Introduction to the Study of Bilingualism

Bilingualism by Suzanne Romaine (1995)

New Words
-The book was written for professional and layman alike.
-Yoruba is a language spoken by the Yoruba people of Africa, now an official language of Nigeria.
-He was stigmatized as a coward and a liar.

Main Points
-‘Bilingualism exists within cognitive systems of individuals as well in as families and communities’
-‘Bilingualism has been treated as a special case,’ but from a global societal perspective, most of the world population speak more than one language. Therefore, monolingualism is a special case.
-‘Many bilinguals might know one language better’.
-Bilinguals tend to lack in some aspects of communicative competence including phonology, grammar, lexicon and semantics for one of the languages.
-Bilinguals might not know when and where their speech style should be changed.