Could sound-change in language contact situations threaten a language? The case of Spanish-Catalan bilingualism
Photo by Jorge Guerrero, courtesy of Yahoo! Could sound-change in language contact situations threaten a language? The case of Spanish-Catalan bilingualism By Stephanie Landblom Stephanie Landblom wrote this blog entry for the course “Language and minorities in Europe” (FRIT 418) in Spring 2016. She is a graduate student in Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include second language acquisition with a focus on second language phonological acquisition. Despite the fact that bilingualism and multilingualism is a common phenomenon across the world, it is often mired in controversy. For instance, much has been said about whether being bilingual puts speakers at a cognitive advantage or disadvantage, which is especially relevant to parents trying to raise their children in a global society, immigrant parents, as well as for governments considering linguistic educational policies. Decades ago, it was widely believed that bei...