Bilingual

A bilingual person has the ability to speak two languages fluently, either natively or by learning at some point later in life. Many people all over the world are bilingual, with one of the languages often being English. A multilingual person can speak more than two languages fluently. A trilingual[?] person can speak three languages fluently.

In a narrow sense, bilinguals are surrounded by both languages throughout their entire adolescence, and speak both languages with equal proficiency, as if having two mother tongues[?]. As such, examples of places or circumstances in which bilinguals are mostly found include:

• certain cantons of Switzerland
• Brussels, the bilingual capital of Belgium (15% Dutch-speaking)
• Finland (6% Finland-Swedish, Åland unilingually Swedish)
• the Quebec province in Canada (10% English-speaking)
• Ireland (4% Irish-speaking)
• some parts of Africa and India
• Wales, and to a lesser extent other Celtic-speaking regions of the UK
• Estonia (29% Russian-speaking)
• Many of Koreans living Japan (see Korean-Japanese[?]) speak both Korean and Japanese.
• border areas between two countries of mixed languages
• among children of ambassadors and expatriates[?]
• among children of mixed couples where the parents each speak a different language.

In a broader sense, a person who speaks a second language with an significant fluency is often termed a bilingual (such as a Dutchman who has been learning English since age 9).

There are, obviously, more bilinguals using the second definition than there are using the first one.

Bilingual education Bilingual education is to teach children in school a language other than their native language.

In the US, proponents of the practice argue that it should keep them from falling behind their peers in the interim between immigrating and mastering English. Opponents of the practice argue that it delays their mastery of English, thereby retarding their learning of other subjects as well. In California there has been considerable politicking for and against bilingual education in the State. Much of the argument against, hinges on the idea that California is in the United States and that everyone in the the US needs to learn to speak English.

In Japan, the need of bilingualism, mostly Japanese and English has been pointed out, thus, there are some scholars who advocates to lecture children scientific topics such as mathematics in English rather than Japanese while other liberal courses such as History are taught in Japanese.

See also

• English-only movement
• Languages in the United States
• Spanish in the United States.

External Links

• Heritage Languages in America: Tapping a ?Hidden? Resource (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWCRAWFORD/HL.htm), by James Crawford[?]