First Fluent Language?

[Alevuss]

I'm curious to hear the linguistic origins of NSers. Also, in an attempt to give substance to this topic, I've prepared a number of questions to keep in mind when responding. What is the first language you learned fluently? Did you learn from from your family or elsewhere (school, neighborhood, etc.)? Is this language you group up speaking? If not, what was? Or did you grow up bilingual? If such is the case, can you note what languages you learned and how they were used (perhaps one was only used in school, with distant family, neighbors, etc.)?

Is your language the dominant/official language of the nation or area you live in? If you grew up learning more than one main language, is that something to be expected of kids where you live?

Also, if there are a number of dialects of the language you speak, what one do speak (or grew up with in the area you live in)?

Perhaps you grew up with three languages under your belt, or you grew up needing to know a type of sign language. If so, I apologize that the poll does not provide for such an option, but I encourage you to tell your story in your post. I also apologize if your language is not listed as one of the nine named specifically above, but I based the options off of expected majorities on this site, internet usage and penetration by country, and the most commonly spoken languages in the world.

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I grew up speaking English, learned from my parents and school. I grew up in Southeastern Massachusetts, so English is the dominant language, but it is common, at least where I've lived and gone to school, to meet people who grew up speaking Portuguese, although in varying fluency. I've only met a few of people my age who speak English and Portuguese fluently. Most others seem to have only enough to be conversational with their grandparents or to catch a few family in-jokes. I am not among those people; I only learned English as child, but wish I could've had the opportunity to grow up with two under my belt.

When I was little, I knew a lot of adults who spoken in the non-rhotic accent that many seem to use to characterize the region, but I most of my friends and I didn't speak in it unless pissed off or stressed about something. As I got older and began to go to school in more urban areas, I met more people who spoke in an accent similar to a Bostonian one, but none very thick. Starting about a year ago, it seems I too have begun to absorb this lack of R's and broad A's, but in occasional casual conversations, so it's not totally pervasive. I do have a growing tendency to speak with a broad A, but I still cling to R's so as to not find myself entirely engrossed in an accent I have a general dislike for.

[Cannot think of a name]

English. And it's my last language too, because I suck like that.

[East Ormania]

My first language is portuguese, as i am Brazilian, and i learned everything everywhere, school, family and friends.

(...)meet people who grew up speaking Portuguese(...)

I am sincerely curious about the meaning and implications behind the above fragment of a sentence. Tell me more.

[TaQud]

English

[Cadia]

French.

[Jerusalemian]

English.

[The Serbian Empire]

English, little more can be said.

Come to think of it, I might have understood mathematics first as I didn't speak until I was three and a half.

[HappyShark]

Sicilian dialect

[Alevuss]

My first language is portuguese, as i am Brazilian, and i learned everything everywhere, school, family and friends.

(...)meet people who grew up speaking Portuguese(...)

I am sincerely curious about the meaning and implications behind the above fragment of a sentence. Tell me more.

I'm not well versed in the history of Portuguese immigration nor what events may have caused them to, but apparently there was a large diaspora of Portuguese. Apparently a sizable number came to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Most of those people taught their children to speak Portuguese while having them learn English either alongside them or on their own.

Based off of people my age that I've met, a smaller number of those second generation immigrants taught their children to speak Portuguese, but quite a few were taught it, either to maintain a sense of their heritage or to help their kids speak to their family members who either still lived in Portugal or those who simply weren't confident in their English enough to admit to people that they spoke it. Still, though, at my high school, there were a few people who spoke Portuguese fluently (but I only ever met three who only spoke it at home).

According to talking to friends and their relatives (and checking Wikipedia), most of the first generation immigrants are from Azores or Cape Verde. The site also says the diaspora occurred in the '50s, but I know quite a few people whose family didn't come here until the late-1960s or early-1970s.

[Utceforp]

Canadian.

[Ponyfornia]

I could say it is English, but my father is Brazilian and and tried to teach me Portuguese in my early childhood, and to be honest, I didn't really catch up with English untill I was 11 and I still have a reasonably strong accent.

It's both, kind of.

[Cadia]

Canadian.

So, Newfie?

