Читать книгу The Mysteries of Bilingualism. Unresolved Issues онлайн

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As for Switzerland, we saw above that in 2012, Swiss Statistics had stated that the 2010 census had shown that a mere 15.8% of the Swiss population was bi- or multilingual. This was because Swiss German and German had been collapsed into one language category, and the criterium for writing down two languages in the “What is your main language?” question was extremely restrictive. In the article I wrote for Le Temps criticizing this approach (Grosjean 2012), I suggested that Swiss Statistics look at the data obtained for the second and third questions: “Which language(s) do you speak normally at home/with family members?” and “Which language(s) do you speak normally at work/at school?.” The reaction I received was at first quite chilly (it isn’t done to criticize your census bureau!) but a few months later one of the collaborators there sent me the results obtained for these questions. The percentage was now 41.9%! To this percentage, one can add a few percentage points to take into account those who use a language that does not appear in the set list of 11 languages (they were put into the monolingual category!) as well as those not counted such as international diplomats and their families. Thus, close to half of the inhabitants of Switzerland use at least two languages in their everyday life.