ABSTRACT
Aspects of Bilingualism Mention the word bilingualism and almost anyone will tell you a story or an anecdote about how they attempted to learn a language, someone they know who is good with languages, or languages they wish they could master. It seems as though everyone has a connection to the idea that humans possess a capacity to learn aspects of more than one language. Actually defining the term bilingualism is a much more complex venture. Earlier definitions relied on distinctions on where and when languages were learned while later distinctions relied on how easy or difficult it was to engage in cognitive tasks across as compared to within languages (see Gass & Glew; Heredia, this volume, for a review). In fact, it is probably best to say that an individual is as bilingual as is demanded by a particular task or context. Take for example a person who is fluent in English but cannot read nor write in French with a great degree of proficiency. Yet, they can carry on a conversation in French almost as easily as they can in English. Could we say that this person is bilingual as a speaker of English and French? Perhaps we would agree to that designation. On the other hand, we might feel the need to designate a bilingual as someone who can read, write, and speak fluently in more than one language, and without fluency in all three aspects, would not be called a bilingual. Thus, it may be the case that defining this term is much too complex a question, and suffices to say that we can use the context we are working in to assist us in assessing degree of bilingualism and leave it at that, at present.
