types of multilingualism
important notes and some links for further study

two meanings of “multilingualism”
The word multilingualism is ambiguous
There are multilingual places: any place that has more than one
language. For example, there are multilingual countries, such asBelgium. There are multilingual cities, such as Bolzano. There aremultilingual schools, and multilingual clubs. There are evenmultilingual households.

.

There are also multilingual persons: any person that uses morethan one language.

a multilingual person
A multilingual person is able to use more than just one wayof speaking. Almost everyone in Japan is multilingual to someextent. A multilingual person is often said to have a dominantlanguage, but even the skills in the nondominant languages
can be native or nativelike.

A multilingual person does not have to speak every language
perfectly. It is very common to speak some languages better
than others.

multidialectal
The different ways of speaking that a person uses do not haveto be completely different (mutually unintelligible) languages.
Many people use different dialects or sociolects. Some people
are masters of a creole continuum, or they can speak a broad
range of language varieties. 

At KGU, it is common for students to use two or three types ofJapanese, as well as English, and possibly other languages.

a bilingual person
A bilingual person is able to use two languages. We say
multilingual to emphasize that a person knows more than
one or perhaps even many languages; however, we saybilingual to emphasize two. 

Sometimes we mean at least two languages, and other times
we mean only two languages.

a bilingual translator or interpreter

We also tend to use the term bilingual whenever therelationship between two particular languages is important;for example, as when we are looking for a bilingual translator
for German and Italian, or when we need an interpreter for
two-way simultaneous interpreting.

diglossiafi

A diglossic person is the typical bilingual person of a diglossic
community, which is a community where two languages are regularly
used for communication. One of the languages is a high language,
and the other is a low language. For example, the high language
might be used for religious, scienti c, or other scholarly discussion,
whereas the low language might be used for shopping and lightentertainment. Examples of diglossia include: the use of both Bokmåland Landsmaal in Norway; the use of both Spanish and Guaraní inParaguay; and the use of both English and Patois in Jamaica.

language skill variation

flAlthough a person from a diglossic community is often abalanced bilingual, most multilingual people have different
levels of skill in the different languages they use, or even indifferent genres of those languages. We sometimes refer tothese contrasts when describing a multilingual person’s skills:• nativelike versus foreign sounding• uent versus halting• grammatical versus ungrammaticalSpeakers are typically (but not always) more competent intheir rst or native languages
native versus nonnative — Language learned before thecritical period often sounds more natural

fi.

fi.

rst versus second language — The rst language intuitions
may differ from those of languages learned subsequently.
(cf. caretaker language; mother tongue)
fificommon reasons for skill de cits

a multilingual community
versus a multilingual person
Not everyone in a multilingual community is a multilingualperson. Multilingual communities are the result of humanmigration and other travel, and there are various types ofmultilingual communities. This travel has typically resulted incontact between speakers of different languages, and suchcontact can result in speaker multilingualism, languagechange, new language birth, and even language extinction.

immigrants often switch languages
It is not uncommon for immigrants to use the majority
language of their new community. Especially when theimmigrant language is a minority language, it may be usedless and less. Eventually, some of the descendants of theimmigrants may no longer know their ancestral language.

Many of the descendants of 20th Century immigrants to Japan
from Korea and China cannot speak Korean or Chinese.

Oracy is the ability to competently speak; i.e., to speak
uently and grammatically
Literacy is the ability to competently write and read.

A script is a system of writing. A language can be written withdifferent scripts. For example, Serbo-Croatian can be written
either with the Latin alphabet or with the Cyrillic alphabet.
.

floracy, literacy, …

natural languages: speech and deaf sign
Speech is the most typical form of language, and theEthnologue lists thousands of natural spoken languages
Sign (deaf sign, deaf sign language) is naturally used by deaf
communities, and the Ethnologue also lists many naturalsigned languages.

.

Both normal speech and deaf sign can be written, but writing
is not the same thing as a natural language.The preceding ends the important notes,
but here are some links to sites for further study:
the Ethnologue
creole continuum:
acrolect, mesolects, basilect

critical period for language
learning
Serbo-Croatian
scripts, writing systems

linguistic genre

deaf sign transcription diglossia