Читать книгу The Mysteries of Bilingualism. Unresolved Issues онлайн

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We looked up the words “bilingual” and “bilingualism” in a number of dictionaries that can be found on the internet. Many of them are well established, such as Longman, Oxford Advanced Learner’s, Cambridge English, American Heritage, Collins COBUILD, Chambers, Merriam-Webster, etc. Others are newer, such as Dictionary.com and Wiktionary. For the word “bilingual,” we restricted ourselves to the meaning pertaining to the bilingual person, and did not include those pertaining to a bilingual activity, event, or item, as in bilingual education, bilingual conference, bilingual book, etc. Out of a total of 11 definitions we examined, ten underlined the ability to speak two languages fluently. Of these, seven indicated speaking two languages equally well (e.g., Cambridge English: “able to use two languages equally well”) or with nearly equal fluency (e.g., American Heritage: “using or able to use two languages, especially with equal or nearly equal fluency”), and three stressed speaking two languages fluently or extremely well (e.g., Macmillan: “able to speak two languages extremely well”). Only one definition of the 11 did not have fluency as a criterion. It was that of Wiktionary, a more recent dictionary, which stated: “having the ability to speak two languages.” We should note that no definition indicated using two languages on a regular basis, nor did any include more than two languages. In addition, none mentioned dialects in their definitions. Thus, dictionaries seem to reflect closely what lay people state, at least those who do not consider themselves to be bilingual (see the previous section).