Types of Multilingualism: Why Speaking Two Languages Is Never the Same Experience Twice

Language researchers discuss a brief incident in which a young child, speaking only the language of her parents’ native country, arrives at a European school for the first time and looks at a chalkboard full of words she is still unable to read. Technically, she speaks multiple languages while she waits. However, decisions made by educators, parents, governments, and time will determine the type of multilingualism she develops. It’s possible that most people are unaware of the variety of ways multilingualism can manifest itself. They believe it just refers to multilingualism. It turns out that nearly everything is missed by that assumption.

The ability of a person or group to communicate in more than one language is referred to as multilingualism. However, the categories quickly grow as soon as you begin to dissect that definition. The simplest distinction is between productive and receptive multilingualism. Although a receptive multilingual can read, follow conversations, and navigate a news broadcast in multiple languages, they might not be able to write or speak them with much assurance. Quieter than most people think, it’s a passive form. The active form of multilingualism, on the other hand, is productive multilingualism: the ability to converse, debate, joke, and bargain in multiple languages. These two types differ in more ways than just technical ones. It is the distinction between swimming in a river and observing it from the bank.

And there’s the question of when the languages were introduced. Compared to late bilingualism, which starts in adulthood, early bilingualism, which is acquired during infancy or childhood, roughly before puberty, tends to produce a different kind of speaker. Simultaneous bilingualism is the process by which a child born into a home where one parent speaks Bosnian and the other Slovene simultaneously and without instruction. Without regard to effort or order, the languages just coexist. Sequential or successive bilingualism is a different matter. This is what occurs when a child who is already proficient in one language enters a school system that operates solely in another, such as French in colonial West Africa or English in some parts of South Asia, and is required to build the second language on top of the first.

It is worthwhile to consider the colonial example. The French government effectively mandated that formal education take place in French in certain parts of Africa. Youngsters were taught in a language that their grandparents may not have spoken at all. French gradually transitioned from being imposed by institutions to being a part of culture. This type of multilingualism, which is far more prevalent historically than the idealized picture of a cosmopolitan speaking four languages for pleasure, is shaped by political force rather than family or personal preference.

The idea of language dominance is what makes multilingualism difficult to study and, to be honest, difficult to live. Few multilingual people are flawlessly balanced in all of their languages. Both linguists and laypeople believe that true balance is more of an ideal than a reality. Additive multilingualism—a benefit rather than a trade-off—occurs when all languages are equally valued and supported. Subtractive language development occurs when a second language emerges at the expense of the first, especially when the first language is a minority tongue. Sometimes to the point of semilingualism, a condition in which a person is unable to fully function in either language, the stronger language grows while the weaker one diminishes. One of the most subtly disastrous things that can happen to a person’s relationship with the world is that result.

It’s difficult to ignore how frequently subtractive multilingualism adheres to the same social pattern: a school system that neither supports nor accommodates the home tongue, an immigrant family, and a dominant national language. The kids blend in. The parents are concerned. During Sunday visits and holiday meals, the grandparents’ language retreats.

Function is just as important to language as fluency. Certain languages are used as communication tools. For example, English is a universal language that is used in contracts, conferences, and negotiations between speakers of different languages. Other languages are used for identification, which is the process of communicating one’s identity, origins, and community. A diplomat may deliver a prepared statement in English at an international summit, then turn to a colleague from the same region and, in the middle of the corridor, switch to their native tongue. It’s not an accidental switch. It has significance. These two completely different types of multilingualism coexist in the same individual.

The truth is that being multilingual is never easy. It can be early or late, additive or subtractive, receptive or active, the result of colonial legacy or free will, or just a geographical coincidence. Multilingualism has always been a necessity rather than a novelty in border communities worldwide. It’s still unclear if most countries’ educational systems have actually taken this complexity into account or if they still view multilingualism as an exception to be accommodated rather than a standard to comprehend. Observing this develop across generations and continents, it is clear that a person’s level of multilingualism leaves marks on their identity, confidence, opportunity, and loss that no grammar lesson can adequately explain.