Pueblos indígenas y comunidades y ejidos forestales

A language background questionnaire was administered to the 20 prospective participants, the results of which qualified all 20 of them for participation in the study. The questionnaire inquired as to gender, first/second/third languages, language(s) of schooling, and language(s) spoken at home, in their area of residence as well as socially. It furthermore enquired as to what symbols the participants had achieved for each of the languages taken as a school subject, and as to the participants’ own rating of their listening, oral, writing and reading proficiency in each of the languages they claim to know. All 20 participants received their foundation/intermediate phase schooling in English (primarily) and Afrikaans, Afrikaans being the language predominantly spoken in the area in which the study was conducted. They all scored their ability to speak, listen/comprehend, read and write in English as either “very good” or “good”. Of the 10 L1 isiXhosa participants, all 10 scored their ability to listen/comprehend and speak isiXhosa as either “very good” or “good”. However, with regard to their isiXhosa reading and writing abilities, one participant selected “very good”, four selected “good”, one selected “fair”, whilst three claimed to have “poor” proficiency and one reported that she had “no knowledge”. Although isiXhosa is their L1, they have (virtually) no exposure to it in a written form. They all went to

English/Afrikaans dual-medium pre-primary/primary schools and live in an area of the Western Cape where Afrikaans is the predominant language, thus all the written media they are exposed to is either in Afrikaans or English. isiXhosa is not offered as a subject at the participants’ school and as a result many of them are illiterate in their L1.

Of the 10 participants in the L1 isiXhosa-speaking group, nine stated that they are L1 isiXhosa L2 English L3 Afrikaans speakers, and one that she is a simultaneous L1 speaker of both isiXhosa and English, with Afrikaans as a L245

. All 10 L1 isiXhosa- speaking participants indicated that their parents are L1 isiXhosa speakers. With regard to the L1 English-speaking group, nine participants specified that they are L1 English L2 Afrikaans speakers, and one that she is a simultaneous L1 speaker of English and Afrikaans46

. All but one of the L1 English-speaking participants listed their parents’ L1 as Afrikaans. At this point it becomes necessary to mention that of the 10 participants in the L1 English-speaking group, seven of the participants are so- called “coloured” participants47

. The relevance of this, as highlighted by Potgieter (2014: 146), is that there is a tendency amongst many L1 Afrikaans-speaking coloured parents in the Western Cape to raise their children in English. This decision, often politically motivated, is said to stem from a negative association between Afrikaans and the Apartheid Government (Potgieter, 2014: 146). The aforementioned tendency, in conjunction with the multilingual context of this study, made it near impossible to find strictly monolingual participants who are learning Mandarin as a L2. Thus, the participants are technically defined as being either (simultaneous) bilingual speakers of English and Afrikaans or trilingual48

speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans49

.

45  _{A telephonic interview was conducted with her mother to ascertain the age at which she started} speaking isiXhosa and English respectively and it was established that she was sent to an English pre- school at the age of four, but that she had been speaking isiXhosa since infancy. She too then qualified as a L1 isiXhosa L2 English and L3 Afrikaans speaker.

46 _{This participant feels equally proficient in both languages, was speaking both before the age of four} (which Potgieter (2014: 31) takes to be the cut-off for “simultaneous bilingualism/trilingualism”) and is therefore regarded as a speaker of two first languages.

47 _{Potgieter (2014: 133) clarifies that the use of this term in South Africa refers to “persons of mixed} ethnic origin” and that this mixed ancestry has roots in a combination of two or more of the following areas: Europe, Asia and regions home to various indigenous Khoisan and Bantu tribes. The term is, however, a sensitive one (and the use of it contested) and should be used with caution.    

48 _{The definition of “trilinguals” relevant to this study, as defined by Hoffman (in Potgieter, 2014: 17),} is “children who grow up in a bilingual community and whose home language (either that of one or both parents) is different from the community languages”. This is the case for the L1 isiXhosa speakers

81   The fact that all the participants can speak Afrikaans as either a L2 or L3 does not pose a problem for this study, as English and Afrikaans are both languages in which the wh-word is fronted. Thus, were there to be CLI from Afrikaans (as opposed to English) it would in fact make no difference to the results, as English and Afrikaans have the same wh-question structure. Furthermore, any CLI that could account for non-target like behaviour in the acquisition of wh-questions in Mandarin by the L1 English or L1 isiXhosa speakers is most likely due not to Afrikaans but to English as the latter is the participants’ stronger language (English being a L1 as opposed to L2 for the L1 English participants and a L2 as opposed to L3 for the L1 isiXhosa participants).