[Ponyfornia]

I'm not well versed in the history of Portuguese immigration nor what events may have caused them to, but apparently there was a large diaspora of Portuguese. Apparently a sizable number came to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Most of those people taught their children to speak Portuguese while having them learn English either alongside them or on their own.

Based off of people my age that I've met, a smaller number of those second generation immigrants taught their children to speak Portuguese, but quite a few were taught it, either to maintain a sense of their heritage or to help their kids speak to their family members who either still lived in Portugal or those who simply weren't confident in their English enough to admit to people that they spoke it. Still, though, at my high school, there were a few people who spoke Portuguese fluently (but I only ever met three who only spoke it at home).

According to talking to friends and their relatives (and checking Wikipedia), most of the first generation immigrants are from Azores or Cape Verde. The site also says the diaspora occurred in the '50s, but I know quite a few people whose family didn't come here until the late-1960s or early-1970s.

It's quite reasonable that you met few Portuguese-speaking second-generation immigrants.

Most of the Portuguese immigration to New England occured from the 1890's to the 1910's, if I recall correctly.

[Arvas]

North Sami is my native language, after this I studied Swedish and then English.

[Alevuss]

I'm not well versed in the history of Portuguese immigration nor what events may have caused them to, but apparently there was a large diaspora of Portuguese. Apparently a sizable number came to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Most of those people taught their children to speak Portuguese while having them learn English either alongside them or on their own.

Based off of people my age that I've met, a smaller number of those second generation immigrants taught their children to speak Portuguese, but quite a few were taught it, either to maintain a sense of their heritage or to help their kids speak to their family members who either still lived in Portugal or those who simply weren't confident in their English enough to admit to people that they spoke it. Still, though, at my high school, there were a few people who spoke Portuguese fluently (but I only ever met three who only spoke it at home).

According to talking to friends and their relatives (and checking Wikipedia), most of the first generation immigrants are from Azores or Cape Verde. The site also says the diaspora occurred in the '50s, but I know quite a few people whose family didn't come here until the late-1960s or early-1970s.

It's quite reasonable that you met few Portuguese-speaking second-generation immigrants.

Most of the Portuguese immigration to New England occurred from the 1890's to the 1910's, if I recall correctly.

Oh. Yeah, I'm just going off of conversations I've had with people, but that time period you mentioned certainly makes sense.

Not to mention, but if they were second-gen immigrants whose family came here in that time period, wouldn't they be in their 30s or 40s? Many of the second or third-generation immigrants I've met are about 20 or so (not to call your statement invalid; Immigration to the Americas was in great numbers, I realize).

[Zocra]

My first and only fluent language: English.

I know poco Spanish.

[Katyuscha]

Old English.

[Nightkill the Emperor]

Marathi, I suppose, though I grew up speaking Hindi alongside it.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

I first learned to fluently speak both Asturian and Spanish.

[Seitonjin]

Malay and the Queen's English.

[Hetalian Indie Rio de Janeiro]

I could say I have two, vernacular Brazilian Portuguese and proper Portuguese, but they are more of co-dialects in a diglossia system with different levels of linguistic prestige (and the varieties of proper Portuguese farther from vernacular Brazilian Portuguese get increasingly more) than properly two language.

I was conversational in Spanish once but I am not anymore. I was never conversational in English. Anyway, I learned them as foreign languages.

I am solely 4 generations separated from Galician, 5 generations separated from Arpitan, French, Prussian German and Polish, 6 generations separated from Yoruba (as a fluent religious language from members of Afro-Brazilian religions) and solely 7 generations from Venetian (being that up to my grandmother this line lived in some place where they could speak with other people, not related to them, fully fluent in Venetian) and Russian, but I was never taught by my family not a single word of any of them (well, my mom taught me how to count in French until 30, but my grandma didn't knew it so bonobos). This is so unfair.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Malay and the Queen's English.

How difficult do you think learning Malay is?

[Ainin]

Mandarin Chinese, followed by French then English.

[The Scientific States]

English, followed by French and then Spanish.

[Pope Joan]

I picked up some interesting Low Dutch jargon from both sides, because of the influence on my farming ancestors who were all Celtic. But their neighbors weren't, and it became part of the lingo.

Throw papa down the stairs his hat.