Bilingualism

[Kevin Rocap]

Dear Trond, Stan, et al,

Actually, at least in the U.S., I believe that immigrants are learning
English as fast or faster now than in the past.  In fact, what is
potentially of greater concern is the rate of language loss (loss of the
non-English primary language) of many children and youth often within
just one generation (their parents are bilingual, but the children are
monolingual English speakers).

James Crawford's policy pages have some of the latest Census data on the
numbers of homes where languages other than English are spoken.  About
76% of people who identify themselves as speaking languages other than
English also report that they speak English either well or very well.
The remaining folks, about 10,000,000 in total report speaking English
not well or not at all.

The issue is that we are also seeing new immigration all of the time and
I think it beomes easy to assume that having a persistent population of
limited English speaking members of our communities implies that
families aren't learning English when, in fact, it is simply that more
recent immigrants may be replacing those who have learned or are
learning English at a perfectly reasonable rate (and as fast or faster
than in the past).

The linguistic demands have also changed over time, imho.  It was
possible for immigrants in the past to get by and succeed with
relatively easily acquired social language skills.  In general, it is
well understood that developing social language skills in English (as
L2) is far easier and takes much less time than developing academic,
technical or specialized language proficiencies in the language.
Arguably, linguistic demands to be successful in U.S. society have
increased and so one must develop more academic language proficiencies,
not merely social language proficiencies, to succeed, than in the past.

I do recall seeing statistics though that immigrants in the past learned
English no more quickly than immigrants today (would need to track those
down).  Just a few other thoughts on the matter.

In Peace,
K.

Trond Trosterud wrote:

>
>
> 1.11.2004 kello 01:38, Stan-Sandy Anonby kirjoitti:
>
>> I'm wondering about your statement that immigrants in the past
>> shifted more quickly than immigrants today. I don't have any stats
>> about this, but would welcome any. I would've thought the opposite
>> would be true, that language shift progressed more slowly in the
>> past. I would've thought immigrants would've had fewer opportunities
>> to speak the dominant language, and languages like English weren't as
>> attractive then.
>
>
> My impression is from personal experience, seeing (well, hearing
> about) my grandparents' and grand-grandparents' sisters and brothers
> moving to USA, for never coming back, the only contact being the
> "America letters", that came from the ones that left, but not from
> their children. As a linguist I have read interviews with Turkish and
> Pakistan immigrants to Norway, who visit their homes, and keep long
> summer vacations there, not every summer, but perhaps every second and
> third summer. A similar difference can be seen in Finnish emigration
> across the Baltic Sea, to Sweden, in the 17th century (no holiday
> travels home :-) compared to the one in the 1960-ies and 1970-ies
> (regular trips). The combination of public holidays, cheap travel and
> now also satellite TV has made this possible. Unfortunately, I don't
> have statistics, but I am sure some sociologists and migration
> researchers do. I agree with you that lg shift has to do with whether
> there are opportunities to speak L2 (the dominant lg), but that
> opportunity was present in earlier centuries also (except where the
> immigrants constituted isolated communities (self-sustainable farms
> far away from others, as the 16th and 17th c. Finnish migration wave
> to Western Sweden / Eastern Norway, where the last Finnish speaker
> died as late as in 1980). In other emigrant waves I know of, e.g. the
> one to the US, most immigrants came to places where they were in
> interaction with other ethnic groups, and the motivation for learning
> the dominant L2 was as large as today.
>
> In the last sentence of your posting you have an important remark,
> "languages like English weren't as attractive then". If you imply that
> this should be a factor promoting faster lg shift today, I disagree. I
> think this recent status of English is irrelevant for bilingualism and
> language shift (except for the "broad" bilingualism, cf. below). When
> your grandparents arrived in the US, the global status of English was
> not as strong as today (with German dominating in European science, no
> wide-spread school-induced language knowledge, and not our
> 3-hours-a-day of English television. But language choice is dependent
> upon your local need. The language of the playground, the school, the
> workplace, these are the important factors, not global status.
>
>> Stan
>> (By the way, my grandparents were Norwegian)
>
>
> :-)
>
> Trond.
>
> p.s.
>
> To the other thread, on more or less real bilingualism, or MP-lingualism:
>
> I will hereby change my position somewhat: Yes, i admit that there is
> a way of establishing a "narrow" concept of bilingualism, in the
> following way: If you live, in addition to your L1-speaking community,
> in a community where you speak L2 and learn it well before the end of
> puberty, then you know the basic grammar in a way such that you are
> able to say that "this is how we (do not) say it". In this sense, I am
> a monolingual, in Norwegian  (and yes, I feel the difference, every
> day), and not a bilingual, whereas my children are bilingual. Then
> there is the broader, functional way of seeing it (you are bilingual
> in L1 and L2 if you may use L2), in which sense I am trilingual (in
> English at work and Finnish at home).
>
> General linguists will typically be interested in the narrow type (I
> am useless as an informant in languages other than Norwegian), whereas
> sociolinguists will be interested  (also) in the second type (for
> studies of lg maintenance, lg shift and lg death, for example, it will
> be of interest to know whether I am capable of bringing up my children
> in Finnish or not)
>
>
>