Bilingüismo
FACTORS OF LANGUAGE THAT CAN EASE INTEGRATION
When someone is deciding whether to emigrate to one country or to another, language should play a crucial role on this choice since knowing the language is a decisive factor to help immigrants get integrated socially in their work places and communities. Knowing the host country language opens the possibility for immigrants to have access to better job opportunities and facilitates the integration in the new culture. Accordingly, there are some aspects of language that should be considered when choosing the country of destination: language proximity, language distance and critical period hypothesis, among others.
One of the criteria that have to do with immigration is language proximity. Immigrants tend to move to countries where they can speak their same language or, at least, a language they consider easier and closer to their mother tongue. It is a fact that immigrants that move to countries where they speak the same language find it easier to integrate in the new culture. It has also been proved that people who speak different languages but with the same roots do not encounter many difficulties in learning the host language and, in consequence, in integrating themselves.
As a result, and in contrast with this concept, language proximity can be described through other term which is “language distance”. Language distance stands for how different one language is from another. It cannot be measured with exact numbers but by studying the roots of the languages. The best way to do that is by analyzing what is known as cross-linguistic similarities. When learning a new language, speakers try to find similarities in both languages and making comparisons between them. This is the most common and unconscious way of learning a new language.
On the other hand, another interesting factor is the critical period hypothesis which states that the first few years of life is the crucial time in which individuals learn easily a language since certain linguistic aspects are more affected by age of the learner than other. Therefore, immigrant children in most cases get integrated easily because they learn the language quicker and are more in contact with people that speak the language they are learning. Taking this into account, language development and social relations could be said to develop in a two way relationship: when someone feels confident with a language, it is easier for that person to interact with other people; otherwise, being in contact with people that use that language, that person is going to be more likely to improve his/her language skills.
