Francois Grosjean - The Mysteries of Bilingualism

The three questionnaires reflect, in their own ways, where things stand concerning the description of bilinguals. They are strong on reported proficiency and use, age and manner of acquisition, and also do well, with one exception, on language functions. They may need to do more, though, on change of language behavior when in monolingual and in bilingual situations, on the evolution of the bilingual’s languages over the years, and on biculturalism. Specific questionnaires already exist for language switching and mixing (e.g., Rodriguez-Fornells et al. 2012) so this may the route they could take in the future for the elements that need to be investigated further.

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1 1 In this chapter, the reader will see a shift from the use of “fluency” in earlier research to “proficiency” in later research. The two are used synonymously here. In chapters that follow, though, we will report on the work of some researchers, as in Chapter 5, who use “fluency/fluent” to mean that a person speaks easily, clearly, and with few hesitations.

Bilingualism is widespread and can be found in practically every country of the world, in all classes of society, and in all age groups. It has been estimated that probably more than half of the world’s population is bilingual; that is, it uses two or more languages (or dialects) in everyday life. But this is just an estimation and, unfortunately, we are still a long way away from knowing exactly how many people are indeed bilingual. Are things easier if we try to assess the number of bilinguals country by country? Not really as there are huge gaps in what we know. And when some data does exist, it is far from satisfactory.

In the first part of this chapter, we discuss why it is that bilingualism is so widespread and why, wherever one goes in the world, one meets people who know and use two or more languages (or dialects) in their everyday lives.

The second part discusses why it is so difficult to obtain exact figures on the extent of bilingualism. Some national censuses simply do not have language questions. Others have a few but for very specific reasons which do not have to do with bilingualism. Countries that have appropriate questions do exist but they often focus on specific types of bilinguals and not on all bilinguals.