Bilingualism - The Different Types Of Bilingualism

If you are interested in raising your kids bilingual, this might be the right blog post for you to start. What is bilingualism, and what different categories are there?

The simplest form to define bilingualism is ‘knowing’ two languages (Valdez & Figueora, 1994).

But that's where the definition problem starts: what does ‘knowing’ a language really mean? 

True Bilinguals

If you are not a truly bilingual, a native-like proficiency speaker in two languages (Cutler, Mehler, Norris, & Segui, 1992; Grosjean, 1982), which is very rare, people usually become bilingual because they need it in their day-to-day lives. As a result, the degree, or proficiency of bilingualism may vary from one individual to another. Bilinguals are not necessarily perfectly fluent in their languages. In fact, it is quite common to have a dominant language.

When I started my own language journey the definition of being bilingual meant to me that you have to be raised naturally by your parents, each of which speaks a different language. After this definition, I am not bilingual. But on the other hand, I have learned English and Russia in school and continued to communicate in English through the rest of my business and private life. My husband Volker had English and French in school. After school, he went abroad to Switzerland to study graphic design in English and was practicing his french outside the university.

So, when I started raising our children bilingual, could it be possible to pass my foreign language knowledge on to my kids? Could it be, that we aren't as monolingual as I always thought?

Are we monolingual?

Ok, let's have a look at what monolingual is defined by dictionary.com:

"knowing or being able to use only one language; monoglot.

spoken or written in only one language."

Since our mother tongue is German and we can speak English, and Volker French as well, on a solid knowledge - we are more than monolingual. But how could you describe our language knowledge? Are we already bilingual?

Definition Of Bilingualism

The definition of bilingualism varies a lot in the literature and is everywhere described with slightly different definitions depending on which point of view you are looking at it. Here are some definitions I found very helpful:  

If you are talking about bilingualism, you have to consider when the two languages have been acquired concerning each other

• Simultaneous bilingualism is considered to occur when two languages are acquired from birth or before one year of age (De Houwer, 2005).

• sequential bilinguals learn their first language (L1) in the home and their second language (L2) in the school and/or community (Flege, 1992). To maintain the classification of bilingualism, communicative competence in the L2 must be acquired and L1 proficiency must be maintained. (Gottardo, Grant 2008)

There may be distinctions between proficiency of a language, or differences in the ability and use between the two languages:

• Ambilingual/Equilingual: Someone who can speak two languages on the same level so that a native speaker thinks, that his conversational partner is a native speaker as well (Saunders, 1988).

• Balanced Bilingual: someone who has almost the same skills in two languages but is not necessarily mistaken for a native speaker in both or one language (Saunders, 1988).

• Receiving Bilingual: someone who knows two languages but can only speak one (Saunders, 1988).

Phew, this was some theoretical stuff to consume! But I think, to dive deep into a topic you are talking about can be sometimes very helpful and I hope, it was also interesting for you. 

There Is No Cookie-Cutter Approach For Defining Bilingualism

To sum it all up, finding a cookie-cutter approach to defining bilingualism in just a few words is not easy, cause each individual has different bilingual characteristics. If I had to put myself in a bilingual category, I would say, that I am sequential in some way balanced bilingual with German as my major and English as my minor language.

Tell me, how would you describe your language knowledge? Feel free, to leave a comment below, so the best conversation can start right after my blog post ;-)

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Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (1992). The monolingual nature of speechsegmentation by bilinguals. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 381-410

De Houwer, A. (2005). Early bilingual acquisition: Focus on morphosyntax and theseparate development hypothesis. In J. F. Kroll, & A.M. de Groot. (Eds.),Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches (pp. 30-48). New York, NY,US: Oxford University Press.

Flege, J. E. (1992). Speech learning in a second language. In C. Ferguson, L. Menn, &C. Stoel Gammon (Eds.), Phonological Development: Models, Research, andImplications (pp. 565-604). Timonium, MD: York

Gottardo, Grant (2008), Defining Bilingualism. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267152186_Defining_Bilingualism

* http://thebilingualadvantage.com/what-is-bilingualism-2/