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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.

historical-linguistics linguistics sociolinguistics
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)
I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to ask, but there are certainly regions in Finland where Fin...
tripleee‭ wrote 11 months ago
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I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to ask, but there are certainly regions in Finland where Finnish and Swedish coexist in rough equilibrium side by side. For example, Vaasa (Vasa) in Osthrobotnia is majority Finnish by a slim margin, but the surrounding rural municipalities are dominantly Swedish. Pargas (Parainen) has the opposite balance, and sits roughly on the boundary of a majority Swedish population to the southwest, and majority Finnish towards the mainland. Urbanization over the last 70+ years has changed the equilibrium in many places where Swedish used to have an equal or even dominating position, especially in urban areas, so nationally, Swedish is becoming marginalized; but there are regions where the language will presumably continue to keep its position for a long time, alone or alongside Finnish.