# Artificial language as a mother tongue



## dihydrogen monoxide

I somehow doubt it when someone says that Esperanto/Ido or any artificial language can be his mother tongue. Artificial languages are taught when you are an adult and are not taught during childhood. So if someone would say that Esperanto is his native language, I doubt it, because his parents didn't speak Esperanto. I know there are gatherings of speakers of Esperanto and communities. But I just can't accept the fact that an artificial language can be someone's mother tongue. What is your opinion on that?


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## Fred_C

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> I somehow doubt it when someone says that Esperanto/Ido or any artificial language can be his mother tongue. Artificial languages are taught when you are an adult and are not taught during childhood. So if someone would say that Esperanto is his native language, I doubt it, because his parents didn't speak Esperanto. I know there are gatherings of speakers of Esperanto and communities. But I just can't accept the fact that an artificial language can be someone's mother tongue. What is your opinion on that?



Hi,
I do not understand really what you mean.
I know a family where the husband is German, the wife is Spanish. Their common language is French, and it is the only language they use to communicate. It is also the language they use to raise their young son.
Are you claiming that French is not a mother tongue for this young child?

In some other families, Esperanto is used instead of French.


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## Tagarela

Olá,

I understand what you both say. Perhaps it's more likely to help to another language than to Esperanto, but it's not impossible as Fred_C has told. 
But, Esperanto would never be the only mother tongue of someone. Unless the child grows up in a isolated community where he or she only speaks with other people in Esperanto, studies in Esperanto etc. 
And also, while the child grows up, he or she would have the chance of learning  the language of their parents and "abandon" Esperanto. 
But, again, a bilingual Esperanto native speaker wouldn't be impossible.

Até.:


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## sethmachine

You might want to check out a similiar thread posted called Artificial Languages vs Natural Languages.  Esperanto is spoken about alot in that thread.


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## Tim~!

Woah, sorry to leave it so long.

I know lots of people who have Esperanto as their original language.  I have three friends originally from Newbury (Berkshire, UK) who are a product of a marriage between people from different backgrounds, where Esperanto was the common language that was shared.  The kids are all fluent in English too and you'd never know that they had been brought up with an artificial language as the household one if you weren't told.  (It's no different to bilingualism in children whose parents are immigrants.)

I've also met people at different Esperanto-events that are introduced to me as _denaskaj_ -- people whose original language is Esperanto.

I don't blame anyone for being pessimistic: I too would be cynical if I heard that someone's native language was, say, lojban, but it's true that a fair number of people have Esperanto as their first (or household) language.  One of my friends even told me (remember that he's also native English) that he prefers Esperanto just because he never has to think of a word to describe what he means.


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## Kevin Beach

I once met an English couple who always talked to each other in Esperanto. If a couple like that bring up their children speaking it, then why couldn't it be their mother tongue?


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## dihydrogen monoxide

Kevin Beach said:


> I once met an English couple who always talked to each other in Esperanto. If a couple like that bring up their children speaking it, then why couldn't it be their mother tongue?


 
Imagine then billion speakers in the world whose mother tongue is an artificial language? Ido,Esperanto,Eurish,Volapük... No natural languages, if I may go that far.


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## Kevin Beach

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> Imagine then billion speakers in the world whose mother tongue is an artificial language? Ido,Esperanto,Eurish,Volapük... No natural languages, if I may go that far.


Well, what _is_ a natural language?

If an originally artificial language is now spoken by millions as their mother tongue, then surely it has become their _natural_ language?

The parallel that comes to mind is modern Hebrew. As I understand it (and Nun-Translator and other Hebrew speakers may shoot me down if I am wrong), ancient Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language at about the time of the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC. Aramaic took its place and Hebrew became just the written language of the sacred scrolls. About a thousand years later, Rabis started to reconstruct it and developed the vowel marking system so that it could be spoken again, although nobody can be certain how close it was to the original spoken language. Meanwhile, dispersed Jews had adopted the languges of their diaspora and in Europe a second Jewish language, the Germanic Jüdisch, eventually became the norm. When the modern state of Israel was formed in 1948, Hebrew was adopted as its official language. For most Jews settling back there, it was a foreign language that had to be learned. It was largely a reconstructed language, and had rarely been used for ordinary speech for 2,500 years. Yet now millions speak it as their mother tongue and it has all the colour and strength of other modern languages.

A language is whatever people use to communicate with. If it comes naturally to them, it is a natural language.


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## sokol

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> I somehow doubt it when someone says that Esperanto/Ido or any artificial language can be his mother tongue. Artificial languages are taught when you are an adult and are not taught during childhood. So if someone would say that Esperanto is his native language, *I doubt it, because his parents didn't speak Esperanto.* I know there are gatherings of speakers of Esperanto and communities. But I just can't accept the fact that an artificial language can be someone's mother tongue. What is your opinion on that?


This here is sethmachine's thread; it would be very useful if you'd read it, see especially the links given by Athaulf over there.

