There Are Bilinguals and Bilinguals: The Real Ones and the False Ones

Excerpts from Huston's Nord perdu, suivi de Douze France (Arles, France: Actes Sud, 1999, 53-64) distinguish real bilinguals, who have mastered two languages from infancy, from false bilinguals & explore the mental processes of the latter, drawing on personal experience as a prize-winning Canadian literary writer in French as a second language whose native language is English. In thinking of the word for an object, regardless of the language being spoken at the time, either the English word or the French one or both may surface; worse, the two words may persistently block each other so that no word comes to mind. Knowledge of French words for concrete objects is restricted below a certain level of specificity, even though French is more comfortable to speak than English on a wide range of adult topics. Connotations & imagery seem to be reserved to words of the mother tongue; French is not emotionally charged as it would be for a native speaker & is therefore more dangerous to use. Adapted from the source document