Interlanguage is a distorted form of a new language learned by a person, containing errors from their native language or incorrect grammar/pronunciation rules. It is unique to the individual and evolves as they learn. It should not be confused with pidgin or creole languages. Interlanguage can contain errors from rigidly following rules or overgeneralizing knowledge. It can also involve attempts to express concepts using limited vocabulary or literal translations.
An interlanguage is a type of speech or writing developed by people during the process of learning a new language, when the learner begins to acquire proficiency in the new language, or ‘target’, but does not master it. It is a distorted form of the target language that contains errors caused by the misuse of aspects of the student’s native language while trying to speak the target language, by incorrect application of the target language’s grammar or pronunciation rules, or by the attempt to express concepts in the target language using more basic words that the student already knows. This is normal in the process of learning a new language. Each interlanguage is specific to the speaker and evolves as he or she continues to learn the target language.
While both are formed from elements of multiple languages, an interlanguage should not be confused with a pidgin or creole language. Pidgin language is an improvised form of communication created by two or more people who do not share a language in common, while a creole language is a language that originally arose from a mixture of different languages but has become a natural language in its own right, with children in the society where it is spoken growing up with it as their mother tongue. An Interlanguage, on the other hand, is always unique to a particular individual and by definition is never anyone’s first language, as it is partly the product of a different language that the speaker already knows.
Interlanguages typically contain elements of the speaker’s original language. For example, in English an adjective appears before the noun it modifies, while in French the adjective usually comes after the noun. Thus, an English speaker learning French and knowing that the French words for “green” and “fish” are vert and poisson, respectively, might call a green fish “un vert poisson,” when un poisson vert is actually correct. The Interlanguage of a Frenchman learning English might contain the opposite error, causing him to say things like “a green fish.”
An interlanguage can also contain errors caused by knowing the general rules of the target language but following them too rigidly. A non-native speaker might conjugate irregular verbs according to the rules of regular verbs, similar to how young children learning their first language often do. This can produce mistakes like saying “he went” instead of “he went” or “six” instead of “six”, for example.
Language learners can also apply previous lessons on how the target language differs from their native language. For example, while adjectives in French usually follow the noun, there are exceptions. Petit, French for “little,” is one example. Once an English speaker has learned how French adjectives generally work, he may overgeneralize the knowledge and mistakenly refer to a small fish as “un petit poisson” rather than the correct un petit poisson. The particular way in which a learner misapplies the rules of the target language depends on when and how they were learned in the first place. An English speaker who hasn’t yet learned that most French adjectives follow rather than precede nouns is unlikely to make a mistake like “un poisson petit,” for example.
A French speaker learning English would not make a similar mistake on that basis, because in this case the word order is the same in both languages and English never, with very rare exceptions such as some legal terms, places adjectives after the names. However, he may make similar mistakes for other reasons. For example, the French speaker might remember the correct English word order for adjectives by thinking of it as the opposite of French, a rule that will give the correct order most of the time, but in this case produces the incorrect “a small fish”. Therefore, an interlanguage can also be affected by how the student mentally organizes and keeps track of what he has learned about the target language, the mental aids or shortcuts he uses, and so on.
Finally, an interlanguage may contain attempts to express things the learner has not yet learned in the target language, using their existing limited knowledge of it. This can involve vocabulary. If the only French word for a bladed, hand-held object that an English speaker knows is glaive, for example, he might refer to a bread knife, called a couteau a pain, as “un petit glaive,” which would actually mean “little sword” or “little spear”. It can also involve trying to accurately and literally replicate sentences from the native language in the target language without understanding how things are normally phrased in the target language or the different connotations of words in the target language.
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