The Puzzle of Receptive Multilingualism

[starshipcat]

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

Comments

[mount_oregano]

This isn't unusual. Among us foreign language teachers, it's sneered at as "lazy bilingualism" and we don't let our students do that. Then after class we nip out for a drink and spend the evening speaking with every bad habit we forbid to our students.

Students need to learn to read, write, listen, and speak, at least in classroom settings. In real life, not so much. In my own household, we may switch languages for no apparent reason in the same conversation. In mixed-language families, the father may speak one language to the children, and the mother another -- in fact that's recommended as a way to raise bilingual children.

In short, classrooms do things certain ways because they are important to the learning process. But that's not how the world works outside of classrooms. If your only experience of language was in school, you've missed a lot of fun.

[starshipcat]

Excellent point.

I was a language major as an undergrad, and one of my great regrets was not being able to study abroad and actually use my foreign language skills beyond the classroom setting. Unfortunately, between the politics of the time and family finances, it simply wasn't feasible.

[mount_oregano]

What languages do you speak? English, obviously, for one...

[starshipcat]

Russian and Polish. I did my undergrad work in the latter half of the 80's, when the Soviet Union was still a going concern.

Looking back, my best opportunity probably would've been in the beginning of the 90's, when things opened up and they wanted native speakers to teach English over there. But at this point that's yet another coulda woulda shoulda.