Читать книгу The Mysteries of Bilingualism - Francois Grosjean - Страница 18

Bilingualism is widespread and can be found in practically every country of the world, in all classes of society, and in all age groups. It has been estimated that probably more than half of the world’s population is bilingual; that is, it uses two or more languages (or dialects) in everyday life. But this is just an estimation and, unfortunately, we are still a long way away from knowing exactly how many people are indeed bilingual. Are things easier if we try to assess the number of bilinguals country by country? Not really as there are huge gaps in what we know. And when some data does exist, it is far from satisfactory.

In the first part of this chapter, we discuss why it is that bilingualism is so widespread and why, wherever one goes in the world, one meets people who know and use two or more languages (or dialects) in their everyday lives.

The second part discusses why it is so difficult to obtain exact figures on the extent of bilingualism. Some national censuses simply do not have language questions. Others have a few but for very specific reasons which do not have to do with bilingualism. Countries that have appropriate questions do exist but they often focus on specific types of bilinguals and not on all bilinguals.

In the third part, we choose a few of countries and report on the state of bilingualism of their inhabitants. Their national censuses, or large language surveys, give us sufficient data from which estimates of bilingualism based either on language use, language knowledge, or both, can be worked out. These include the United States, Canada, and a number of countries in Europe.

Finally, in the last part, we move up to the level of the world and track down how a percentage of the bi- and multilinguals in the world was estimated by two recognized experts, and the many problems that were encountered when doing so.