Multilingual
- multilingualism at the personal level
- multilingualism at the societal level
- multilingualism at the interaction level
Multilingualism at the personal level
A multilingual person is, in the broadest definition of multilingualism, anyone with communicative skills in more than one language, be it active or passive. More specifically, the terms bilingual and trilingual are used to describe comparable situations in which two or three languages are involved.Multilingual speakers have acquired at least one language during childhood, the so-called L1. L1-type languages are acquired without formal education, by mechanisms heavily disputed. A rather broadly held, yet nearly as broadly criticised view, is taken by the American linguist Noam Chomsky, whose professional life has so far mainly been dedicated to the description of what he calls the human language module, the mechanism that enables us to recreate correctly the rules that speakers around us apply to the language they speak. This language module, according to Chomsky, wears out over time, and is not normally available by puberty, which explains the relatively poor results adolescents and adults have in language learning, as compared to young children.
Multilingual speakers have extra languages at their disposal. These can be either "L1s" or L2s, languages that has been learnt at a later age. If language learning is a cognitive process, rather than a language module, as the school led by Stephen Krashen suggests, there would only be relative, not categorical, differences between the two types of language learning.
Even if someone is a highly proficient bilingual at the performance or output level, his so-called bilingual competence may not be so balanced. Linguists have distinguished various types of bilingual competence, which can roughly be put into three categories:
- coordinate bilingualism: the linguistic elements (words, phrases) in the speaker's mind are all related to their own unique concepts. That means, a French-English bilingual speaker of this type (as can be found in large numbers in Quebec) has different associations for 'chien' and for 'dog'. This type of bilingual speaker usually belongs to different cultural communities that do not frequently interact. These speakers are known to use very different intonation and pronunciation features, and not seldom assert the feeling of having different personalities attached to each of their languages.
- compound bilingualism: speakers of this type attach most of their linguistic elements to the same concepts. For them, a 'chien' and a 'dog' are two words for the same concept. Those speakers are reported to have less extreme differences in their pronunciations. Such speakers are often found in minority language communities, or amongst fluent L2-speakers.
- subordinate bilingualism: the linguistic elements of one of the speaker's languages are only available through elements of the speaker's other language. This type is typical of, but not restricted to, beginning L2-learners.
It should be noted that the distinction between compound and coordinate bilingualism has come under scrutiny and this comparison is not currently fashionable. When studies are done of multilinguals most are found to show behavior intermediate between compound and coordinate bilingualism. Some authors have suggested that the distinction should only be made at the level of grammar rather than vocabulary, others use "coordinate bilingual" as a synonym for one who has learned two languages from birth, and others have proposed dropping the distinction altogether.
Receptive bilingualism occurs when someone has the ability to understand a language, but (for various reason) doesn't speak it. Receptive bilingualism can occur when a child realizes that they are dominant in a community language over the native language of their parents, and choose to speak to their parents only in the community language. While some see this as a failure to become bilingual, family who adopt this mode of communication can be highly functional, and receptive bilinguals can rapidly achieve oral fluency when placed in situations where they are required to speak the subordinate language.
Multilingualism at the societal level
and other communities that are multilingual often make use of multilingual signs, like this one in Brisbane.Multilingualism has been more common in the past than usually supposed; in early times, when most people were members of small language communities, it was necessary to know two or more languages for trade or any other dealings outside one's own town or village, and this holds true today in places of high linguistic diversity such as Sub-Saharan Africa and India. Linguist Ekkehard Wolff estimates that 50% of the population of Africa is multilingual.
Widespread multilingualism is one form of language contact.
In multilingual societies, not all speakers need to be multilingual. When all speakers are multilingual, linguists classify the community according to the functional distribution of the languages involved:
- diglossia: if there is a structural functional distribution of the languages involved, the society is termed 'diglossic'. Typical diglossic areas are those areas in Europe where a regional language is used in informal, usually oral, contexts, while the state language is used in more formal situations. Frisia (with Frisian and German/Dutch) and Lusatia (with Sorbian and German) are well-known examples. Some writers limit diglossia to situations where the languages are closely related, and could be considered dialects of each other.
- ambilingualism: a region is called ambilingual if this functional distribution is not observed. In a typical ambilingual area it is nearly impossible to tell which language is used when in a given setting. True ambilingualism is rare. Amibilingual tendencies can be found in Luxembourg, or in border regions with many cross-border contacts.
- bipart-lingualism: if more than one language can be heard in a small area, but if the large majority of speakers are monolinguals, who have little contact with speakers from neighbouring ethnic groups, an area is call 'bipart-lingual'. The typical example is the Balkan.
Multilingual at the interactional level
Whenever two people meet, negotiations take place. If they want to express solidarity and sympathy, they tend to seek common features in their behavior. If speakers wish to express distance towards or even dislike of the person they are speaking to, the reverse is true, and differences are sought. This mechanism also extends to language, as has been described by Howard Giles' Accommodation Theory.Various, but not nearly all, multilinguals tend to use code-switching, a term that describes the process of 'swapping' between languages. In many cases, code-switching is motivated by the wish to express loyalty to more than one cultural group, as holds for many immigrant communities in the New World. Code-switching may also function as a strategy where proficiency is lacking. Such strategies are common if one of the languages is not very elaborated, like Welsh, Frisian, Sorbian and other minority languages, or if the speakers have not developed proficiency in certain lexical domains, as in the case of immigrant languages.