Esperanto was intended to work as a _lingua franca_ - it was not supposed to become a "native language". It seems however that there are tendencies in this direction. (I think there's yet another thread here on the forum about this topic but I can't find it right now.)

But apart from that - referring to the highlighted part of your quote (my bold letters): children having a different native language than both their parents are a reality and exist all over the world.
See also this explanation here on pidgin and creole.

If creolisation already took place with Esperanto is something which could be discussed in further detail on sethmachine's thread.

The main point concerning this thread anyway is: if an artificial language is going through a creolisation process it is no more an artificial language - it has become native. It *is *a mother tongue, even if no "mothers" exist.

Thus I think this here is very much to the point:


Kevin Beach said:


> A language is whatever people use to communicate with. If it comes naturally to them, it is a natural language.


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## dinji

Kevin Beach said:


> The parallel that comes to mind is modern Hebrew. As I understand it (and Nun-Translator and other Hebrew speakers may shoot me down if I am wrong), ancient Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language at about the time of the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC. Aramaic took its place and Hebrew became just the written language of the sacred scrolls. About a thousand years later, Rabis started to reconstruct it and developed the vowel marking system so that it could be spoken again, although nobody can be certain how close it was to the original spoken language. Meanwhile, dispersed Jews had adopted the languges of their diaspora and in Europe a second Jewish language, the Germanic Jüdisch, eventually became the norm. When the modern state of Israel was formed in 1948, Hebrew was adopted as its official language. For most Jews settling back there, it was a foreign language that had to be learned. It was largely a reconstructed language, and had rarely been used for ordinary speech for 2,500 years. Yet now millions speak it as their mother tongue and it has all the colour and strength of other modern languages.


 
Your description is imprecise in some details:

1) Hebrew did not cease to be spoken when native speakers ceased to exist. It was always a lingua franca of interaction between jewish communities of different geographic origin. In the land of Israel in particular, communities of different geographic origin communicated, often supposedly in Hebrew. 

2) Native speakers of Hebrew could have existed in the Judean periphery as late as the Bar Kokhba war in 135 c.e. The issue is disputed. Your dating for the "extinction" seems overly early by any measure.

3) The rabbinic vowel marking systems (the Tiberian from 9th century c.e. if I am not mistaken) are not reconstructions from scratch but relying on uniterrupted spoken traditions (see point 1 above)

4) The function of Hebrew as lingua franca in the land of Israel has been well documented in the 19th century, well before the naturalisation/nativisation (creolisation) process proper started with the family of Eliezer ben Jehuda in the 1880'ies.

But of course, none of these points are in conflict with your actual main point, concerning the creolisation of modern Hebrew.


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## Tim~!

sokol said:


> Esperanto was intended to work as a _lingua franca_ - it was not supposed to become a "native language". It seems however that there are tendencies in this direction. (I think there's yet another thread here on the forum about this topic but I can't find it right now.)



I submit that Zamenhof never suggested that couples would raise their children speaking it as a household language, but I think it's a pretty natural extension of what would happen when a couple with only one common language in which they're equally capable of expressing themselves then has children.  If I'm Japanese, meet a Kenyan, we both speak Esperanto, fall in love, get married ... I reckon there's a good chance that conversation between the pair of us in our household (and around any children) would be in Esperanto.

They're in no way harmed by this though: my friends speak English as well (and as naturally) as I do, even though it was but rarely used in the household.

It's no different to a Gujurati-speaking couple raising children in Leicester; the kids still speak English perfectly well.  Just because a few dozen couples have done the same thing with Esperanto shouldn't be seen as a bad thing.  Good for the couples concerned that they're happy


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## Mr.Slade

Tim~! said:


> I submit that Zamenhof never suggested that couples would raise their children speaking it as a household language, but I think it's a pretty natural extension of what would happen when a couple with only one common language in which they're equally capable of expressing themselves then has children. <...>


 
Also, if the parents just decided that Esperanto would be their sole language of communication.  Then their children are native speakers.

International billionaire financier George Soros is often cited as the most famous person whose native language (i.e. kitchen language of childhood) was Esperanto.


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## Forero

I believe that Esperanto is a living natural language now with native speakers, dialects, and evolutionary changes, both in phonology and in grammar.  Wasn't this documented over thirty years ago?


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## Nanon

There seems to be about 1000 native speakers of Esperanto. And the number should be growing, because of the growing number of learners and Esperanto-speaking families...


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## sokol

Thanks, Nanon - perfect! That's Lindstedt's work on Esperanto which I've already seen once: only couldn't find it again - and now found out that the 3rd reference on Wiki page about Esperanto links to it: your link unfortunately doesn't work on my computer so I did research the URL and found one in HTML which works on my PC here.

And a language is of course a "mother tongue" or "native language" as soon as it is *used *as such one.


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## Yôn

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> What is your opinion on that?



That you are wrong and need to offer evidence for your position.  Any language can be acquired as a native language.  Now, this may not necessarily ever happen, but you seem to imply that it is impossible.  Unless I am misunderstanding you.


Jon


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