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What is bilingual to you?

  Tags: Multilingual
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
63 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 35 6 7 8 Next >>
shk00design
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
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 Message 25 of 63
05 November 2013 at 9:58pm | IP Logged 
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.
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Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
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Norway
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 Message 26 of 63
05 November 2013 at 10:15pm | IP Logged 
vermillon wrote:
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
That is why I asked how the term was interpreted in the
different languages. In my language, I have never heard it used by experts or laymen as anything but
knowing two languages equally well. If I say I am "tospråklig" in Norwegian, my English doesn't cut it,
regardless of how well Norwegians in general speak English or other languages.


Are you implying that the meaning of the word in different languages could correlate with how common it is in
that country to have native bilinguals? I would imagine that in multilingual countries, nobody would call
himself "bilingual" if he knew only his second language to a B1 level. On the other hand, in France (and from
CVs I've seen, Spanish people in London) people don't hesitate to brand themselves as fluent (and/or
bilingual) when their English is still clearly poor: they're usually the person that speaks the best English in
their family, and in the eyes of their entirely monoglot parents, they're bilingual. Would that make sense?


That was not what I meant when I wrote it, but that does actually make perfect sense.
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Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
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 Message 27 of 63
06 November 2013 at 12:38am | IP Logged 
s_allard wrote:
I wonder if this debate isn't fundamentally the same as that of speaking multiple languages, something we all know about here. One could think, rather naively, that to speak various languages means to speak them equally well. We all know that this is not the case. Similarly, being biiingual does not really imply equal proficiency in two languages.
Hm, for me it's more about the "way of learning" than the level. AFAIU in Canada bilingual often implies "both English and French"? It surely makes sense that if you can use both of the official languages, it doesn't matter if they are both your native languages or only one of them. (if it's neither, you'd be called trilingual, right?)

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

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LeadZeppelin
Diglot
Groupie
United States
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 28 of 63
06 November 2013 at 6:04am | IP Logged 
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.
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beano
Diglot
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 29 of 63
06 November 2013 at 9:44am | IP Logged 
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"
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Iversen
Super Polyglot
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Denmark
berejst.dk
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 Message 30 of 63
06 November 2013 at 10:24am | IP Logged 
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

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
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China
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 Message 31 of 63
06 November 2013 at 10:28am | IP Logged 
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).
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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
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United Kingdom
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 Message 32 of 63
06 November 2013 at 12:57pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
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.


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?



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