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Passive fluency is often brought about by being raised in one language (which becomes the person's passive language) and being schooled in another language (which becomes the person's native language). [2] [3] Such speakers are especially common in language shift communities where speakers of a declining language do not acquire active competence.
For example, around 10% of the Ainu people who speak the language are considered passive speakers. Passive speakers are often targeted in language revival efforts to increase the number of speakers of a language quickly, as they are likely to gain active and near-native speaking skills more quickly than those with no knowledge of the language.
"He was a genuine rapid language learner, and before he was 40, was fluent in five of the Germanic languages, five of the Romance languages, three Slavic languages, in Arabic, Swahili, Turkish, Uzbek, Mongol, Mandarin, Tok Pisin, and Police Motu, and could get by in perhaps 30 other languages—over 50 in all." [120]
This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect . For example, Chinese and Arabic are sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually unintelligible varieties , and so they are sometimes considered language families instead.
Language fluency is one of a variety of terms used to characterize or measure a person's language ability, [3] often used in conjunction with accuracy and complexity. [4] Although there are no widely agreed-upon definitions or measures of language fluency, [ 3 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] someone is typically said to be fluent if their use of the language ...
As of 2016, 400 million people spoke English as their first language, and 1.1 billion spoke it as a secondary language. [70] English is the largest language by number of speakers. English is spoken by communities on every continent and on islands in all the major oceans. [71]
The predominance of English in many sectors, such as world trade, technology and science, has contributed to English-speaking societies being persistently monolingual, as there is little incentive to learn a second language if all dealings can be done in their native language; [17] that is especially the case for English-speakers in the United ...
Phonemic awareness builds a foundation for students to understand the rules of the English language. This in turn allows each student to apply these skills and increase his or her oral reading fluency and understanding of the text. [3] There are studies also demonstrating this for student's learning to read in non-English language. [4]