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What is bilingual to you? | ||
Tags: Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4445 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 25 of 63 05 November 2013 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Nowadays it is common for people to relocate but still retain fluency of their native language. To be bilingual you
need certain fluency in a language but not necessarily residing in places where the language is spoken. I know people from Africa who speak Swahili as a mother-tongue but ended up in Canada where English is the official language. They can speak both fluently although their English tend to have a distinct accent. Out in the West there are a lot of people in the Chinese community who are fluent in spoken Chinese but have trouble with the characters besides writing their names. We would consider them native as well as long as their fluency in spoken Chinese is sufficient to carry on a conversation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 26 of 63 05 November 2013 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
That was not what I meant when I wrote it, but that does actually make perfect sense. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 27 of 63 06 November 2013 at 12:38am | IP Logged | |||||
But for example on this forum it's important for us not to lump together people with two native languages and those who grew up speaking one language and then learned one more. (interestingly, the combination "bilingual diglot" is very rare here. an overwhelming majority of the people with two native languages speak at least one more language fluently, regardless of whether English is one of their native languages or not) Edited by Serpent on 06 November 2013 at 12:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| LeadZeppelin Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5022 days ago 59 posts - 85 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 63 06 November 2013 at 6:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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In the US if you say that you're a diglot or a triglot, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people wouldn't know what
you're talking about. I really don't think that people here use bilingual as native fluency in both languages. I do think, however, that they're talking about a pretty competent level in each. Someone who has taken a few years of Spanish in high school is never going to call themselves bilingual. Someone who lived in Argentina for a couple years would probably be described as bilingual. That's my experience here in the states anyway. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 29 of 63 06 November 2013 at 9:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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I suppose it depends upon the foreign-language proficiency of the individual nation. An American who can speak sufficient Spanish to communicate with Mexican clients will be a prized asset and most likely regarded as bilingual, even if the grammar is on the ropey side.
If, on the other hand, a Norwegian claims bilingual status with Norwegian and only lower-intermediate English, he or she would be, in the words of Solfrid Christin, "laughed out of the country" 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 63 06 November 2013 at 10:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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It seems that the majority of those who have answered in this thread expect a certain level in both languages (though not necessarily a very high level or two equally high levels), but they don't make a distinction between native languages and later additions. And the dictionaries in English and French may support that.
But here in Denmark it is a simple fact that the word "tosproget" (= bilingual) almost exclusively is used about persons who grew up in immigrant families who spoke their original language at home and then their kids simultaneously learnt Danish outside their front door. In the few cases where this situation isn't relevant the family situation will almost certainly be one where a family has parents speaking two different native languages or families who have moved a lot around in the world during the childhood of their kids. It would be almost unheard of to characterize as bilingual just because he/she had Danish as native language and English as a 'good' second language. Like Solfrid Cristin's daughter, who even prefers reading stuff in English. And as I wrote earlier, I'm in my own eyes not a native speaker of English so by inference I'm just a mere monolingual - even though most of my TV watching, reading and writing is in English (if you include computer programs), and even though I think in English as readily as in Danish. This suggests that there indeed is a fundamental difference between the use of the notion "bilingual" in 'big' and 'small' languages, and it may actually reflect a difference in the expectations concerning the level of the 'second' language. Edited by Iversen on 06 November 2013 at 10:34am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 31 of 63 06 November 2013 at 10:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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Tweetalig in Dutch also implies native level in both languages, yes. "Tweetalig
onderwijs" (bilingual education) refers to education taught in two languages with the idea of having the students obtaining a level of English that is native-like in addition to Dutch (except in the cases where the language in case is not English but German - there are a few of those schools near the border - Frisia also has trilingual schools with Dutch/English/Frisian). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 32 of 63 06 November 2013 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
Is it the level of the languages that determines this of how they were learnt? Could I become "tosproget" by starting Danish now and keeping going until I become (in practice) indistinguishable from a native? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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