Bilingualism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Bilingualism - Essay Example eaching and measuring tools for bilingualism have not yet been sufficiently developed, evidences that bilingualism is good and productive for individuals point to the direction that more work be conducted in refining both teaching and measuring tools. A bilingual person is someone who speaks two languages. A person who speaks more than two languages is called multilingual (Birner n.d.). According to Chan (1998) the definition of bilingualism can be arbitrary due to different connotations for different people. Bloomfield, an American linguist defines bilingualism as a native like control of two languages. Thià ©ry, a French linguist defines a true bilingual as one who can at all times be taken for a native speaker by native speakers of either language. Haugen, a Norwegian-American linguist says that bilingualism starts when a speaker of one language can produce complete and meaningful utterances in another language. Diebold states its compliment that a type of bilingualism commences when a person begins to understand utterances in a second language. Bilingualism or multilingualism is no longer a rarity in today’s world. With the promotion of English as the global language most societies today know English as well as a native language and sometimes even a regional language. A lot of people, too, especially those who function in international circles have become multilingual in order to accomplish their everyday tasks. People become bilingual by acquiring two languages at the same time in childhood as in the case of most countries where the medium of instruction is different from the native language or in cases where the educational system provides for learning more than one language. Bilingualism can also be achieved by deliberately learning a second language, like in the case of migrants who have to learn a second language if they have migrated to a place where a different language is used. In order to develop bilingualism, the individual must be exposed to both