This code-switching appears in many forms. If a speaker has a positive attitude towards both languages and towards code-switching, many switches can be found, even within the same sentence. If, however, the speaker is reluctant to use code-switching, as in the case of a lack of proficiency, he might knowingly or unknowingly try to camouflage his attempt by converting elements of one language into elements of the other language. This results in speakers using words like courrier noir in French, instead of the proper word for blackmail, chantage.
Bilingual interaction can even take place without the speakers switching. In certain areas, it is not uncommon for speakers to consistently each use a different language. This phenomenon is found, amongst others, in Scandinavia. Speakers of Swedish and Norwegian can easily communicate with each other speaking their respective language. It is usually called non-convergent discourse, a term introduced by the Dutch linguist Reitze Jonkman.
A few examples of multilingual regions/settings
There is a distinction between social and personal bilinguism. Many countries, such as Belgium, which are officially multilingual, may have many monolinguals in their population. Offically monolingual countries, on the other hand, such as France, can have sizable multilingual populations.- a majority of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is multilingual
- Brussels, the bilingual capital of Belgium (15% Dutch-speaking)
- Canada is officially bilingual under the Official Languages Act and the Constitution of Canada that require the federal government to deliver services in both official languages. As well, minority language rights are guaranteed where numbers warrant. Approximately 25% of Canadians speak French. See Bilingualism in Canada
- the Canadian province of Quebec, (10% English-speaking) Note: Although there is a relatively sizable English-speaking population in Quebec, French is the only official language.
- the province of New Brunswick, Canada (35% French-speaking) New Brunswick is the only province in Canada with two official languages.
- there are also significant French language minorities in the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba. Though those provinces are not officially bilingual they do provide a number of services in French.
- Nunavut is a Canadian territory with a population that is 85% Inuit. Its official languages are the Inuit dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun as well as English and French.
- most regions of China: usually a local regional dialect such as Cantonese Chinese or Shanghai dialect (native) and Mandarin Chinese (learned, official)
- In Hong Kong, both Chinese and English are official languages, and for Chinese both Mandarin and Cantonese are used. All the three spoken and two written languages are taught in schools, and are mandatory subjects.
- In Macau, both Chinese and Portuguese are official languages, and for Chinese both Mandarin and Cantonese are used, but with predominance of Cantonese, as in Hong Kong.
- Finland (6% Finland-Swedish, Åland unilingually Swedish)
- India: Twenty-two official languages. The largest, Hindi, is spoken natively by only 18% of the population
- Most people in Indonesia are bilingual at an early age. They speak a local native language with their families whereas the official language Indonesian which is used to communicate with people from other regions and is taught in schools as a compulsory subject. Indonesia has over two hundred native languages.
- Ireland, where three languages have some form of official status. In the Republic of Ireland, Irish (one of the Goidelic languages) is the first official language while English is the second. Approximately 1.5 million Irish citizens are either fluent or semi-fluent in Irish, making it by far the most commonly spoken Goidelic language. However English is far more commonly used as less than 3% speak Irish as their 1st language and they are all located in the remote Gaeltacht regions. Ulster Scots, a variety of Lowland Scots, is spoken by some in northern regions, but again English is far more commonly used and Ulster Scots is less actively used in media. Irish and Ulster Scots now both have official status in the Northern Ireland as part of the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
- many Koreans living in Japan speak both Korean and Japanese
- in Mauritius, where children are taught Mauritian Creole, French, and English
- Philippines: Filipino and English are official languages in the constitution. People in native Tagalog areas are usually bilingual, while in non-Tagalog speaking areas it's common to be trilingual in the native language, Filipino and English.
- ex-Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact countries: many people fluently speak Russian, especially in Slavic countries within the area of the former USSR (typically in Poland, Slovakia. However Few Czech people speak Russian, despite huge expenditure in the past)
- Parts of Lower Silesia vovoidship of Poland, where live many people for which German is mother tongue
- certain cantons of Switzerland
- Spain, where many regions have more than one official language (especially in Catalonia, where Spanish and Catalan both enjoy great social esteem and are both used in almost every social situation)
- Sweden in Stockholm area and North Bothnia, Finnish speaking
- Wales, and to a lesser extent other Celtic-speaking regions of the UK, and London
- among immigrants and their descendants.
- among children of ambassadorss and expatriates.
- in border areas between two countries of mixed languages.
- among children whose parents each speak a different language.
See also
- Bilingualism in Canada
- Plurilingualism
- English-only movement
- Languages in the United States
- Spanish in the United States
- Diglossia
- Non-convergent discourse
- Indian Languages
- Monoglottism
- Polyglot
External links
- Heritage Languages in America: Tapping a ?Hidden? Resource, by James Crawford
- Why Bilingual Education?
- A Brief History of Bilingual Education in Spanish
- A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
- Ten Common Fallacies about Bilingual Education
- Bilingualism and ageing
