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What is bilingual to you? | ||
Tags: Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4100 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 33 of 63 06 November 2013 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | ||
I can't speak for Danish, but I've had this discussion with Swedes (about the cognate "tvåspråkig") and it's definitely a matter of how the language has been learned, not how well. During my teen years, I often made errors in Swedish that appalled my parents simply because they were the errors of an anglophone. I got perfect scores on my Swedish tests at school, but I often created new words out of English, put English-like suffixes on Swedish words, and I had a tendency to get prepositions wrong. English was, in effect, my strongest language. Few people would have called me "tvåspråkig". Some relatives have, when bragging about me, said in those days that I was practically "tvåspråkig", but that is how far it went. Now, my ex, on the other hand, who had horrible Swedish for someone who'd spent his entire life speaking the language, and apparently much worse Arabic (including being entirely illiterate, not that reading and writing is what matters here),would have been someone people wouldn't hesitate to call "tvåspråkig" because he had two "native" languages. Edited by eyðimörk on 06 November 2013 at 3:41pm 2 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 34 of 63 06 November 2013 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think we all agree that a child who is heavily exposed to two language environments and can switch effortlessly between them can be classed as bilingual. But it's also possible to reach this position in adulthood.
My wife grew up speaking only German and didn't learn any English (beyond the absolute basics) until she moved to Ireland at the age of 20. After many years residence in English-speaking countries, using the language professionally, academically and socially (including local dialect), she can speak and write at a native level in my opinion. I have heard people class her as bilingual and I wouldn't contradict this. Leaving aside heritage speakers, people who grew up in bilingual communities and those who a spent a large chunk of their childhood abroad, few British citizens actually reach the stage of being entirely comfortable in an additional language. The situation is more common in Germany, but hardly the norm. Yet once you look at countries like Norway and the Netherlands, you start to find huge numbers of people who speak English to an incredibly high level, many of whom have never lived in an English-speaking society. I don't know how they do it, people say it's down to pop music and TV. Can it really be that simple? Maybe it is. Anyway, it's not unusual at all for a Scandanavian or Dutch person to be "bilingual" going by definitions from larger countries. But I guess that in Norway it's nothing really to brag about, being fluent in English. People would say...tell me something new. Edited by beano on 06 November 2013 at 4:18pm 3 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 35 of 63 06 November 2013 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's down to exposure, cultural standards and use. Many Dutch people don't write as
well as they speak either. I wouldn't class the level of English most Dutch people have as bilingual - more as competency in English, but I've seen the workings of actually teaching teenagers in English firsthand - the more exposure they get and the more they are forced to use that language in the classroom and home environment, the better they do with it. Almost invariably, those people who speak better English have more exposure to the language and practice it. Practicing English here doesn't mean you have to travel abroad (although many of us have and those that have spent extensive time in English-speaking countries will speak better English as a rule). But those who for even two or three years had the bigger part of school education in English and who had come in with a modicum of English already would speak fluently by ANYONE's standards and the only way to tell that they are foreign are by tracing their accent (which is generally weaker), as well as the odd word choice here and there. It's really down to the fact that in the Netherlands often the exposure to English is huge and this exposure has the corollary that some active practice will mean that this English can activate quickly - and English is more popular now than 30 years ago. Teenagers now speak much better English than the generation of babyboomers (who would still need conversational English classes if they went abroad, though they would understand the grammar). Even children who do not necessarily grow up speaking English at home may learn it passively - my brother didn't read English when we returned home but at age 10 or so (when he started English I think) he had amassed a serious passive ability already and could recognise many things, even though he was shy to speak it. The reason is that around our house many things are and have been in English and thus he had the exposure to it. In this case, it's really sink or swim - Dutch children cannot get around using English anymore and thus the expectation culturally has become that some modicum of English must be present - and it should preferably be quite good. The other strange story I heard recently is of people arriving as au pairs here to learn English (???). I talked to a friend recently who did that and I said "what? why?" and she said it's only old ladies and children who don't speak English. Which is only half true in my opinion, but it conserves the point - that no English is a rarity, but that native English among Dutch speakers also is. Most people hover somewhere in between and tend to have functional commands, which foreigners will take for fluency because the Dutch tend to have clear, understandable accents with mistakes that can easily be traced or accounted for. Which is why Dutch people reserve bilingual (because it usually refers to English) for someone who speaks this natively because of home environment reasons, or due to growing up abroad, or whatever. For example, I would be considered bilingual (grew up abroad and have attended bilingual education) but someone who had just learned English at school (many of my friends) would not be, even if they are equally as capable of conversing in English as I am (albeit with a slightly worse accent). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4704 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 36 of 63 06 November 2013 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Strange but definitely plausible. When I was studying in Utrecht in 2011, I knew an exchange student from China who barely spoke English (let alone Dutch). She had chosen to study in the Netherlands because she had heard it would be a great place to improve her English. I always felt a bit bad for her because all our classes turned out to be in Dutch, which must have been really frustrating. But the teachers and most of the students could speak English, so there was this system set up where she would sit through the Dutch-language classes and then get kind of filled in on what had happened three hours later at the end of the lesson. Edited by Hekje on 06 November 2013 at 4:47pm 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 37 of 63 06 November 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's not unheard of, I agree... but I just find it so counter-intuitive.
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| 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 38 of 63 06 November 2013 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder how that would go down in France or Italy? Hi, I'm the new au-pair.....we speak in English, yes?
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| 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 39 of 63 06 November 2013 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually it makes perfect sense, and I know people who have done that here too. It would be almost like
going to Barcelona to learn Spanish. Yes, Catalan is the main language, but everybody speaks Spanish as well. In principle the difference should be that here absolutely everyone would have Norwegian as their mother tongue, whereas in Barcelona a lot of people do not speak Catalan, but given the amount of foreigners who speak only very basic Norwegian, the difference is smaller than you would think. And as many have commented on, Scandinavians and the Dutch tend to switch to English the moment they hear that you are a foreigner anyway. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4704 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 40 of 63 06 November 2013 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
I can see how it would feel that way, but you guys just have a crazy good reputation for speaking English. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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