Passive speaker (language)

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A passive speaker (also referred to as a receptive bilingual or passive bilingual) is a category of speaker who has had enough exposure to a language in childhood to have a native-like comprehension of it, but has little or no active command of it.^[1] Such passively fluent individuals are often raised in an environment where the language was spoken but did not become native speakers.^[2]

Such speakers are especially common in language shift communities where speakers of a declining language do not acquire active competence. Around 10% of the Ainu people who speak the language are considered passive speakers. Passive speakers are often targeted in language revival efforts to increase the number of speakers of a language quickly, as they are likely to gain active and near-native speaking skills more quickly than those with no knowledge of the language. They are also found in areas where people grow up hearing another language outside their family with no formal education.

Language attitudes[]

A more common term for the phenomenon is 'passive bilingualism'. Grosjean argues that there has been a monolingual bias regarding who is considered a 'bilingual' in which people who do not have equal competence in all their languages are judged as not speaking properly. 'Balanced bilinguals' are, in fact, very rare. One's fluency as a bilingual in a language is domain-specific: it depends on what each language is used for.^[3] That means that speakers may not admit to their fluency in their passive language although there are social (extralinguistic) factors that underlie their different competencies.

Basque Country[]

The percentage of passive speakers in 2011 among under -35s in the Basque Country.

In 2016, 28.4 % of inhabitants aged 16 and over are bilingual, 16.4 % are passive bilingual and 51.2 % are non-Basque speakers. Today there are 751 500 bilinguals and 434 000 passive speakers.^[4][5]

Karlos Cid Abasolo discusses that passive bilingualism would be a minimum requirement for the co-official status of Basque and Spanish to become a working reality. As there are now many monolingual Spanish-speakers, and no monolingual Basque-speakers in the Basque Country, there is little reason for those fluent in Basque to speak it, regardless of the domain, circumstance or interlocutor.^[6]

See also[]

• Heritage speaker
• Home language
• Language acquisition
• Multilingualism
• Speech repetition
• Literary Arabic

References[]

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