”. It was very bad though, so I thought to repost my thoughts in a different approach…I am here to improve my English after all :-)

Anyhow, let’s stay at where you are now!

>>Mauritius, a former British colony, the official languages are English and French. However, French is the language of the media, English reigns supreme in schools while a French-derived creole is often spoken at work and at play.

Almost every Mauritian is hence theoretically trilingual and indeed, many of them are. However, they do not speak English as well as a native speaker nor do they compose their French as eloquently as a native francophone<<

quite interesting. So what would be their native language, or their mother tongue?

By the way, what is the difference between native language and mother tongue?

I have a French couple friend. They have 3 and 4-year-old daughters. They live in Germany. The father speaks mostly german with the kids to strengthen their german langauge. The mother speaks only French to the whole family. The kids speak very little French (actually german accented french) and they talk to each other only in germany because all their activities out among other german kids are in german. The kids understand their mother when she speaks French, but they reply back to her in German...if things keep going like this, evantually the kids will turn to be speaking only german language in thier adulthood.

So, the question is: what is the kids native language? And what is the kid’s mother tongue?

The one they speak -- German.

I definitely prefer Italian to English.

"Talkinging about being monolingual or bilingual, I read this article about cows in England that have different accents. I suppose that they can also speak different languages. One cow that is sold to another country would have a foreign moo. "

That's true. Cows from the West Country - Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Dorset etc - don't say "Moooooo!". They say "Moooooarrrrggghh!" with a West Country accent. Like the people, it makes them sound like pirates. The West Country is a big maritime area of England, and the reason the people speak with "pirate accents" like like you hear in the movies is for that reason. The people say "Oooarrrgghhh!" like pirates so cows do a similar thing.

The accents that pirates speak in the movies were taken from the accents that people in the West Country speak.

Adam : « Cows from the West Country (...) don't say "Moooooo!". They say "Moooooarrrrggghh!" (...) ».

Fascinant ! Et elles meuglent comment à Bolton ?