Francois Grosjean - The Mysteries of Bilingualism

In the third part, we choose a few of countries and report on the state of bilingualism of their inhabitants. Their national censuses, or large language surveys, give us sufficient data from which estimates of bilingualism based either on language use, language knowledge, or both, can be worked out. These include the United States, Canada, and a number of countries in Europe.

Finally, in the last part, we move up to the level of the world and track down how a percentage of the bi- and multilinguals in the world was estimated by two recognized experts, and the many problems that were encountered when doing so.

It has long been recognized that bilingualism is extremely widespread and that it can be found in practically every country of the world, in all classes of society, and in all age groups. There are many reasons for this. A very straightforward one is that there are some 7,117 languages in the world according to Ethnologue: Languages of the World and they are housed in 195 countries (Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig 2020). Even if not all countries have 36 or so languages (an average based on these numbers), it does mean that countries house many languages and there will be language contact within them. In addition, some countries have many more languages such as 719 in Indonesia, 1461 in India, 2390 in Australia 3and so on. Contact between language groups means learning and using other languages or, at the very least, acquiring a common language of communication and hence often becoming bi- or multilingual.

In addition, some countries have a language policy that recognizes and fosters several languages such as India, Canada, Belgium and Switzerland among others. Children in these countries often learn their group’s language and one or two others. Many countries have only one national language and members of other linguistic groups are expected to become bilingual in their own language and the national language (for example, the Kabyles in Algeria, the Kurds in Turkey, the Finns in Sweden, and so on).

Trade and business are a major cause of language contact and hence bilingualism. For example, Greek was the language of buyers and sellers in the Mediterranean during the third, fourth and fifth centuries BCE and, of course, English has become a major language of trade and business today. It is well known that some business people in countries such as The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Singapore, among many others, will speak English all day at work and return home to speak their native language.

Another important cause of bilingualism is the movement of peoples. The reasons are many – political, religious, social, economic, educational – and go back to the beginning to time. People have always moved to other regions or countries in search of work and better living conditions. For example, in the United States, Batalova and Alperi (2018) report that the foreign-born share of the population is at its highest level since 1910, with approximately 44 million immigrants representing 13.5% of the overall population. In the United Kingdom, in 2018, people born outside country made up a similar percentage (14%), 4and in Switzerland, in 2019, as many as 25% of the population was made up of foreigners. 5All this leads to substantial bilingualism.

People also travel, within a country or between countries, to be schooled or to go to college in a different language. The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and many others welcome foreign students for their studies who often stay for several years. Even shorter stays are enough to anchor a new language. The world’s most successful mobility program is the European Erasmus program. Since it began in 1987–1988, it has provided over three million European students with the opportunity to go abroad and study at higher education institutions or train in a company. 6

There are many other reasons for the extent of bilingualism one of which is intermarriage. This often results in households being bilingual where at least one spouse has learned the language of the other and uses it at home, and where children often learn different languages. Another reason is simply that many professions require people to know and use two or more languages: language teaching, interpretation and translation, the hospitality, travel and leisure industries, diplomacy, media, research, and so on.

In sum, bi- and multilingualism is extensive, and wherever one goes in the world, one meets people who know and use two or more languages or dialects. Is this reflected in the national statistics of countries that house these people?

One could expect, perhaps naively, that countries would be interested in those who know and use several languages, and would make available statistics that reflect the bi- or multilingualism of their population. As we will see below, this is far from the case. In fact, finding out how many bilinguals there are in countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland and the United States, among many others, is a very real challenge.

Some nations simply do not have language questions in their censuses. Belgium and France are two examples of this. In Belgium, the last census that contained such questions was in 1947. Up to that date, the results had been used to either attend to inhabitants in their own language (if 30% of the population declared speaking a language other than the official language in the area in question) or to change the official language of the municipalities (if 50% of the population declared speaking it). But under the pressure of certain groups who did not want to accept language shifts in areas around Brussels, language censuses were abolished in Belgium in 1961. No official information about language knowledge and use has been obtained since then via the census. It is only by going to other information sources, such as European surveys of languages, that one can get an idea of the level of bilingualism in Belgium, as we will see in the next part.

France does not have language questions in their census either. The word “langue” (language) does not appear in the 2020 census form, nor in the preceding ones. When I wrote in 2013 to the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) which is in charge of the census, the curt reply I received was that the information I requested did not fall within what it offers. This is due to the fact that, officially, the French Republic wants to give equal treatment to everyone by interacting directly with the individual, without going through minorities, communities, or groups, be they religious, regional, linguistic, etc. A less official reason is that it also prefers not to put too strong a light on the fact that France contains many minority languages, including immigrant languages, spoken by literally millions of people. This said, regional languages were finally recognized as belonging to the French national heritage in an amendment to the French Constitution in 2008, and various language surveys do exist, some sponsored or cosponsored by the state. It will be one of these surveys that we will refer to in the next part.

There are many other countries that do not have questions on languages in their censuses, and even less on bilingualism. Thus, Christopher (2011) states that in the Commonwealth, only 37 of the 71 census authorities included language questions in recent censuses, leaving many without such questions.

Other national censuses do have language questions but for very specific reasons which do not really have to do with bilingualism. The examples we will mention here are those of England and the United States. In England, before 2011, no question about language had been asked in its censuses, unlike in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland where one question had been asked. The Office of National Statistics finally decided to ask two questions in 2011 for a number of reasons, according to Sebba (2017). Among these we find: enabling the government bodies to meet their duties under legislation governing race relations and disability discrimination; allowing local and central government to allocate resources for teaching English as a second language, and for translation services within public services; and supporting regional or minority languages like Cornish and British Sign Language.