sesquilingualism
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
28
Scrabble Score
16
Letters
3
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The condition of being sesquilingual; the ability to speak one language fluently, and a second language only to a limited extent.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The transitional zone can be regarded as the dialect boundary, where the two different dialects meet but there is no significant gap in mutual intelligibility due to the sesquilingualism of the native speakers."
- "In Pilch's terminology, sesquilingualism ("mastery of one-and-a-half languages") occurs when "all members of a given society speak the inferior [sic] language, but only some of its members speak the prestige language, usually in a more or less imperfect manner as a 'foreign language.'""
Etymology
From sesquilingual + -ism.