RECENT STUDIES IN BILINGUAL AND MULTILINGUAL CHILDREN IN SLOVAKIA

Abstract

Like the rest of Central Europe, Slovakia has been a multicultural and multilingual society for centuries. Although Slovak is recognized as the official language, there are many other languages spoken in the country. Due to historical reasons, the largest minority communities are Hungarian, Roma, Czech and Rusyn, but the number of bilingual and multilingual speakers varies according to the region, with the highest concentration in Western and Eastern Slovakia. In contemporary Slovakia, bilingualism and multilingualism also results from international migration, globalization or mixed marriages. In this environment children are often exposed to more than one language and experiencing or acquiring another language(s) becomes natural part of their socialization. This paper provides an overview of the linguistic situation and sociolinguistic context of bilingualism and multilingualism as a common phenomenon in the territory of Slovakia and presents the most recent studies in bilingual and multilingual competence in children. Our research focuses mainly on the questions of language differentiation, code-switching, code-mixing, and natural interpreting skills. A few examples of short dialogues are provided to illustrate the features of bilingual communication. The findings are based on the error analysis of spontaneous and elicited production of language and the outcomes of experimental tests carried out in form of a number of individual case studies of children in Slovakia.