User:LigeiaRose

=Bilingualism=

The term bilingualism (of bi = two, lingua = language) refers to individuals who can speak two languages. It is a product of second language called L2, being learnt after the first native language L1. Ability to speak a second language requires skills in listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing, although in practice some of those skills are often less developed than the others. Bilingualism is not just for individuals, but also for whole societies where two languages are spoken fluently. Approximately half of the people in the world are speakers of more that one language. The phenomenon is found commonly in border regions, especially in those whose geographical boundaries change from time to time. 2 South-eastern Poland was formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, making Austrian the official language for a population whose native language was Polish, but which was in contact with neighbouring Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Slovakian communities, and whose religious groups included Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Jewish. Thus, Church Slavonic, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Yiddish were all likely to be used to varying degrees by inhabitants of the region, in addition to the Slavic languages. The phenomenon is also found in small countries that participate extensively in international relations: the Netherlands and Switzerland are the best example. In the Netherlands, children have instruction in Dutch as a first language, begin a second, third, and fourth (English, French, or German) within a few years of each other, and if they plan to go to university, they have to learn Latin or Greek for several years. 2 Bilingualism is one of the most intriguing topics. The scientists and the people are wondering how it is possible for one child to be able to learn two languages without mixing them and to be able to make deference which language is spoken when. Most of these questions are answered. Sometimes the child is making mistakes with mixing the two languages and in one sentence he/she can use words from both of them.

This term is actively studied by the linguists who are interested in the way that speakers of one language accommodate the impact of another on their own, by sociolinguists who trace change in social custom as a function of change in language, by teachers concerned to minimize the interfering effects of one language upon the learning of another, by psychologists who are interested in bilingualism as a natural laboratory for the study of the way the mind represents its knowledge and many others who are interested in this topic. In one of the earlier studies of this topic, this kind of language mixing was presented in negative light. In their opinion, the children were very confused and had difficulties with the two languages they spoke. 3

E.g.: This nose is perdu – This nose is lost. (French-English)

Because of this problem, the parents who were living in bilingual area were meeting psychologists and educators who gave them advice about the way they have to raise their children. For example, children growing up in bilingual households – where both parents speak two languages regularly, or where each parent speaks a different language – are typically bilingual from the very beginning of language acquisition. Many parents after the meetings stopped raising them bilingually, because they understood that that mission is so hard and sometimes impossible. However, it now seems clear that some amount of language mixing is a normal part of the early bilingual acquisition process, and not necessarily an indication of any language problem. [3]

The speaking development of the bilingual children
There are some interesting questions about the grammar that the children in bilingual societies use. One of them is: Does the child first start to use the grammar of the first language, or both of them at the same time? The unitary system hypothesis says that the child initially constructs only one lexicon and one grammar and that is proved. Bilingual children have words for particular objects, but only in one language. An example of that is a child in an English-Spanish family, where for the word “milk” he will use the Spanish word “leche”, but not the English “milk” and vice versa. This is a proof that the children at the beginning of their speaking have only one lexicon. Later, when they grow up and are old enough, they will understand the differences between the two languages that are spoken in their family. 3

Another question, or issue when we talk about bilingualism is whether the bilingual people are more intelligent, more creative or smarter that the ones who are monolingual, i.e. the ones who speak, understand and have only one native language. The earliest researches and studies, which were provided between bilingual and monolingual children, showed that monolingual child’s results on the IQ test and other kinds of tests were much better that the bilingual’s results. But, recent studies showed something different. They indicated that bilingual children are outperforming the monolinguals in solving certain kinds of problems and it showed that bilinguals have better metalinguistic awareness which refers to a speaker’s conscious awareness about language and the use of the language. Bilingual children have an earlier understanding of the relation between an object and its name, for an instance. They have sufficient metalinguistic awareness to speak the contextually appropriate language. Some studies show positive effect of the bilingualism on the children. They enjoy the benefits from being some kind of different than the other children in the society. The parents are satisfied, interested and supportive in their children’s bilingual development. 3 There are some similarities between bilingual and monolingual children. Both of them develop their grammar along the same lines. They start with babbling stage, holophrastic stage, a telegraphic stage and so on. During the telegraphic stage they have and they show the same characteristics. 3

E.g.: Jane go there. English-speaking child -  Alex das haben. (Alex that to have) German-speaking child

With these examples we notice that English-speaking children omit verb endings in a sentence, and German-speaking children use infinitives.

Kinds of bilingualism

•		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 very rarely assert the feeling of having different personalities attached to each of their languages. 3 •		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. 3 •		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 beginners of L2. 3		It is not a strict rule that in bilingual societies the whole population is bilingual. But when there is a case when all of the people are bilinguals, the scientists classify the community in their own ways, i.e. according to the way of distribution of the language: •		diglossia: there is diglossia when structural functional distribution of the language is involved. Typical areas where diglossia appeared are the areas in Britain and on the Continent where informal language is used 3 •		ambilingualism: if the functional distribution in one region is not observed, that region is called ambilingual. Ambilingual speech is very rare, but it can be found in Luxemburg. 3 •		bipart-lingualism: this appears if more than one language is heard in a small area, but the large majority of speakers are monolinguals, who have little contact with speakers from neighbouring ethnic groups. The typical example is the population on the Balkan. 3

References

 http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1789/Bilingualism-Second-Language-Learning-English-     Second-Language.html

 http://www.answers.com/topic/bilingual

 Stojanovska-Ilievska, Natasa and Jovanka Jovanchevska-Milenkoska. eds. (2009) Introduction to Linguistics, A Reader. Skopje: University American College Skopje. pg. 374-378