What Is It Called When You Can Understand a Language but Can't Speak It

When discussing the linguistic communication skills of children in multilingual families, y'all occasionally come across the situation where a kid has learnt to understand a language, but is unable (or unwilling) to speak it. Quite ofttimes you volition detect this described as passive bilingualism – I take used this expression myself, until Professor Grosjean pointed out to me that it is misleading and gives the wrong impression. The right term is receptive bilingualism.

Understanding a language is annihilation but a passive procedure

To be able to sympathise what someone says to you, your brain has had to practise a lot of grooming work and it has to stay highly alarm while the discussion is ongoing. Information technology picks up and processes the sound impulses and turns these random sequences of sounds into something we can comprehend and put into context. It does all this in a affair of milliseconds. You can become here  for more than in-depth information on the process of understanding spoken language.

How does receptive bilingualism occur?

It is sometimes the case that children in multilingual families learn the family languages and happily speak them when they are pocket-size, but so something slowly changes and in their teens the children no longer feel confident in using their minority language. This can happen very gradually, even without the parents really realising it.

Parents have told me that ane 24-hour interval they only noticed that the majority language had crept in as theprimary language between them and the children, and that only the parents spoke the minority language between them. When the parents tried to modify the situation, they were met by resistance from the children and gave upwards. The children did not experience motivated in picking the language upwards over again.

The crucial stage for maintaining a minority language

The crucial phase seems to exist when kids showtime school and spend more than time with their peers and get more than exposure to the majority language of the community and get used to information technology as their master linguistic communication of communication.

This is the time when it is important for parents to stay alert and be persistent (and consistent) and keep speaking the languages they have used with their children since they were pocket-sized. At this point children need a lot of support from their parents to ensure that they volition retain their ability to communicate in the family languages. Information technology might not ever exist piece of cake, just information technology will pay off and everyone will be pleased later in life that they made the effort.

Why receptive bilingualism tin exist something highly positive

The phrase passive bilingualism comes with a baggage of negative connotations. If a child does not get plenty interaction in ane of the family languages, the language can alter from being actively used to beingness only understood. Hence, I suppose, the employ of the give-and-take "passive" to describe it. It is all the same important to emphasise that understanding a language is significantly better than not having any knowledge at all of it!

If this has happened in your family, or to yourself, do keep in mind that a receptive language skill can exist turned into a " productive" one. I experienced this myself years ago, when during a visit to Republic of india, I convinced myself to make use of the Punjabi skills I had picked up by listening to my daughter speaking information technology with her father and start speaking, picayune by piffling. I did not stay long enough in India to become anywhere nearly fluent, but I was able to make myself understood. I was able to communicate the nuts.

With enough motivation and opportunity to use the linguistic communication, it tin can be revived!

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