February 21, 2022

International Mother Language Day is observed annually on 21 February. It was first initiated in 1999 by Bangladesh as they pursued the worldwide recognition of the Bangla language. The United Nations General Assembly formerly recognized the initiative in 2002 as part of a wider initiative to elevate, preserve, and protect the myriad languages used by people throughout the world.

In ‘The impact of foreign language caregiving on native language acquisition’ (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2019) Associate Professor Leher Singh and Ms See Kim Seet (both from NUS Psychology) investigated the influences of non-native language input on native language acquisition. Their experiment focused on two groups of undergraduates. The first group was exposed to Hokkien when they were cared for by their grandparents at a young age. The students selected for this group confirmed they had forgotten Hokkien, instead acquiring and utilizing English as their native language as they grew up.

The second group consisted of students reared in an English-speaking household who continued speaking English as their native language. The researchers ensured that both groups were of similar age and educational background, including the amount of years spent studying Mandarin, and their Mandarin proficiency, to construct a fairer experiment. Each group was put through phonological, semantic, and grammatical tests to assess their proficiency in English, their eventual native language.

In addition, A/P Singh and Ms Seet compared the groups on their implicit memories of Hokkien tonal phonology and vocabulary. Implicit memories are the long-term memories which are unconsciously kept in the mind. An example would be a person’s ability to remember nursery rhyme lyrics. Despite not hearing the lyrics for many years, most people will be able to recite them easily. This is due to the lyrics being stored in our unconscious mind when repeating them throughout childhood. Similarly, traces of Hokkien tonal phonology may have remained in the memories of the students who were in the first group.

The findings support a moderate view of the critical period hypothesis. Advocates of the critical period hypothesis believe that early exposure to a language is vital for its full acquisition. However, in the English lexical, syntactic, and phonological tests, the students who were cared for by their Hokkien-speaking grandparents scored similar results when compared to their English-raised peers. The experiment showed that language learners have the potential to make up for a reduced early exposure to their eventual native language. The only difference between the groups was their ability to learn Hokkien tonal phonology. In this test, the Hokkien-reared group performed better when presented with novel syllables which suggested that they may have retained an abstract understanding of Hokkien tonal phonology even after forgetting the language.

Read the full article here.