What does it mean to be bilingual?
17 November 2005
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If you speak just one language, you probably think that's pretty normal, and that people who speak more than one are an exception, or at least a minority. In fact, it's just the opposite. Three quarters of the people in the world, including many in the U.S., are bilingual or multilingual. It's monolinguals who are a minority breed.
Bilingualism, of course, can mean different things. And not all bilinguals speak two languages at the same level. For example, after September 11th, 2001, bilinguals responded to calls for people who could handle both English and Arabic. But their skills weren't good enough to meet the need. Some spoke both languages fluently but couldn't read and write one of them well, or vice versa.
So how do you get to be bilingual? Often, it happens early in life, in a home where two languages are spoken. Parents sometimes speak both languages to the child; sometimes one parent uses one language and another uses the other. Or, bilingualism can be what linguists call "additive", where a new language is added to your repertoire later in life. You can obviously you do that by learning a language in school. Or maybe your parents move to Armenia when you're little and you learn Armenian while continuing to develop English skills at home.
A bilingual capability may also wither away, which can happen if you move to a new country and the language of the majority largely replaces your original language. We see that often in small children. By about age two-and-a-half a bilingual child starts to make choices in language use, and it's usually in favor of the majority language. Think of little Quang who moved to the U.S. from Vietnam. He runs errands for his grandmother when she speaks to him in Vietnamese, and may even answer her in Vietnamese, but not in the presence of his friends! He's decided that English is the language he's going to use most. And his skill in Vietnamese starts to fade. It can be revived, and he'll re-learn it more quickly than someone who starts it from scratch, but it'll take some serious effort.
Immigrant families in the U.S. who want their children to retain the community's heritage language, as well as English, have to consciously work at it. Children rarely have the chance to continue learning their heritage language at school, especially if it's a language like, let's say, Swedish or Tagalog, the main language of the Philippines. So some communities start special language programs after school or on Saturdays to help keep the language alive. Being bilingual doesn't automatically mean being bilingual for life.
Bilingualism is often confused with bilingual education, an approach to educating children who speak a language other than English. The thrust of bilingual education is to help students learn school subjects through their native tongue while they're learning English. For a variety of reasons it's been very controversial.
Lately, dual language education, has become popular, and seems to show promise. Dual language programs offer kids the chance to speak and do schoolwork in two languages (one of which is always English), and thus to experience additive bilingualism. Both language-minority and language-majority kids can become bilingual in classrooms where they learn together and help each other.
True bilinguals -- and by this I mean people whose skills in both languages are very strong -- have an enormous advantage in society. They can function in more than one culture. They can be bridges for communication in their communities -- and the globalized world. There are, of course, important reasons for new U.S.citizens and their children to learn English. But there are also important reasons for them to keep, nurture, and strengthen a language they learned at their mother's knee. Historically we have sometimes discouraged people from retaining their original language when they come to the U.S. And that's a national loss. We need to find ways instead... to encourage it.
That's the language thought for today, which comes from Dora Johnson of the Center for Applied Linguistics. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit our website at www.cofc.edu/linguist. And keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do, language makes a difference.