Pascal Lepesqueux, Chair of the ISB Outreach and Continuing Education Department
What does it take to thrive in our interconnected world despite its cultural differences? How can education provide an answer to such a challenge? Learning another language to understand and communicate with others is one of the most common answers to these questions. But what does it mean to be “bilingual,” and what skills besides speaking a language must be acquired to achieve our goal of training world citizens? Understanding and connecting with more distant and multifaceted others are increasingly essential in our modern world, and this post will address what it implies to achieve that goal.
Bilingualism, Biculturalism, Biliteracy
We will begin with simple definitions of four terms: Multilingualism, Bilingualism, Biculturalism, and Biliteracy:
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Multilingualism is the ability of societies, institutions, groups, and individuals to use more than one language in their daily lives.
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Bilingualism refers to the individual competence of comprehension and oral production of two languages.
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Biliteracy is the ability to read and write fluently in two languages. It also involves understanding and communicating written ideas through both languages' grammatical systems, vocabularies, and symbols.
- Biculturalism entails navigating and embracing the values, customs, and traditions of two cultures simultaneously.
These last three B concepts, embedded in the International School of Boston's mission, drive our School's teaching and community as we consider these essential skills of the future world citizen. Let's see how bilingualism fares nowadays.
"Bilingual people are often hiding in plain speech."
This paradoxical title reflects that despite being a relatively common phenomenon globally, it is unevenly distributed and not always considered an asset.
Bilingualism in the World
According to Francois Grosjean, a Professor at the Université de Neuchâtel in Switzerland, an estimated 3.3 billion people, nearly half the Earth's population, are bilingual.
Map 1: Secondary Primary Languages Around the World; Source
Indonesia is the world's gold medalist of linguistic diversity and bilingualism, with 70% of its 277 million inhabitants using multiple languages daily. Multilingualism predominates primarily where different populations share or are divided by a common geographic space. For example, in New Guinea, the isolation of populations created 850 idioms; in Luxemburg or Serbia, the proximity of other cultures created the more bilingual European countries. But diversity is not enough; quantity matters. India proudly announced that it hosts more than 720 languages but forgot to specify that about 220 more idioms have disappeared since 1970 because too few people used them.
Bilingualism is scarce in other parts of the world: Albanians, Serbians, Australians, and Italians are primarily monolingual. Some languages are considered challenging and do not attract your neighbors, like Hungarian or Icelandic, limiting their spread. Still, politics, including educational and economic choices, play the most critical role in promoting or not bilingualism.
For example, Africa and Asia share the same number of official languages, 16. However, 27 out of 57 countries in Africa are officially bilingual, compared to only nine out of 50 in Asia.
Quebec actively uses politics to promote bilingualism in and out of the "Belle Province," but with mixed results. While the (younger) Quebecer population is becoming increasingly bilingual in French and English, the Francophone population outside or inside Quebec is dwindling. French fails to attract the main Canadian population, for whom the French language is considered a barrier. Paradoxically, Francophones, who see English as a must-have, help lift this barrier without a tangible linguistic counterpart.
Bilingualism in the U.S.
According to the last census, only 23% of Americans declare themselves bilingual. That's less than the European average, and Americans mirror the 65% of British people who confess to being monolingual. There are four main reasons for that:
- Why should Americans learn another language while English becomes the universal lingua franca^?
- Mastering English is still broadly considered by first- and second-generation immigrants as a token of integration.
- While proudly preserved privately, Americans never claimed status for their native tongue at school or work.
- A linguistic policy in the USA is yet to be written.
This low rate fails, nevertheless, to reflect two realities:
- A massive 76 million Americans are bilinguals.
- The share of Americans declaring bilingualism has soared by 60% since 1970.
The United States: The Next Chapter of Multilingualism
In fact, according to this map from the U.S. census, the U.S. could become one of the most linguistically diversified countries in the world. Why could multilingualism become the norm?
Map 2: The Most Spoken Language in Every U.S. State Besides English and Spanish; Source
- The ancient generations of immigrants saw no particular advantages in retaining their language heritage.
- The new generation of immigrants benefits from new means of communication or transport, which allow them to stay connected with their culture of origin.
- Inclusion and diversity: It's also about utilizing languages as tools to build bridges, rather than walls, toward a more open, inclusive, and culturally sensitive world. To cite the "Raising Bilingual Children" blog, "Bilingual families raising children between languages, cultures, and ways of doing life are uniquely positioned to be the trailblazers for transformative change."
- A recent shift in the perception of the second language in education helped develop bilingual programs.
But would these two phenomena combined contribute to changing the "America where languages go to die" into an "America where languages come to live"? It is still too early to say, as heritage languages are at various stages of their bilingualism coming out.
For example, the U.S. is home to the second-largest population of Vietnamese and Japanese speakers worldwide, but these languages have had limited impact on the linguistic or educational landscape.
By contrast, the National Congress of American Indians is actively promoting all surviving Native American languages, motivated by the fact that over 90% of them could be on the brink of extinction by 2050.
The Benefits of Becoming Bilingual
Monolinguists have an opportunity to seize. Monolinguists are at risk of missing something out. Still, according to Steve Leveen, Founder of "America the Bilingual Project," they could also become the main force behind a boom in bilingualism:
"Yet, if we have 76 million (American) bilinguals, we also have the complement or some 250 million monolinguals. One of the risks of being 74% monolingual — in English — is that this situation feels so utterly normal to most Americans. American parents can be lulled into complacency, believing that their children will need English. However, if their children wish to enter a global workforce in a professional capacity, they will be at a disadvantage as English monolinguals. These children also risk missing out on one of life's great adventures and lifelong learning opportunities that bilingualism opens. The opportunity, on the other hand, lies in the millions of monolingual English adults who recognize the benefits that both they and their children can gain by adding a language. This recognition is reflected in the growing market for adult language learning and in a demand for dual-language schools that far outstrips the supply."
Conclusion: A World of Advantages
For those who will choose that path, the benefits of being bilingual are proven and surprisingly diverse.
To conclude, if there is now a consensus that learning a second language is highly beneficial, people are not always aware of what it takes to become "true" bilingual, bicultural, or biliterate superheroes.
That will be the subject of the second part of this article.
^ A Lingua Franca is the common language between speakers whose native languages differ.
About the Author: Pascal Lepesqueux is the Chair of the Outreach Program at ISB, a department that brings ISB expertise to the general public. With more than 20 years of experience teaching immersion in the U.S. to young people and adult learners, he has developed a keen interest in international education, multilingualism, and language acquisition questions. He also manages the French proficiency certifications at ISB and is busy developing online training solutions for candidates.