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Comments on Has there ever been a situation of perfect bilingualism, without falling in diglossia?

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Has there ever been a situation of perfect bilingualism, without falling in diglossia?

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In many places around the world there are different languages that coexist: some people speak one, some the other, and many can speak both.

There are as many cases as situations: some of the languages are forbidden, others are official, while others have some good/bad background.

Over time, if a language is official and offers benefits to the speakers, it is difficult for the people speaking the other to keep it over generations, so it becomes a diglossia: one language is used for certain situations, while the other is used on the rest. Normally, one becomes the official and the other one becomes the popular.

However, I wonder: has there ever been, or even now, a situation of perfect bilingualism in a place, where the indicators of both languages remain more or less equal over the decades? This needs to imply that both languages are official and taught in schools, for example.

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posted almost 2 years ago
2y ago by Moshi‭
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fedorqui‭
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2 comment threads

I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to ask, but there are certainly regions in Finland where Fin... (1 comment)
There are countries with multiple official languages and significant speaking populations for each, b... (5 comments)
There are countries with multiple official languages and significant speaking populations for each, b...
gmcgath‭ wrote almost 2 years ago
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There are countries with multiple official languages and significant speaking populations for each, but they tend to be divided regionally. Examples are Belgium (Flemish and French) and Switzerland (German, French, Italian, and Romansh). In any particular place, one language dominates. I don't know if those meet your criteria.

fedorqui‭ wrote almost 2 years ago
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Switzerland is an interesting case on an almost perfect federation with regards to language handling throughout the country, only that each one is "alone" in a given region. However, it is not really the type of cases I am looking for, gmcgath‭. I am interested in a given region with two languages "coexisting in harmony". Do you know of any?

gmcgath‭ wrote almost 2 years ago
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In every case I can think of, one language dominates locally. However, I'm far from an expert in this area, which is why I wrote a comment rather than an answer. Maybe you'd find such bilingualism in areas close to national borders, especially ones that have shifted recently.

TextKit‭ wrote almost 2 years ago
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Why don't you cross post this to https://languagelearning.stackexchange.com/ or https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/?

Moshi‭ wrote almost 2 years ago
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TextKit‭ Users are free to post wherever they want; if you want to ask there, then you're free to do so.

(As it is, I don't think this is a language-learning question)