The Puzzle of Receptive Multilingualism
What happens when two (or more) language communities overlap? How do they communicate with each other? Does one language become dominant and the others diminish to minority language status? Does some sort of trade language develop, with a simplified grammar for ease of learning and a bare-bones vocabulary?
Although these are the most common results, they are by no means the only ones. On a small island off the coast of Australia, there is a community in which a mere five hundred people speak nine different languages. Because of a peculiarity of the cultures of some Australian indigenous communities, some of these languages are regarded as the sole property of that community. For an outsider to speak it would be a trespass, even an act of aggression.
However, it is completely acceptable to listen and understand these languages. So one can get a situation in which two people carry on a conversation, each speaking his or her own native language which the other does not speak, but can understand quite well. Sometimes even husband and wife in a mixed marriage will spend their entire lifetimes communicating in this manner, which to Western ears would seem more like a stopgap.
Even more interesting, this situation has persisted over multiple generations, raising serious questions of what it means to learn and be proficient in a language. In most Western foreign language and second language coursework, only learning how to understand another language would be viewed as only half of the process, if not outright failure to learn. Yet in another cultural context, it seems to be the norm.
Although these are the most common results, they are by no means the only ones. On a small island off the coast of Australia, there is a community in which a mere five hundred people speak nine different languages. Because of a peculiarity of the cultures of some Australian indigenous communities, some of these languages are regarded as the sole property of that community. For an outsider to speak it would be a trespass, even an act of aggression.
However, it is completely acceptable to listen and understand these languages. So one can get a situation in which two people carry on a conversation, each speaking his or her own native language which the other does not speak, but can understand quite well. Sometimes even husband and wife in a mixed marriage will spend their entire lifetimes communicating in this manner, which to Western ears would seem more like a stopgap.
Even more interesting, this situation has persisted over multiple generations, raising serious questions of what it means to learn and be proficient in a language. In most Western foreign language and second language coursework, only learning how to understand another language would be viewed as only half of the process, if not outright failure to learn. Yet in another cultural context, it seems to be the norm.