Potential Bilinguals in Japanese Society : A Perspective by the Ecology of Language

グローバリゼーション

言語の生態学

出入国管理及び難民認定法

継承言語

Potential Bilinguals

Globalization

Ecology of Language

Immigration Law

Heritage Languages

Japan is not a monolingual country. However, many Japanese have a fixed image of bilinguals as people who are fluent in Japanese and English. Thus those potential bilinguals in present Japan whose native tongues are mostly Asian, Portuguese and Spanish are not recognized. One aim here is to show Japan has for some time been a multilingual country by providing various demographic data on these potential bilinguals. Also, the article makes the suggestion that Japanese majority speakers should have more language choices at school, other than Japanese and English. Moreover, it is shown how they would be benefited to know about "present languages used in Japan" and "endangered languages".