Cixiu Duan
I found an interesting phenomenon that some bilingual and multilingual speakers may experience the process of losing their first language or have the difficulty to recall certain words or grammatical rules (which is called first language attrition). Take my husband for instance, after living in the U.S. for about ten years, when he talks about finance-related topic, he unintentionally uses English rather than Mandarin. As far as I know, after reading several articles, many factors may have impact on the process of first language attrition, including the attitude (Cherciov, 2013), amount of contact and time elapsed (de Bot, Gommans & Rossing, 1991), the age when the bilingual is exposed to a L2 (Ahn, Chang, DeKeyser & Lee-Ellis, 2017), amount of exposure to the native language (Dragoy, Virfel, Yurchenko & Bastiaanse, 2017), and gender (Ellis, 1994). However, I haven’t found much information about the role of cross-linguistic influence in the process of language attrition. Let me explain it.
Some people’s first language and second language are in the same language family, which means the two languages are genetically related, and others’ first language and second language are in different language families. For example, Peter speaks Spanish as first language and English as second language; I speak Mandarin as first language and English as second language. After migrating to Canada for ten years, who will experience higher degree of first language attrition? Will Peter experience higher degree of language attrition because Spanish and English are so similar that he may get confused with the grammar rules or vocabulary? Or will I experience higher degree of language attrition because Mandarin and English is so different that once I become more and more proficient in English, I tend to gradually lose Mandarin? How similarity and difference between first language and second language affect the first language attrition? I know the question is somewhat off-topic. It deals with linguistics rather than sociolinguistics, but this is the question I’m wondering all the time and I still can’t find a good explanation from any resources. If anyone has any idea, please respond to this post!!!
References:
Ahn, S. , Chang, C. B., DeKeyser, R. and Lee‐Ellis, S. (2017), Age Effects in First Language Attrition: Speech Perception by Korean‐English Bilinguals. Language Learning, 67: 694-733. doi:10.1111/lang.12252
Cherciov, M. (2013). Investigating the impact of attitude on first language attrition and second language acquisition from a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective. International Journal of Bilingualism, 17(6), 716–733. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006912454622
de Bot, K., Gommans, P & Rossing, C (1991). L1 loss in an L2 environment: Dutch immigrants in France. In SELIGER & VAGO (eds.) 87–98.
Dragoy, O., Virfel, E., Yurchenko, A., & Bastiaanse, R. (2017). Aspect and tense attrition in russian-german bilingual speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism, 1(1), 136700691772838-136700691772838. doi:10.1177/1367006917728388
Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
I don’t know if research has any answers to this question, or even if there IS any relevant research. But I have vivid memories of my late father’s distress when he realized that, after having spent most of his life in Canada, surrounded by an English-speaking family, he no longer remembered key words in his first language, Bengali. Regular visits back to Kolkata, where our family now lives, helped him stay fluent and up-to-date for many years (though our younger relatives often remarked that he spoke in an “old-fashioned” way, since he left the speech community in 1952 when he was 23). But as he grew older his health made it more and more difficult, and finally impossible, for him to travel. He could feel his first language slowly slipping away.