Passive and Balanced Bilingualism

Most misunderstandings about Bilingualism derive from a lack of understanding of two very specific forms of bilingualism: Passive and Balanced Bilingualism. We have already looked at some definitions of bilingualism here, but now let’s focus on passive and Balanced bilingualism.

• Balanced Bilingualism: it might look like Balanced Bilingualism corresponds to the popular idea of Bilingualism, i.e. “to understand, speak, read and write two languages like a monolingual”, to be infact two monolinguals in one person.  But, it is not so. Everybody acquires a language on the basis of the stimuli and needs s/he receives or perceives. So if a child goes to a bilingual school where (for instance) History is taught in English and Maths in French, he’ll have the vocabulary for History only in English, and that for Maths only in French. Similarly, a woman who speaks German at work but Italian with her children will probably find that she lacks the words relating to work in Italian, and the words relating to raising children in German. In short a balanced bilingual can express him/herself fluently in both languages, but normally s/he will prefer either language depending on the context or the experiences.
• Passive Bilingualism: This form of bilingualism is often underestimated, if a child doesn’t actively use a language poeple tend to think that s/he doesn’t know the language at all. But this can be very wrong! If a child, or an adult for what matters, understands a language but doesn’t speak it, s/he’s normally doing a very pragmatic consideration: “I understand what I’m being told, but I’ll be better understood if I speak the language I master best”. If and when circumstances will create the need for him/her to speak the second language, like living in a country where the first language is not understood, the second language will bEcome active in no time. It would then become obvious that the knowledge was already there, just waiting for a reason, or an opportunity, to come out.

Picture by Kevin Dooley.
(What the does the picture if a blue sky have to do with bilingualism? Not much, but it has a lot to do with thinking. I find that looking at the sky stimulates reflections, and I think that these themes -like what is bilingualism, why should i raise my child bilingual, what can I expect and so on- deserve a lot of good thinking…)

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