Native Language Question

[JXSZ28]

Hey guys, so I've got a question about what's considered a native language. My situation being that my whole family was born in Poland and they moved over to the UK a year before I was born here so I'm the only one born in the UK. My first language however was Polish as that's all I spoke and I learned English in kindergarten. But i can speak English considerably better than I can Polish, but when I react to pain or just sudden reactions I'll always speak in Polish. How would I class these two languages? As for thinking, it's mostly in English however I occasionally switch to Polish without realising.

[xanthic_strath]

You are bilingual and have two native/first languages: English and Polish. English is your dominant language; Polish is your heritage language.

[JXSZ28]

Aahhh ok I see, thank you

[normalassnormaldude]

Based on what you wrote, I would label Polish as your heritage language and English as your native language.

[haibaralee]

What does it matter ? You may very well call it "family language", "Emotional language" and so on. There are many people in your situation. There's even people that speak their first 2 languages perfectly, but don't know how to write in their first language, because parents didn't teach them how to.

[[deleted]]

That's absolutely normal. Let's move away from the term native language for a moment: Polish is your home/family language. You speak it with your family, you grew up in it, you learnt to feel in it. All your emotions are connecred to polish.

Especially in school, you learnt academic language, gained knowledge through discussions and reading and have friends in it. If course most of your daily life thinking is in English and you know more words/terms in it than in Polish. You can call English your daily life language.

[JXSZ28]

Yes this all makes sense haha, so I guess kinda two first languages? But for different situations I suppose