#MONOLINGUAL COUNTRY DEFINITION HOW TO#

The judgment here is comparative: total monolingualism versus a minor degree of ability to comprehend a second language. Such persons are said to have receptive competence in a second language and to be 'more bilingual' than monolinguals who have neither receptive nor productive abilities in a language other than their first.

French) but unable to function in the spoken language are considered to be bilinguals of a certain type and placed at one end of the continuum. Thus, persons able to read in a second language (e.g. Others display varying proficiencies in comprehension and/or speaking skills depending on the immediate area of experience in which they are called upon to use their two languages.Īccording to this perspective, one admits into the company of bilinguals individuals who can, to whatever degree, comprehend or produce written or spoken utterances in more than one language. Some bilinguals possess very high levels of proficiency in both languages in the written and the oral modes. The key to this very broad and inclusive definition of bilingualism is 'more than one'.įrom the perspective of this framework, a bilingual individual is not necessarily an ambilingual (an individual with native competency in two languages) but a bilingual of a specific type who, along with other bilinguals of many different types, can be classified along a continuum. More recently, however, researchers who study bilingual and multilingual communities around the world have argued for a broad definition that views bilingualism as a common human condition that makes it possible for an individual to function, at some level, in more than one language. Some researchers have favored a narrow definition of bilingualism and argued that only those individuals who are very close to two monolinguals in one should be considered bilingual.

#MONOLINGUAL COUNTRY DEFINITION HOW TO#

The question of how to define bilingualism or multilingualism has engaged researchers for a very long time. The term bilingual here is used to convey a very different set of meanings from what linguists intend. They are monolingual speakers of their first language and not bilingual at all. In this case, newly arrived immigrant children do not yet function in two languages. schools, for example, are described as 'bilingual children,' the term is often used as a euphemism for 'poor' and 'uneducated'. When newly arrived immigrant children entering U.S. For others, the term bilingual means something quite different. They imagine that such a person can speak, understand, read, and write in two languages at the highest levels.

For them someone who is 'truly' bilingual is two native speakers in one.

When people hear the term bilingual many imagine an individual who speaks two languages perfectly. Definitions of Bilingualism and Multilingualism Each of the world's nations has groups of individuals living within its borders who use other languages in addition to the national language to function in their everyday lives. What is evident from these figures is that few nations are either monolingual or mono-ethnic. Moreover, scholars estimate that there are over 5000 distinct languages spoken in that same small number of nation states. According to figures cited in Stavenhagen (1990) for example, five to eight thousand different ethnic groups reside in approximately 160 nation states. Monolingualism is characteristic only of a minority of the world's peoples. Contrary to what is often believed, most of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual.

Monolingual country definition