Bilingualism

[Trond Trosterud]

Increased monolingualism comes as a result of minority languages
becoming smaller due to assimilation in modernising nation-states. This
certainly takes place, e.g. here in Norway during the last century, but
numerically the assimilated minorities are not that large. In Norway,
it affected perhaps 2-3 % of the population. Indigenous languages
represent even smaller percentages of the population, so even though
many languages disappear, only a small portion of the population
becomes monolingual. Larger minorities have fared better, and stayed
bilingual.

There is a growth of EFL/ESL, as has already been stated. Shift to
English, on the other hand, only takes place as a result of
colonisation, and that historical phase seems to be over (at least for
the moment). Thus, English will be able to assimilate speakers only in
Britain's former colonies. The result of the EFL/ESL rise will be
increased bi- and trilingualism (coming on top of local bilingualism),
leaving monolingualism an increasingly rare phenomenon.

As we migrate and travel more than in earlier centuries, bilingualism
will have to increase. In earlier centuries, migration (e.g. from
Europe to America) happened once in a lifetime, and resulted in change
of language and assimilation. Today, emigrants are more in touch with
their former country, and the result will be at least a prolonged
bilingualism, spanning over more generations.

As for stable bilingualism: In border regions, I see stable bilingual
situations over centuries and millennia, as e.g. between Finnish and
Swedish in Finland and Sweden (there are assimilation processes, but a
large number of speakers are and have always been bilingual. Also in
Africa bilingualism is the norm, and it seems it has deep historical
roots. With different languages being used for different domains, there
is no reason why bilingualism cannot be stable.

The discussion is a bit hampered by the unclear concept 'bilingualism'.
When is a person bilingual? Here in Norway, I would not be counted as a
bilingual (Norwegian-English), since English is a foreign language to
me, but I would have been counted as bilingual if I moved to Scotland
(I guess).

If we instead have a liberal definition of bilingualism, as a person
being able to use more than one language for communicative purposes,
then widespread monolingualism is probably found only in Spanish and
English America, in Russia, Japan, the UK and perhaps France, and among
Mandarin Chinese speakers of China (and also in these countries, the
bilingual minorities are substantial) . In the rest of the world, my
guess is that bi- and trilingualism is dominating.

Trond Trosterud