bilingual
bilingual — adjective
1. able to speak, read, and write two languages with roughly the same skill, often
able to speak, read, and write two languages with roughly the same skill, often because you grew up hearing both at home or school.
Greta is bilingual in Spanish and English because her mother spoke only Spanish at home.
bilingual in [language] and [language]
The hospital wants to hire bilingual nurses who can speak with Vietnamese patients in their own language.
bilingual + noun (job-applicant context)
Farouk grew up in Montreal, so he has been bilingual since he started kindergarten.
Many bilingual children switch between Mandarin and English in the same sentence without thinking.
Ravi says being bilingual helped him find a job at the airport check-in desk.
- multilingual
broader — speaking three or more languages
- fluent in two languages
longer paraphrase, no implication of childhood acquisition
- monolingual
able to use only one language
文法句型
bilingual in [language] and [language]
用法筆記
Subject is normally a person (or a person-noun like 'staff', 'nurse', 'child'). For a place or product that uses two languages, use sense 2 or 3.
常見錯誤
2. describing a country, city, school, or community where two languages are regular
describing a country, city, school, or community where two languages are regularly spoken in daily life and official settings.
Brussels is a bilingual city where street signs appear in both French and Dutch.
bilingual + place noun
The Watanabe twins attend a bilingual school that teaches half the lessons in Japanese.
Canada is officially bilingual, so federal workers must reply to citizens in English or French.
Our small town has a bilingual community of farmers who use Welsh at home and English at the market.
- dual-language
common in school and policy writing
- two-language
rare, mostly attributive ('a two-language society')
- monolingual
of a place or group using only one language
用法筆記
Distinguish from sense 1: here the subject is a place, institution, or group, not an individual person. Often appears with 'officially', 'fully', or 'truly' before the adjective.
常見錯誤
3. describing a book, sign, app, or document whose content appears in two languages
describing a book, sign, app, or document whose content appears in two languages side by side, so readers can compare or choose between them.
I bought a bilingual edition of the poems with French on the left page and English on the right.
bilingual edition (typical collocation)
The museum prints bilingual labels under each painting for tourists from Korea and the United States.
bilingual labels / signs (text artifact)
Our team built a bilingual app that lets shoppers switch between Thai and English with one tap.
Kalani wrote a bilingual storybook so her children could read the same tale in both their languages.
- dual-language
more technical, common in publishing and software
- parallel-text
specifically for translations shown side by side
- monolingual
of a text or product in only one language
用法筆記
Subject is an object or piece of content (book, sign, menu, website), not a person or place. Frequently attributive: 'bilingual menu', 'bilingual edition'.
常見錯誤
bilingual — noun
1. someone who can use two languages with about the same ease, especially in everyd
someone who can use two languages with about the same ease, especially in everyday talk as well as in reading and writing.
The research team interviewed thirty bilinguals who grew up in Singapore speaking Mandarin and English.
plural noun: bilinguals as research subjects
As a bilingual, Diego often dreams in Spanish but writes his shopping list in English.
as a bilingual (descriptor of a person)
The agency only hires bilinguals to translate phone calls between doctors and Vietnamese patients.
Some bilinguals say they feel like a slightly different person in each of their two languages.
- polyglot
informal, usually for someone who speaks several languages, not just two
- dual-language speaker
longer descriptive phrase, plain-English alternative
- monolingual
a person who speaks only one language
文法句型
a bilingual
用法筆記
More common in academic and journalistic writing than in everyday speech, where 'someone who speaks two languages' is preferred. Often plural ('bilinguals') in research contexts.