Residence and language maintenance in a multilingual city

Abstract

Abstract Because of the pressures for communication between the different segments of a society's population, some form of bilingualism will occur in all nations inhabited by more than one language group. Although bilingualism is inevitable, its consequences for the language groups are not predetermined. Basically, there are two possible outcomes: mother tongue shift between generations will occur if bilinguals raise their children in the acquired language; or the bilinguals may maintain linguistic pluralism in the society by raising their children in the same mother tongue. In the first process, bilingualism is but a temporary stage intermediate stage between thc initial contact of two monolingual populations and the final outcome of a linguistically homogeneous society. This is largely the case for various non-English speaking immigrant groups in the Unitcd States, Australia, and Canada, where bilingualism is followed in a generation or two by descendants who can speak only English and have more Or less...