Bilinguals
Terms
Concepts
More Terms
Wild
100

Someone who acquired both languages at the same time (usually from birth)

What is a Simultaneous Bilingual?

100

Someone who speaks 2 languages to native or near-native-like levels

What is a bilingual (narrow)?

100

Hawai’ian Pidgin and Tok Pisin are examples of this

What is a creole?

100

Proficiency in a language

What is fluency?

100

Someone who is raised in a home where a minority language is spoken and who speaks (or at least understands) the minority language in addition to the dominant language

What is a Heritage Speaker?

200

Someone who learned a second language after their primary language was established

What is a Sequential Bilingual?

200

Someone who uses 2+ languages in everyday life

What is a bilingual (broad)?

200

The norm in societies

What is bilingualism/multilingualism?

200

A language not used in the wider community/society

What is a Minority Language?

200

Someone who acquired their L2 before the age of six

What is an Early Sequential Bilingual?

300

Someone who speaks one language better than the other

What is an Unbalanced Bilingual?

300

A language variety that is ungrammatical and unsystematic, and is NOT a language. It often develops as a result of colonialism, slavery, trade, or a mixture of/or other similar circumstances

What is a pidgin?

300

The only language spontaneously created, without the influence of other languages, to have been recorded from its birth

What is Nicaraguan Sign Language?

300

The environments and contexts in which a speaker uses their languages, as well as the functions for which they use them

What are the Domains of Use?

300

It is systematic and requires significant knowledge of the language; it’s actually a sign of cognitive flexibility and is often done based on social context

What is code-switching?

400

Someone who acquires their L2 after the age of six and before adulthood

What is a Late Sequential Bilingual?

400

Speakers using non-technical vocabulary and simple sentence structure, and avoiding words used in only one dialect

What is Simplification?

400

The key to the creation of a creole. They insert grammar and systematicity into the pidgin and thus make it a fully formed language (aka a creole)

What are children?

400

The gradual loss of language competence owing to lack of use

What is Language Attrition?

400

When a speaker population uses two language varieties for different functions

What is Diglossia?

500

Someone able to understand two languages but cannot or chooses not speak one of them

What is a Passive Bilingual?

500

Speakers adjusting their speech to match the person they are talking to - including pronunciation, vocabulary, length of sentences, and non-verbal gestures

What is Accommodation?

500

a) the practice of using two languages in the same lesson

b) bilinguals and multilingual speakers select and deploy their languages from a unitary linguistic repertoire

What is translanguaging?

500

The idea that bilinguals tend to acquire and use their languages for different purposes, in different domains of life, and with different people

What is the Complementarity Principle?

500

The language that supplies much of the vocabulary for the resulting language in a contact situation (often the language of the socially or politically dominant group)

What is a superstrate language?