The "Equal competence" issue

I don't think I have ever met a bilingual who feels equally competent or native-like in all their languages, indeed, most people I know tend to be quite apologetic about how "bad" or "rusty" or "childlike" one of their languages is. This is definitely the case for me with my Hungarian. For years I felt slightly embarrassed that my Hungarian wasn't better, that I can't really spell (even though Hungarians pride themselves in having such a phonetic spelling system... (but, for any Hungarians out there, why "biztos" and not "bisztos"?))

So why are we so apologetic? Again, there is this underlying expectation that a true bilingual should be the sum of two monolinguals. You shouldn't be able to tell that they are not really from a particular place. (This mainly applies to the non-dominant language, as bilinguals tend to feel they are as native-like as monolinguals in their dominant languages.) It took me a while to accept that my Hungarian is pretty amazing considering that it is my non-dominant language: I have never lived there, and have never gone to school or studied there, I only ever spoke it with my father, and on holiday.

And this brings me to the next point: literacy skills versus language competence. In the Western world the notion of language competence is intrinsically linked to that of literacy skills. When people in the UK say to me that they are not very good at "language", they usually mean spelling or knowledge of formal grammar. Yet worldwide there are many more languages without writing systems than there are ones with writing systems. Yet surely we would never think of these speakers as somehow not being 'native speakers' of their particular languages. And still the fact that I am not really literate in Hungarian makes me feel like I am not really a native speaker, I'm not really Hungarian.

And that brings me to the next point: there seems to be this idea that "language" is somehow static; our native language is something we acquire as children and this language is ours for the rest of our lives. But we know that immigrants who have not used their native language in a long time can struggle when they have to use it again. We also know that language use changes all the time. We use words and constructions today that weren't around five or ten years ago. (Famously, even Queen Elizabeth's accent has changed over the past 50 years!) People move to an area with a different dialect, and find that they struggle to communicate. But crucially, they will adapt their language use accordingly and learn to communicate in the new setting.

So it is worth reminding ourselves that there actually is no such thing as language. There are only speakers. Native speakers are confident communicators in their speech communities. Bilinguals are no different. They are also confident communicators in their speech communities. But their speech communities differ (perhaps only slightly) from those of monolinguals. Therefore it is not surprising that there will be differences in their language use, and that this will be most pronounced (or perhaps only actually noticeable) in their non-dominant language.