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. Such passively fluent individuals are often raised in an environment where the language was spoken but did not become native speakers. Such speakers are especially common in

language shift Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are percei ...

communities where speakers of a declining language do not acquire active competence. Around 10% of the

Ainu people The Ainu are the indigenous people of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, including Hokkaido Island, Northeast Honshu Island, Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula and Khabarovsk Krai, before the arrival of the Ya ...

who speak the language are considered passive speakers. Passive speakers are often targeted in

language revival Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community groups, o ...

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. 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

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. Karlos Cid Abasolo discusses that passive bilingualism would be a minimum requirement for the co-official status of

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

and

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

to become a working reality. As there are now many monolingual Spanish-speakers, and no monolingual Basque-speakers in the Basque Country, there is no requisite for those fluent in Basque to speak it.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Passive speaker (language) Bilingualism Language acquisition Multilingualism acquisition-stub

Language attitudes

Basque Country

See also

References