Re: [tied] Glen, regarding...

I am a german who lives in Brazil and my children didn`t have any trouble to learn Portuguese, although they have been born from german parents. In my case, it was simply the question of where one has been brought up and where did he live afterwards. I speak Portuguese with a lot of accent and I still have some difficulties with it, since Portuguese, as the Brazilians who are members of this list can easily confirm, is a terribly difficult, complex and rich language, and learning it was for me a sensational experience. Anyone who can read Guimarães Rosa in the portuguese original will agree with me ;-) In his books language achieved such incredible results, that I have never seen anything close to it, for instance, in german literature. But this is not the question. What I want to say is that, in spite of my difficulties with Portuguese, and in spite of the complexity of Portuguese itself, my children speak Portuguese as if they were born from Brazilians: they have no accents or difficulties at all, and that is because they have been brought up in a country where the Portuguese is the primary tongue. So these questions on genetics must be carefully handled with if we do not want to go through simplifications which in fact are useful only for the political speeches.

Klaus.   

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-
language@...> wrote:
.....
> My own view is, as a hypothesis, to seek to explain phonological
changes are a result of changing gene frequencies in the population
speaking the language.

and....

> <PCR> In my opinion, "social change" can best be understood as
reflecting changes in genetic composition. I have no doubt that when,
in certain US states, a certain critical mass of Latinos is achieved,
power will shift to this group, and changes in the English phonology
there will ensue, although national communications media will slow
and somewhat inhibit them.

Your scenario may quite possibly be true- but do you actually believe
that genetics would have anything to do with it?! I find it hard to
come up with a more classic example to demonstrate a correlation
without causation. Certainly there are differences between the two
populations in terms of both genetics and pronunciation, but newborn
infants from one population brought up by adoptive parents of the
other population will speak like their adoptive parents, not their
genetic parents. You might as well propose that phonological changes
are caused by diet or religion, or what sports one follows.

Ned Smith



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