ABSTRACT
Political and economic alliances and the often arbitrary assignment of national borders can present opportunities for bilingual communities to develop. Simply, bilingualism is a result of languages in contact—or more precisely, the result of people, cultures, and/or nations in contact. Consequently, bilingualism can develop during childhood, as part of the cultural transmission of language within a family and/or a bilingual community, or during adulthood. The ability to read and write in both languages, to have native-like command of both languages, and keeping the two languages separate and unmixed, may be nonnegotiable defining features of bilinguals. There are as many ways to achieve bilingualism as there are definitions of bilingualism. Along the way to developing the best definition of bilingualism, a number of categories or types of bilingualism have been identified by various researchers. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
