Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1985, Page 55

Language Shift in an Icelandic Child
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2. The study
2.1 The subject
The subject of this study is my son Baldur. Baldur came to England
when he was 3:1 years old. At the time of emigration his acquisition of
lcelandic had been „normal“ as compared with children his age in Ice-
land, and the timing of his acquisiton can probably be assumed to be of
average rapidity. (For example his acquisition was seen to be earlier and
more rapid than that of another boy two months older. But then there
were other children of similar age in the day-care he attended whose
acquisition was more rapid than his.) He started attending a preschool
center in the same month as he arrived, for around 20 hours per week
(around 3—4 hours per day). By the time he was 4:5 years old he was
still a dominant Icelandic speakerbut had enough command of English
to get along at the preschool center. When he was 4:6 years old he
started school and spent 32.5 hours per week (around 6.5 hours per day)
in an English speaking environment. As there were no Icelanders in the
area, his parents and baby sister were the only people to whom he
spoke Icelandic. Icelandic, therefore, became a kind of private language
only used by the family. By the time he was 4:7 years old and had
attended school for around 2 months, changes were noticeable in his
speech. For example he had acquired a wide range of new vocabulary,
most of it in English. Words like teacher, nourísh, the various shapes,
e.g. round, square, concepts like down and up, the letters of the alpha-
bet as well as numbers above 20 all became very well established in
English. Code-switching or loan words became a strong characteristic of
his Icelandic speech. At this time (February 1982) most of these loan
words were pronounced according to English phonology but frequently
fitted with an Icelandic inflection. Forexample:
(1) Þá tala ég í teacher-inn
then I talk to the teacher
The sounds [(]] and [aj] do not exist in Icelandic. At this time his un-
usual use of the inflectional system of Icelandic became apparent.
2-2 Data collection
Data collection starts at this age, with an average regularity of once
monthly or bimonthly. Most of the data is in the form of tape-recording