Receptive bilingualism: when you don’t speak the language
In one of my first blogposts, I have explained what it means to be bilingual. Although the definition is not set in stone, the basic idea is that a person speaks two or more languages in his daily life. I already talked about a specific situation, in which you do understand the language, but cannot speak it.
As communication is key, this still can be a form of bilingualism. The term for this is a receptive bilingual, also known as a non-speaking bilingual or passive bilingual. So what does it mean exactly? In this post I will tell you all about this, both from individual perspective and broader language perspective.
Receptive bilingualism, or to be a receptive bilingual, means that you understand 2 or more languages. As the ‘normal’ bilingual person will also be able to speak their languages, the receptive bilingual does not. Often this means that the person has a native language that they can understand and speak, and another (or a third, fourth etc) language that they can only understand. This can also be in the form of being able to read in a certain language, while not being able to write in it.
A note of importance here, is that bilingualism comes in many forms. Balanced bilinguals (those who have equal fluency in all their languages) are very rare and it is common that a person is more fluent in one language and less so in the other. This makes the distinction between being a receptive bilingual and not being very fluent very difficult.
Let’s talk about the reasons why an individual can be (or become) a receptive bilingual
#1. The language was never learned in an active way
Take a look at the following example. In a multicultural family, one parent of the family has a native language language A, and the other parent has a native language B. They both use their own language when speaking to their children. As they don’t speak each other’s languages, the parents communicate in language C. The children are exposed to language C by listening to their parents interact with each other. For this reason, they will be able to understand the language after a while. However, because they are never addressed in this language, they never had to communicate actively in this language. Even though it is possible that a child will start speaking in language C regardless of this, most often the speech will not be developed. In short: without active practice, no active speech.
#2. There is no need for the language
Let’s take the example of our own family. We are currently speaking English at home with our daughter, whilst living in the Netherlands. Since we are both native Dutch, we are able to speak the Dutch language, but choose not to. Hopefully our daughter will grow up speaking English to us, but this is not a certainty. As she will be perfectly understood if she chose to speak Dutch to us, the need to speak English is not really there. Children tend to take the easy way out (adults as well), and use their dominant language if possible. If you want your child to grow up actively using all the languages, creating a need for the language is very important. This can e.g. be done in interaction with people who only understand the other language or by traveling to places that the language is spoken.
It can also be done by pretending you don’t understand your child in one of the languages, but that completely goes against what I stand for. As for me communication is most important, it feels unnatural to ignore half of what my daughter tries to tell me, just to improve her other language.
#3. The active part of the language is forgotten
In this situation, a person has lost the ability to actively use the language they once could use. With this it is really hard to say whether you really have become a receptive bilingual in the sense that you CAN’T speak the language. In many circumstances, people simply WON’T speak the language. This can be due to no need of the language, or some insecurity about their fluency or any other reason. It is possible that a language is forgotten again, especially when only used it in a very young age. An example of this is a child who uses language A (or A and B) at home, and only uses language B once they go to school, or move to a country that speaks language B. In these early age examples though, it is more likely that both understanding and speaking are affected by the situation.
When speaking from an individual point of view, people will have different opinions on receptive bilingualism. For some people, it is no problem and they go about their lives not thinking too much about it. Others might regret it and learn to speak it at a later age. Both these, and any other opinions people can have, are absolutely fine. However, receptive bilingualism on a broader level, can sometimes become problematic.
So what happens if we look at receptive bilingualism from the perspective of the language itself?
Take the individual examples. If in some families the children are receptive bilinguals in language A, and in other families in language B, both languages will be passed on to the next generation. But if in ALL families the children are receptive bilinguals in language A, will this language be passed on? Most likely, it will not. And that is were it can become a problem, which is called language shifting.
A language shift is a gradual change in the use of a language by a community, often within a country or region. It happens often with dialects and languages that are perceived to be of a lesser status. At first, the community speaks language A. Later, the community starts speaking language A and B. After that, more and more people in that community only speak language B (with or without receptive bilingualism). When this process continues in all communities that speak language A, it becomes endangered and could even become extinct.
The big question here is: is this actually a problem? Personally, I like the idea of a variety of languages and dialects existing in the world. Language is tied to culture and losing any of that would be such a shame. However, it is also a natural thing and new languages can also pop-up again.
I would love your thoughts on this!
For now, thanks for reading and until the next post!
Originally published at https://intentionallybilingual.weebly.com.
