6 Minute English / Losing your mother tongue

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Sam.

And I m Rob.

In this programme, we ll be hearing about an issue experienced by many child refugees who are forced to leave their home the loss of their first, native language, or mother tongue, as they start a new life, learning to speak a new language, in a new country.

Julie Sedivy and her family left their home in what was then Czechoslovakia and is now the Czech Republic during the Cold War, when Julie was a small child. After several years travelling through Europe, they arrived in Canada as political refugees with no English. We ll be hearing about Julie s childhood when learning English started to replace her native language, Czech, and, as usual, we ll be learning some new vocabulary as well.

But first, I have a question, Rob. Julie s family left their home as political refugees, but every year millions of people are also displaced because of war, persecution, or the damaging effects of climate change. So, according to the United Nations, how many people around the world are currently living as displaced refugees? Is it:

a) 3 million?b) 53 million? or,c) 103 million?

I ll guess it s 103 million.

I ll reveal the answer later in the programme, Rob. Like many child refugees, Julie spoke only her mother tongue, Czech, at home with her brothers, sisters and parents who, in the beginning, spoke no English at all. Here she describes to Michael Rosen, presenter of BBC Radio 4 programme, Word of Mouth, going to an English-speaking school for the first time.

Michael Rosen so, you went into school not, to start off, with really understanding what was going on, is that right?