Slovak Language of Roma Children: Mother Tongue Or Second Language
Journal of Language and Education, 2015, 1(3), 6-11 . DOI: 10.17323/2411-7390-2015-1-3- 6-11
6 Pages Posted: 16 Oct 2017
Date Written: September 1, 2015
Abstract
The paper presents a study done with 40 Roma children from Slovakia between 4-8 years old. They are speakers of an ethnolect, which they learn from their parents but in Slovak society their ethnolect is not considered to be a “good Slovak language”. The children were tested with tests in official Slovak language in order to find out how much the children know the complex grammatical categories from Slovak language: wh-questions, wh complements and passive verbs. One of the hypothesis of the study is that the Roma children follow the path of normally developing children and by the age of 5 they already know the deep structure of complex sentences. The results show that although the Roma children grow up with a variety of Slovak language which is an ethnolect of Slovak, they comprehend and produce deep linguistic structures. Slovak language serves for them as a mother tongue.
Keywords: Mother Tongue, Second Language, Roma Children, Ethnolect, Slovak Language
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